Picking

on the
Beatles
Al Di Meola
Pays Tribute to
the Fab Four

FALL 2013 Display until JANUARY

www.jazziz.com
 Fall 2013

4 fall 2 013 jazziz

 on the cover

Picking on The Beatles

Al Di Meola sets his sights on the Fab Four. By Bill Milkowski

54

 jazziz fall 2 013 5

 Jeff Lorber Fusion

On Disc
Fall into JAZZIZ Nightlife
Two new discs, lots of hot new music from Earl Klugh, Jeff Lorber Fusion,
Chick Corea, Gregory Porter, Kneebody, Michel Camilo, Roberto Fonseca,
David Chesky and more.
32
62 Coming On Strong
The sudden emergence of Gregory Porter. By Ted Panken
70 As In a Dream
Thirty years on, Michele Rosewoman’s New Yor-Uba continues to evolve.
By Larry Bumenfeld
76 Vintage Ink
Rediscovering the cover art of David Stone Martin.
87 Happy Trails
George Duke departs on a high note. By Bill Milkowski
94 Playing Smart
Pondering the curious mind and music of Craig Taborn. By Shaun Brady
100 Nothing But ’Nett
Charnett Moffett adds a remarkable solo disc and more to his résumé. By Bob Weinberg
106 Movin’ On
David Murray sets his sights on a larger audience and the neon lights of Vegas.
By Shaun Brady

8 fall 2013 jazziz Photo by Greg Allen

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 Fall 2013

14 Publisher’s Letter
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By Michael Fagien

18 Prelude
George Benson covers Nat Cole; Geri Allen returns
to Motown; Gary Burton picks up the pace; the
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies return to swing; Bill Frisell
surveys Big Sur; Eliane Elias recalls Chet Baker;
Will Calhoun plays the world, and more.

Departments
50
48 Traditions
Catherine Russell and her late mother, Carline Ray.
By Bob Weinberg
50 Contempo
The life and times of young Emily Bear.
By Jonathan Widran
52 Blu Notes
The strikingly original world of Andy Bey.
By Larry Blumenfeld

114 Auditions
Cécile McLorin Salvant steps into the spotlight.
By Jon Garelick

Reviewed: Christian McBride & Inside Straight,

Terence Blanchard, Jerry Bergonzi, Marc Cary, Uri
Caine and Han Bennink, Gary Peacock and Marilyn
Crispell, Preservation Jazz Hall Band, Jaimeo Brown,
114
Nicole Mitchell’s Ice Crystal, Dave Douglas Quintet,
Joshua Redman and more.

Roundups
119 The Caribbean tinge. By Mark Holston
123 Mixing it up in the Windy City. By Phil Freeman

Travels
128 Stumbling Into Montreal. By David Pulizzi

Coda
130 One Man’s Sax. By Brian Landrus

119
10 fall 2013 jazziz Photos by John Abbott, Nick Suttle, and Laura Ferreira
 George Duke has gathered a myriad of
funk, jazz, gospel and R&B talents on
DreamWeaver. Guests include Christian
20-Time GRAMMY® winner Chick Corea
McBride, Rachelle Ferrell, Lalah Hathaway,
returns with his highly anticipated new band.
Jeffrey Osborne, BeBe Winans, and Perri’s Lori
The Vigil also features guest appearances
Perry, among others. “Ball & Chain,” features
by Stanley Clarke and Ravi Coltrane.
a duet with Duke accompanying the late R&B
singer Teena Marie – one of the last tracks she
recorded.

The Line contains explosive rock

Jeff Lorber, heralded as “one of the founding energy paralleled with high-level nuanced
fathers of fusion” (Keyboard), returns with chamber ensemble playing, highly
GRAMMY® nominated power trio the Jeff wrought compositions that are balanced
Lorber Fusion, featuring bassist/ co- with adventurous no-holds-barred
producer Jimmy Haslip and saxophonist Eric improvising. This project explodes with
Marienthal. Hacienda spotlights eleven rock and jazz influences through engrossing
tracks, including a brilliant take on the Frank improvisational instrumentals, includes 12
Zappa composition “King Kong.” original compositions and contributions from
various members of the group.

Master guitarist Earl Klugh has been lauded

Yo is a finely crafted blend of traditional as a prodigy, groundbreaker, and one of
acoustic instruments with elements of the true statesmen of contemporary jazz.
cutting-edge electronica – a mesmerizing Klugh’s highly-anticipated Concord debut,
musical alchemy that pays homage to Cuba’s HandPicked, is a self-produced solo
African roots. album with guests Bill Frisell, Vince Gill and
Jake Shimabukuro.

Available at

Amazon, Amazon.com and the Amazon.com logo are

registered trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.
©2013 U.S. Postal Service, Photo ©MEPHISTO

www.raycharles.com www.concordmusicgroup.com
 Publisher's Letter

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

It was a hot summer night in Boca Raton. In contrast to Sanborn and Bob James, Jeff Lorber and Jimmy Haslip, and
the seasonal South Florida heat, cool air was flowing co- other acts, each with a musical language of their own that they
piously through JAZZIZ Nightlife, through the club’s open delivered to crowds with various cultural and musical tastes.
windows and doors, as well, to the outside lounges where We’ve featured blues, Latin, R&B, reggae and pop music. No mat-
the seated dinner crowd was listening to singer/pianist Ariel ter the group or genre, the audience always loves the music, and
Pocock and her quartet finish a set of standards. The group’s the musicians love the crowds. The variety of music somehow
final number was met by a round of cheers. When those engenders a heightened sense of community and generates
concluded, on came a team
of sound engineers, who
quickly moved the quartet’s
instruments and equipment
backstage. In short order, the
stage was set for the next
act, Bikini Jazz. The begin-
ning of what would soon
be a large crowd began to
file in, and these people all
looked like they had little
interest in staying seated.
While that was going
on, I went backstage to bid
farewell to Ariel, who’s
played the club many times
already — and whose ver-
sion of “Real Emotional Girl”
was featured on the Summer Bikini Jazz
2013 JAZZIZ On Disc — and
to welcome the members of
Bikini Jazz, who’d be playing the club for the first time that new audiences for artists. Larry Carlton told his audience that it
evening. In the preceding weeks, the band’s lead singer, Eli was refreshing to play in front of a crowd that wasn’t a bunch
La O, and I had exchanged a few emails. She wrote in perfect of guys in black T-shirts. When my brother, Steven, welcomed
English, so I was a touch surprised to discover when we Eubanks to our stage, he reminded the folks at the crowded bar
met that she and her band conversed backstage mostly in to keep conversation to a minimum. Kevin took the microphone
Spanish. Onstage, also, La O spoke Spanish — which didn’t and promptly countered that request by telling everyone to
seem to bother the predominantly English-speaking audi- enjoy themselves, that “We’re all here to have fun.”
ence. Surrounded by guitarists and trumpeters, a bassist As we move into Fall, and the outdoor humidity starts to wane
and percussionist, Eli delivered her message in the universal and the temperature begins to drop, we’ll keep the AC cranked
language of jazz. because inside JAZZIZ Nightlife the music’s always cooking. And
In the weeks prior to Bikini Jazz’s debut appearance at the one performance at a time, we’re keeping the dream alive.
club, JAZZIZ Nightlife had presented Kevin Eubanks, David  —Michael Fagien

14 fall 2013 jazziz Photo by Enrique Padron

 Honoring and
extending the
tradition –
New music Editor and Publisher Michael Fagien
Publisher Zakiya Fagien
from

Managing Editor
Associate Editor
David Pulizzi
Robert Weinberg
Hot Shoe Editor-at-Large
Copy Editor
Larry Blumenfeld
Candace G. Nelson

Records Art Director Benjamin Rennells
Assistant to Publishers Brian Frey
Webmaster Cesar Rengifo
Accountant Lisa Gainsborg
Certified
Public Accountant Melamed & Karp
Digital Media Jennifer Lima
Customer Service Brittani Excell

advertising: 561-910-7721

contributors : Hrayr Attarian, Louisa Bertman, Ross Boissoneau, Philip Booth,

Shaun Brady, Mars Breslow, Stuart Brinin, Julia Cocuzza, John Diliberto, Casey
(HSR 109)

Joe Gransden & Russell Gunn
JAZZ CONTRASTED: Tribute to Kenny Dorham
Trumpet masters pay homage to one of the greats.
(HSR 108)
Donahue, Ted Drozdowski, Enid Farber, Sascha Feinstein, Phil Freeman, Steve
Futterman, Jon Garelick, Cary Gillaspie, Fernando Gonzalez, Mark Holston, Jeff
Jackson, Ilana Khon, Ed Kopp, Kara Manning, Bill Meredith, Bill Milkowski, John
Frederick Moore, Alan Nahigian, Daniel Nevins, Ted Panken, Michael J. Renner,
Michael Roberts, James Rozzi, Kirk Silsbee, Neil Tesser, Eric Waggoner, Jonathan
Widran, Josef Woodard, Scott Yanow, Linda Zacks.
JAZZIZ USPS# 015486 ISSN 074-5885 is published (in print and delivered by mail) quarterly
by JAZZIZ Publishing, LLC.
201 Plaza Real Boca Raton, Florida 33432
Editorial phone number 561-893-6868.
Subscription rate is $59.95 per year for 1 year. Each subscription includes monthly Digital
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The Atlanta Young Lions our production office.
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Prelude

Back to Motown

18 fall 2013 jazziz

“I really have been very intimidated by this
project, because the songs are so iconic,”
admits pianist and Michigan native Geri Allen
about Grand River Crossings: Motown and Motor
City Inspirations (Motéma), an album dominated
by versions of tunes associated with Motown’s
classic era. “People take them very personally, so
I wanted to take a lot of care with them.”
Not that Allen was interested in cloning the
covers she chose. Indeed, anyone anticipating
watered-down, radio-friendly renditions of
tunes such as Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a
Clown” and Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues”
will likely be left slack-jawed by Allen’s adven-
turous, keyboard-only interpretations — which
explains why she’s so grateful to Motéma Music
president Jana Herzen for supporting this con-
cluding chapter of a solo-piano trilogy that in-
cludes 2010’s Flying Toward the Sound and 2011’s
A Child is Born. From Michael Jackson’s “Wanna
Be Startin’ Something” to The Supremes’ “Stoned
Love,” she pays tribute through improvisation
and self-expression, not replication.
At the same time, Allen stresses, “I tried to be
really careful not to affect the melodies at all.
They’re so beautiful that I wanted to use them
as a source of inspiration. I’m a Detroiter, and I
grew up with them, too.”
Also featured are Allen originals such as the
two-part title track and “In Appreciation,” a
phrase that can also be applied to the recording’s
guests: trumpeter/mentor Marcus Belgrave, who
plays on three tracks, including his own “Space
Odyssey,” and alto saxophonist David McMurray,
heard on “Itching in My Heart.” And while the
presence of Paul McCartney’s “Let It Be” may seem
like the set’s outlier, the tune connects to the
theme because of Aretha Franklin’s epochal ver-
sion and its role in Allen’s musical development.
“It was the first tune I learned to improvise
on in high school,” she notes. “I remember get-
ting the sheet music and learning to play to that
song. Because of Aretha Franklin’s performance
of it and what she represents in this music, I de-
cided to do it in tribute to her. And the fact that it
had a particular meaning to me was nice, too.”
Did Allen feel any anxiety over tackling a
concept that was simultaneously so personal
and so risky? “There’s always anxiety,” she
replies with a laugh. “It’s a photograph of where
I was musically, and I definitely gave it my best.
And that’s all you can do.” —Michael Roberts

jazziz fall 2013 19

Cole Mining
Guitarist/vocalist George Benson has been a devotee of
the music of Nat “King” Cole for almost his entire life. Their
careers have followed parallel tracks, each transitioning from
serious jazz instrumentalist to pop crossover star. Benson’s
heartfelt renditions of some of Cole’s most beloved tunes on
his new album, Inspiration (Concord), should be proof enough
of his lifelong love of that repertoire, but more is provided on
the album’s first track: a recording of an 8-year-old Benson
performing “Mona Lisa.” Over the phone from Arizona, where
he now resides, Benson recollected that recording more than
60 years later. —Shaun Brady

What are your memories of recording “Mona Lisa”?

I won a singing contest and the reward was they were
going to take me into the studio and record me. It was a very
small, makeshift place and they stuck me in a room with my
ukulele. The biggest surprise when I hear that, even though it
was many, many years ago and it’s very vague in my mind, is
when I listen to the chord changes I’m playing. My ears were
really intact way back then because I didn’t know anything
about music, and I’m playing by ear. It really shocked me. But
that answers the question, ‘How long has George been in love
with Nat Cole’s music?’ That tells it all in a minute’s time.
What does Cole’s music mean to you?
I grew up hearing a lot of blues, a lot of R&B and some
pop music, but when Nat’s voice came on the radio it was
something special. I knew that he was not ordinary. I
wanted to be like that.
How did you choose the material for your album?
It’s very difficult to choose from Nat’s great
repertoire. It’s like an Italian menu — you don’t
know what to eat because there are a thousand
things and they’re all good. But some things we
knew had to be on the album because they’re
such great classics: ‘Mona Lisa,’ ‘Nature Boy,’ a
few others. We tried to do a cross-section of his
trio things, his jazzy things, great ballads and
some of his popular novelty songs.
Do you feel an affinity because of your similar
career trajectories?
Nat put his best into everything, no matter what
it was. I call the two elements that make music
great the ‘feel good’ and the ‘sound good,’ and
Nat always had that in his music. So I’ve always
tried to make that a part of my music, too.

20 fall 2013 jazziz Photo by Greg Allen

THE 13TH ANNUAL SAILING OF
THE JAZZ CRUISE
WHERE EVERY PERFORMANCE
IS SPECIAL

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BIG BAND DIRECTOR 888.852.9987

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MUSIC DIRECTOR Chuck Findley
Tom Kennedy Poncho Sanchez
Alonzo Bodden Bruce Forman WWW.THEJAZZCRUISE.COM
COMEDIAN Joe LaBarbera Arturo Sandoval
Nnenna Freelon
Randy Brecker Christoph Luty Gary Smulyan
Wycliffe Gordon
Ann Hampton Callaway GOSPEL SHOW HOST Dennis Mackrel Cedar Walton
Quartet Manhattan Transfer Walt Weiskopf
Jimmy Greene
Bill Charlap Trio Marcus Miller Quartet Jennifer Wharton
Jeff Hamilton
Clayton Brothers Quintet Lewis Nash Trio
Niki Haris
Freddy Cole Trio Dick Oatts
Antonio Hart
Kurt Elling Quartet Ken Peplowski
Tamir Hendelman
Robin Eubanks SHOW HOST
Dick Hyman
Positive Vibes
At an age when most people begin to slow down, 70-year-old
vibraphonist Gary Burton seems to be picking up the pace.
He’s just completed an autobiography, Learning to Listen: The
Jazz Journey of Gary Burton (Berklee Press), and released Guided
Tour (Mack Avenue Records), his richly rewarding second album
with the New Gary Burton Quartet, an ensemble he originally
saw as a one-off.
“I put the group together for a tour,” he says of his teaming with
bassist Scott Colley, drummer Antonio Sanchez and guitarist Julian
Lage. “I’d played with everyone separately, but the combination
was so good I knew we had to go into the studio.”
Indeed, Burton puts his new band in the same league with his
three favorite lineups: his mid-’60s unit co-starring saxophonist
Stan Getz; the original Gary Burton Quartet, featuring guitarist
Larry Coryell, drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Steve Swallow; and
“the one with Pat” — meaning Pat Metheny, a member of Burton’s
mid-’70s quintet who subsequently made his mark on jazz history.
Burton envisions a similarly bright future for 25-year-old Lage,
who was only 12 when Burton spied him on a Grammy telecast. “It
looks like I’ve discovered another guitar player,” he notes. “I keep
22 fall 2013 jazziz
doing it, from Larry to Pat to John Scofield to Kurt Rosenwinkel to
Julian. Maybe he’ll be the last one.”
Lage, Colley and Sanchez get space aplenty on Guided Tour, but
that’s nothing new. Rather than dominating the outfits he fronts,
Burton views them “more like string quartets. You might think of
the first violinist as the leader, but everyone can contribute.”
Even so, Burton squeezed in two of his rare compositions: the Astor
Piazzolla tribute “Remembering Tano” and “Jane Fonda Called Again,”
whose whimsical title may come back to bite him: “For the next 20
years, I’m going to be asked, ‘Why did Jane Fonda call the first time?’”
Although Burton doesn’t actually know Fonda, he’s made some
fascinating friends over the years, as portraits of Duke Ellington,
Thelonious Monk and others in Learning to Listen demonstrate. In
the book, Burton also explores his mid-life embrace of homosexual-
ity and his educational transition from Berklee College of Music
veep to online sensei for thousands of improv students.
“Once you learn the language of music and are fluent in it,
you’re able to create musical sentences,” Burton explains. While his
charges’ lines may not all be as eloquent as his, there’s no shame in
that. After all, he’s had decades of practice. —Michael Roberts
Photo by Jimmy Katz
From One Beautiful Musician to Another
When Eliane Elias croons 14 Chet Baker classics on I Thought
About You (Concord Jazz), the Brazilian pianist and singer’s
tribute to the late trumpeter and vocalist, she brings more to
the session than a passing interest in Baker’s legacy. The iconic
musician was a major influence on the creation of the suave bossa
nova Elias heard while growing up in her native São Paulo. On
earlier recordings, she has frequently sampled Baker’s expansive
songbook. And, on one unforgettable night in Manhattan, the two
met face-to-face for the first time.
“It was 1982, and it was my very first gig as a leader in the
U.S.,” she recalls of the night she performed at a club called
Seventh Avenue South in New York City. Because Elias was still
an unknown commodity in town, she agreed to work for the door
and take her chances. Happily, both shows sold out, and she was
able to pay the musicians fairly well. Then a lanky guy with an
instantly recognizable voice walked up. It was Chet Baker. He told
the pianist that he’d been present for both sets and that he really
liked her playing. “Naturally, I was very flattered,” she says. “We
talked a bit and exchanged phone numbers. Then he said that he
24 fall 2013 jazziz
was having a problem with his wife and couldn’t go home. He
also said he didn’t have any money.” Unaware of Baker’s drug
addiction, she forked over a fistful of bills. “I gave Chet all of the
money I’d made on my first gig in the States,” she says, laughing.
“He took off his cap, handed it to me and left.”
On I Thought About You, the pianist is joined by husband
and bassist Marc Johnson and former husband Randy Brecker,
whose trumpet and flugelhorn work on three tracks evokes
the warmth and brevity of Baker’s cool-school style. On three
bossa-style takes, Brazilian acoustic guitarist Oscar Castro-
Neves is present while Steve Cardenas appears elsewhere,
adding electric-guitar comping and solos on tunes that range
from ballads such as “Everything Depends on You” to up-tempo
fare like “This Can’t Be Love.”
“I saw Chet perform a couple of times,” Elias recalls, “and when
I sing ‘There Will Never Be Another You,’ I vividly remember how
he performed that tune, how he put the microphone so close to his
lips and how softly he sang. What an incredible sound and great
phrasing. He was a beautiful musician.” —Mark Holston
Photo by Bob Wolfenson
 Requisite
Tina Brooks True Blue (Blue Note) — Tenorist
Harold Floyd “Tina” Brooks was a valued session
player in the Blue Note stable when he recorded
this blues-drenched 1960 masterwork. In fact, just
the week before the date, he had brilliantly accom-
panied Freddie Hubbard on his debut album, Open
Sesame. The trumpeter returns the favor on True
Blue, obviously finding plenty of room for expres-
sion within Brooks’ meaty writing, which calls on
blues and church influences from his native North
Carolina. Riff-rich choruses and unison lines recall
Horace Silver and the Adderley brothers, while the
rhythms of pianist Duke Jordan, bassist Sam Jones
and drummer Art Taylor provide expert propul-
sion and color. But Brooks’ tenor playing is the real
star here, at once laid-back yet never less than
fully emotionally committed. While his star may
have been eclipsed by Hank Mobley and Sonny
Rollins, Brooks’ all-too-brief discography is well
worth exploring, starting with this continually
satisfying highlight of the hard-bop era. Sadly,
Brooks battled a longtime drug habit and died in
1974 at age 42. —Bob Weinberg

PorterGlasper_Jazziz_Outlined.indd 1 8/6/13 10:17 AM

26 fall 2013 jazziz
Hangin’ Tough
On July 15, saxophonist Jimmy Greene
performed at Jimmy Mak’s jazz club in
Portland, Oregon, as part of a concert
to raise money for the “My Sandy Hook
Family Fund.” Greene’s daughter, Ana,
was one of the 26 people killed at Sandy
Hook Elementary School in Newtown,
Connecticut, on December 14, 2012.
Following the tragedy, Greene stepped
away from music. His performance with his
quartet — pianist George Colligan, bassist
Chris Higgins and drummer Matt Jorgensen
— was among the few he’s given in recent
months. “Getting back to writing and playing
made me feel more like myself, and it of-
fered me a way with which to express every-
thing that I’ve been going through,” Greene
told Portland’s KOIN 6 News before the
concert. “We can’t wrap our minds around
what’s happened, even still. The shock and
the senselessness of it is still very raw.”
One hundred per cent of the money col-
lected by the “My Sandy Hook Family Fund”
is distributed equally among the families that
lost a loved one during the Newtown tragedy.

jazziz fall 2013 27

Diggin’ the Daddies
With the recent release of White Teeth Black Thoughts, the
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies officially returned to big-band swing
and jazz after taking a 14-year hiatus from playing the kind
of music that made them famous in the late ’90s. Frontman
Steve Perry and his cohorts — including fellow founders Dan
Schmid (bass) and Dana Heitman (trumpet) — sashay their
way through the record’s 11 tracks which, through a series of
vignettes, narrate America’s decline with the ominous joviality
of the Ghost of Christmas Past. The squalid suffer (“Whiskey
Jack” and “Huffin’ Muggles”), the young and poetic struggle
with modern mediocrity (“I Love American Music” and “Brown
Flight Jacket”) and the one percent bask in Gatsby-esque
extravagance (“The Babooch”).
“I started writing swing songs again during the financial
crisis,” Perry explains over the phone from his home in Eugene,
Oregon. “It was a ‘Brother, can you spare a dime’ time. You
started seeing the cardboard signs, and then there was Occupy
and the foreclosures. Swing fit these things.”
A deluxe edition of White Teeth Black Thoughts (Space Age
Bachelor Pads Records) includes 9 additional songs as well as a
“director’s cut” of “The Babooch” on a second disc that features
28 fall 2013 jazziz
renowned guest stars Buckwheat Zydeco and Zoot Horn Rollo. Disc
2 finds the band and its guests exploring additional American roots
styles, including psychobilly and New Orleans swamp rock.
Perry hadn’t touched swing since 1999, when Zoot Suit Riot
went platinum and gained he and his cohorts national renown
as a retro-swing band—which they really weren’t. When the
Daddies first formed in Eugene in 1989, half of them were
jazzers, the other half punkers. Their sound was ska-influenced
Fishbone-esque funk infused with strains of big-band jazz. With
the massive success of Zoot Suit Riot, the band was pigeonholed
as just another retro-swing outfit. And then, says Perry, “There
was the inevitable backlash. We turned back into a pumpkin,
and we thought, ‘Let’s do what we’ve always done. Maybe people
will dig us the way we are.’”
Since then the Daddies have experimented with a wide
variety of styles, including soul, R&B, country, ska, Latin and
world music. Whatever they’re playing, swing included, says
Perry, the band’s goal is to revitalize, not mimic. “There’s
nobody that’s going to be as good as Charlie Parker. I’m sorry,
there is not. You should try to be a modern version of it. Make it
new, while using the old.” —Casey Donahue
Photo by Rod Black
 Bill Frisell’s music is often associated
with images. The films of Buster Keaton,
the paintings of Gerhard Richter and
the oddball collection of Depression-era
portraits by photographer Mike Disfarmer
have all been grist for various projects by
the guitarist/composer. Even when he’s not
focusing on a particular subject, the impres-
sionistic, lyrical spaciousness of Frisell’s
particular brand of jazz-Americana can
conjure vast Midwestern landscapes.
With his latest project, Frisell took to one
of America’s most distinctive landscapes,
the rocky central California coastline. Big
Sur, his Okeh/Sony Masterworks debut,
combines his 858 Quartet and Beautiful
Dreamers trio into a band Frisell calls the
Big Sur Quartet, which includes violinist
Jenny Scheinman, violist Eyvind Kang,
cellist Hank Roberts and drummer Rudy
Royston. Commissioned by the Monterey
Jazz Festival, the album’s 19 tracks are a
beguiling fusion of roots music, hymns, jazz
and even a touch of rockabilly — all imbued
with cinematic suggestiveness.
According to Frisell, the Monterey
commission issued no directives about the
content of the piece. Instead he was simply
offered a place to work —the private Glen
Deven Ranch — for 10 days. “I probably
shouldn’t say this,” he confides on the phone
from the San Francisco airport, “but I don’t
even know if the music is about Big Sur. But
Big Sur gave me the chance to get inside my
own head and let whatever was in there
come out. … I didn’t feel like I was under the
gun to accomplish anything. I was writing
all the time, but I wasn’t worried about what
it was or how it was going to come out.”
Frisell worked in a small cottage on the
ranch, occasionally drove into Monterey
to pick up food, and took long walks with
a notebook, often settling on a spot that
overlooked the steep cliffs above the Pacific.
“It was so inspiring on so many levels —
being hit by this awesome beauty, the smell
of the eucalyptus trees,” he says.
When it was time for the full band to

Bill Frisell’s
rehearse, Frisell brought everyone to Glen
Deven so they could get a feel for it. “I
found that when we did the record and

Big Sur
were playing, it triggered memories of
the place,” he recalls. “Little flashes. It is
connected.” —Jon Garelick

30 fall 2013 jazziz Photo by Monica Frisell

World Without End
Will Calhoun is best-known as the drummer for the rock group
Living Colour. But he’s always been musically adventurous,
recording jazz and world-music-influenced projects under his
leadership. His latest album, Life In This World (Motéma), com-
bines all of his musical influences in a jazz framework. Not that
Calhoun bothers with those types of labels.
“Studying in Africa the last 15 years has taught me to listen
to sounds and not styles,” Calhoun says. “I just stopped thinking
in that framework because I was learning so much stuff about
Manding rhythms and Dogon rhythms and all these things that
are so connected to different parts of the continent. When you
start to study it, you realize how connected everything is. You just
have to call it music after a while.”
Calhoun’s experiences while living and studying in Africa are
evident throughout the record — not just on an obviously African-
influenced track like “Afrique Kan’e,” but also on Thelonious
Monk’s “Evidence,” which Calhoun plays in a 6/8 Manding rhythm.
Immersing himself in African music allowed Calhoun to more fully
comprehend and express his musical vision. “I understood more of
what Max and Elvin and Miles and Ornette and these guys were
doing when I went to Mali,” he says. “I wanted to put an indigenous
Photo by Bill Bernstein
40,000-year-old rhythm from the Manding people in Mali on the
record along with gentlemen like Ron Carter and Wallace Roney,
and tie together this spirituality and history of the music.”
For Calhoun, having a legend like Carter play bass on Wayne
Shorter’s “Etcetera” was both a thrill and a way to connect to the
jazz tradition. But the other musicians — including contemporaries
such as pianist Marc Cary and bassist Charnett Moffett — also
bring the genre-bending sensibility that Calhoun believes is es-
sential for ensuring jazz’s continued relevance.
“It’s horrifying if [jazz] becomes like a museum piece,” he says.
“It’s important what younger folks are bringing to the music, and
it’s very important that we stay in touch with the roots of the
music. We’re not abandoning one for the other.”
For Calhoun, who’s getting ready to record a new album with
Living Colour, combining all of his influences in a common
framework is his way of treating jazz with integrity. “I want to
approach the music with respect, but I think it’s very important
for me to respect the music in a Will Calhoun fashion,” he says. “I
don’t think I would be honest with the art form if I just covered
an Art Blakey record. Honesty is important in art. Life In This
World is total honesty.” —John Frederick Moore
jazziz fall 2013 31
 OnDisc Fall Into JAZZIZ Nightlife
For more information regarding this and more than 100 other JAZZIZ discs available for purchase, go to

Acoustic-guitar virtuoso Earl Klugh smith in his own right. For HandPicked,
www.jazziz.com
Earl Klugh

phistication is the increased prominence

once again show-
cases his warm
tone and ar-
ticulate fingering
on HandPicked
(Heads Up), a
quietly radiant
set of jazz and
pop gems played solo and in collabora-
tion with guests. Duet partners include
fellow six-stringer Bill Frisell, ukulele
ace Jake Shimabukuro and guitarist
and vocalist Vince Gill. In a career
spanning more than 40 years, Klugh
has recorded with the likes of George
Benson, Return to Forever and Bob
James. Besides his dazzling technique,
the Detroit-born guitar great is known
for his interpretations of melodies from
the jazz and pop worlds, even as he’s
established himself as a fine song-
Klugh, who turns 60 in September, dips
into the songbooks of The Beatles, The
Eagles and The Everly Brothers, as well
as Thelonious Monk, Vince Guaraldi
and Rodgers and Hart. He also penned
three tunes for the session, including
the sprightly “In Six,” included here.
Klugh conjures the shimmer of moon-
light, as his fingers deftly dance to the
rhythms he pulls from his strings.
Costa Rica has been much in the public
eye these days,
its burgeon-
ing economy
acknowledged
by a visit from
President Obama
earlier this year.
More evidence
that the verdant nation is growing in so-
of its Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional. In
March of this year, 72 members of the
symphony collaborated with a contin-
gent of South Florida jazz musicians
on Bossa Nova Sinfónico: Recordando a
Antonio C. Jobim, which captured their
performance at the Teatro Nacional in
San José. Pianist Michael Orta, bassist
Jamie Ousley and drummer Carlomagno
Araya form a core rhythm section
behind vocalist Rose Max and guitarist
Ramatis Moraes, the South Floridians
teaming up with the Costa Rican orches-
tra on a set of standards by Brazilian
maestro Jobim. Conductor and arranger
Jeremy Fox assures that the intimate
acoustic music is never overpowered by
the orchestra. Rather, brass, strings and
woodwinds add color, texture and cin-
ematic sweep to Jobim gems. The group
borrows a Claus Ogerman arrangement

JAZZIZ ON DISC is a 2-CD music compilation from the artists of yesterday, today and tomorrow, bundled in the subscriber copies
of the print editions of JAZZIZ Magazine. For this issue, we’ve made Disc One a compilation of music by artists who have appeared at
JAZZIZ Nightlife, this magazine’s sister nightclub, in Boca Raton, Florida. Disc Two features fresh jazz from a diverse range of artists.

32 fall 2013 jazziz Photo by Tanner Photography

 Following her 2009 Burt Bacharach Songbook
CD, vocalist Carol
Duboc returns to
music of her own de-
vising on Smile (Gold
Note). The Kansas
City, Missouri, native
first established
herself as a composer,
penning songs for R&B singers Patti Labelle,
Chante Moore and Stephanie Mills, but
revealed jazz roots on her own 2001 release
With All That I Am. On Smile, Duboc displays
her prowess in the contemporary-jazz idiom.
Well-crafted original material draws from
bossa nova and samba rhythms in a way that
will sound familiar to fans of Michael Franks
or Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen. And she’s
certainly in great company here. Duboc once
again calls on flutist Hubert Laws, who ac-
companied her on her Bacharach CD, and re-
cruits top session players including keyboard-
ist Jeff Lorber, bassists Brian Bromberg and
Jimmy Haslip, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and
percussionist Luis Conte. The singer’s cool,
understated vocals deftly ride the swaying
rhythms of the clever “Elephant.” Included
here, the song makes use of the “pachyderm-
in-the-room” metaphor to describe a couple’s
unaddressed difficulties.
for their read of “Wave,” included here.
Moraes’ and Orta’s sparkling opening
statements ride Ousley’s and Araya’s
insistent groove, while Rose Max’s velvety
vocals effortlessly surf the rhythmic tide
and gentle swells of brass and strings.
Contemporary-jazz guitarist Chieli
Minucci recently
celebrated his
30th anniversary
recording under the
Special EFX rubric.
As evidenced by his
latest CD, Genesis
(Shanachie), the
group has undergone significant person-
nel changes over the decades, having
started out as Minucci’s duo with percus-
If you purchased this magazine without the CDs or would like additional copies, e-mail service@jazziz.com
or log onto www.jazziz.com.
 jazziz fall 2013 33
sionist George Jinda. The pair have long
since parted, but Minucci recruited
A-list players including keyboardist Jay
Rowe, bassist Jerry Brooks and drum-
mer Lionel Cordrew. All are on hand
for the new release, which spotlights
Minucci’s often-exotic compositions
and remarkable playing. Minucci also
features standout contributions by
violinist Karen Brigg, pianist Lao Tizer
and vocalist Xu Feiyu. On “Till the End of
Time,” our selection, the guitarist offers
some intriguingly bent, bluesy notes, as
well as agile lead lines that call to mind
Wes Montgomery. Brooks and drum-
mer Omar Hakim maintain a slinky
backbeat, and saxophonist David Mann
blows unison lines and a fiery, albeit
too-brief solo to close out the tune.
JAZZIZ OnDisc Fall 2013
FALL 2013
Fall Into JAZZIZ Nightlife
Disc 1
q Orquesta sinfónica nacional de costa rica
w chieli Minucci and special eFX e earl klugh
rvictor espinola t nanami Morikawa and Phillip strange
yAndrew neu u Palo! iJeff lorber Fusion
o Patrick lamb a Bikini Jazz
s eric Hansen d carol Duboc
f randy Brecker/Włodek Pawlik
Disc 1
q Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Costa Rica
“Wave” Bossa Nova Sinfónico: Recordando a
Antonio C. Jobim [Centro Nacional de la Musica]
w Chieli Minucci and Special EFX
“Till The End of Time” Genesis [Shanachie]
e Earl Klugh “In Six” HandPicked [Heads Up]
r V ictor Espinola
“Somewhere in Mediterranea”
Army of Angels [Harpara Music]
t Nanami Morikawa and Phillip Strange
“UMMG” Open Spaces [New Truth]
y A ndrew Neu “Date Night”
Everything Happens for a Reason [CGN]
u Palo! “Tabaco y Ron Pa’ Mi Santa”
This Is Afro-Cuban Funk [Rolling Pin Music]
i Jeff Lorber Fusion “Corinaldo”
Hacienda [Heads Up]
o Patrick Lamb “Sweet Tea”
It’s All Right Now [Patrick Lamb Productions]
a Bikini Jazz “No Se Puede Vivir sin Coger”
La Receta de la Felicidad [self-released]
s Eric Hansen “Back in the Groove”
String Theory [Hansenhaus]
d C arol Duboc “Elephant”
Smile [Gold Note Music]
f Randy Brecker/Włodek Pawlik
“Night in Calisia” Night in Calisia [Summit]
Mastered by Tod Levine at Magnetic North Studio, NY
 It seems like mastering the Paraguayan
harp would
require a lifetime
of study. Victor
Espinola’s been
at it since the age
of 10. His dizzy-
ing artistry on
the instrument
— as well as his vibrant incorpora-
tion of flamenco, Gypsy, Brazilian,
Middle Eastern, African, pop, jazz and
electronica influences — has kept him
in demand all over Latin America and
Europe, leading his own groups as well
as touring with contemporary-jazz star
Yanni. While he’s recorded in a duo with
fellow Paraguayan harpist Eugenio
Leon, and has participated in multi-
artist collaborations, the South Florida-
based virtuoso also shines brightly on
his own recordings. On his Forbidden
Angel release, he interpreted a personal- Longtime fans were thrilled when the Jeff Lorber Fusion re-emerged in 2010 after
ized set of pop favorites including “Dust a nearly 30-year recording hiatus. Keyboardist and composer
in the Wind,” “California Dreaming” Lorber, who’s enjoyed a prodigious career as a solo artist as well
and “Careless Whisper.” But on Army of as a much-sought-after sideman and producer, re-formed the
Angels (Harpara Music), from 2008, he JLF with new personnel, recruiting like-minded contemporary-
concentrates on music that’s especially jazz giants Eric Marienthal and Jimmy Haslip, on sax and bass,
evocative of his folkloric roots, although respectively. On their third recording, Hacienda (Heads Up),
he updates the proceedings with subtle the group is rounded out by alternating drummers Vinnie
electronic effects. Espinola crafts swift Colaiuta and Dave Weckl and percussionist Lenny Castro. While
and elegant string magic as he dances the music bears electronica influences from the band’s global travels, JLF continue to
gracefully throughout “Somewhere in craft the funky fusion fans have come to expect. They even tackle Frank Zappa’s “King
Mediterranea,” included here. Kong,” which features violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and marimba player Ed Mann, the latter
of whom was a member of the Mothers of Invention. Certainly the emphasis on expert
Possessing a crystalline voice and a deep musicianship remains a constant. On the album-opening “Corinaldo,” our selection,
understanding the bandmates display taut synergy as they chase a relentless groove around various
of the jazz idiom, corners. Lorber alters his palette from otherworldly electric sounds to acoustic piano,
Nanami Morikawa and Marienthal holds forth on tenor, rather than his usual alto sax.
has been winning
over audiences Truth). With a group rounded out by she interprets Strange’s lovely original
in South Florida, bassist Tetsuro Aratama and drummer lyric. The pianist also penned words to
where she Larry Marshall, Morikawa displays Billy Strayhorn’s “UMMG,” a little-heard
relocated from elegance, sophistication and a natural bit of Ellingtonia, which we’ve included
her native Japan a couple of years ago. sense of swing on songbook standards here. Morikawa playfully skips along
In 2010, the singer teamed up with of varying vintages. Best of all are to the buoyant melody, which drifts
pianist, composer and arranger Phil her exquisite, emotionally unguarded like a breeze-blown cloud. “Music flows
Strange, a South Florida transplant renditions of Bill Evans’ “Very Early” straight to your heart through me,” she
currently living in Osaka, on a lovely and Wayne Shorter’s “Infant Eyes,” the sings. And it’s true, especially on her
quartet album titled Open Spaces (New latter displaying a sublime intimacy as final, clarion note.

OnDisc
34 fall 2013 jazziz  Photo by Greg Allen
 IMPORTED FROM
PASEAUX ROBLES.

What could the wines of JUSTIN Vineyards possibly have in common with the great Bordeaux wines of Margaux
and Saint-Émilion? The answer is, quite a lot: from Paso Robles’ limestone-rich soil and ideal microclimate,
to the wine itself, intense yet elegant and well worth aging. However, what sets JUSTIN apart from its
Old World counterparts is price. Thanks to our Paso Robles location, we can create superb wines for
a fraction of the cost of Bordeaux of equal quality. To which we say, vive la différence!

©2013 JUSTIN Vineyards & Winery LLC. All Rights Reserved. JUSTIN, JUSTIN LOGO, ISOSCELES, and JUSTIFICATION are registered trademarks of JUSTIN Vineyards & Winery LLC. JV9130
 Contemporary-jazz saxophonist Andrew
Neu has paid his
dues as a sideman.
His talents have
been employed,
onstage and
in the studio,
by the diverse
likes of Bobby
Caldwell, Pat Martino, Randy Brecker,
Gerald Albright and Peter Nero and the
Philly Pops. Neu’s contributions to Peter
White’s “Here We Go” helped that song
reach No. 1 on the Billboard Smooth Jazz
chart in 2012. The saxophonist’s latest
disc, Everything Happens for a Reason
(CGN), is certainly a crowd-pleaser.
Switching between tenor and alto saxo-
phones, Neu welcomes a host of con-
temporary-jazz stars, a spanking horn
section and the Los Angles Studio String
Orchestra on the 12-track program.
Caldwell lends his lithe vocals to “What
Would I Do,” which he penned with
the saxophonist, and guitarist Gannin
Arnold adds modern texture to the jazz
classic “Take Five.” All-stars Steve Oliver,
Jeff Lorber, Brian Bromberg and Alex
Acuña further enrich the proceedings
throughout. The romantic “Date Night,”
our selection, features Neu’s tenor
joyfully loping over the funky rhythms
and enlivened by a sunny horn chorus.
Lorber’s electric piano is equally ecstatic,
but leaves you hungry for a longer solo.
About a decade ago, Miami keyboardist
and composer
Steve Roitstein
assembled a
handful of simpa-
tico musicians to
perform a hybrid
of his favorite
kinds of music —
funk and Afro-Cuban — and Palo! was
born. Collaborating with vocalist and
songwriter Leslie Cartaya, timbalero
Raymer Olalde and percussionist and
vocalist Philbert Armenteros, Roitstein
OnDisc
36 fall 2013 jazziz 
Even if you didn’t know he was born
in Jackson,
Mississippi, you
could easily
detect the roots
of saxophonist
Patrick Lamb’s
funky, old-
school soul and
R&B. On his latest release, It’s All Right
Now (Patrick Lamb Productions), Lamb
digs in on a meaty set of contemporary
jazz with a decidedly roadhouse ori-
entation. He nods to inspirations with
songs such as “Maceo!” which is dedi-
cated to James Brown saxman Maceo
Parker (and was No. 2 on Billboard’s
Contemporary chart as of this writing),
and interprets a slinky Eddie Harris
party groover for the title track. And
his blowing throughout conjures those
heroes, as well as King Curtis, David
Sanborn and Grover Washington Jr.
Lamb receives sterling support from
producer Jeff Lorber, who lends his keyboards and horn arrangements and who co-wrote
much of the material. The über-funky “Sweet Tea,” included here, is a perfect example of
the Lamb-Lorber connection. Lamb’s church-meets-juke-joint sax line rides the greasy
rhythm laid down by bassist Alex Al and drummer Michael White. Meanwhile, Lorber
and guitarist Dwight Sills offer instrumental commentary, and trumpeter Ron King
fattens up the horn choruses. It’s a fitting tribute to the official beverage of the South.
was able to realize his musical vision. developed the groove from a Perez
Palo! further shaped their aesthetic Prado beat, which he started playing
while holding down a weekly residency one night during a set. The rest of the
at the Little Havana nightspot Hoy band followed suit, and in the keyboard-
Como Ayer. Since then, they’ve played ist’s words, “it turned into a cool jam.”
clubs and events throughout South Cartaya and Roitstein crafted verses
Florida. Featuring tenor-sax giant for the song, which celebrates saint
Ed Calle, the band’s 2009 CD, This Is worship with lines like “I light a cigar
Afro-Cuban Funk (Rolling Pin Music), for you, my little mother” and “I bring a
ladles up a hefty portion of the band’s cigar and rum, an offering that comes
roots-rich picadillo, combining tastes from my heart.”
and textures from both sides of the
Florida Straits. On “Tabaco y Ron Pa’ Mi With a sound as seductive as their
Santa,” which translates to “Tobacco name, Bikini Jazz create the kind
and Rum for My Saint” and is included of steamy, jazz-infused Latin music
here, Calle’s greasy tenor cuts through you’d expect to hear blasting from a
a vintage-sounding electric keyboard Miami nightclub. And sure enough,
vamp fattened by a deep bass groove the core of the band came together
and steady-rolling percussion. Roitstein during a jam session at the Van Dyke
 Cafe, a Miami Beach nightlife staple.
Members bring skills honed in their
respective home lands, as well as in
the United States. Vocalist, guitarist
and composer Elizabeth “Eli” La O hails
from Camaguey, Cuba. Guitarist and
composer David Sound is from Bogota,
Colombia, and earned a scholarship
to the University of Miami’s Frost
School of Music. And percussionist,
conguero and arranger Reynaldo Pena,
who grew up in Caracas, Venezuela,
received a scholarship to Miami Dade
College and went on to study at UM
and Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Drawing from a rich tropical palette
of Afro-Latin, bossa nova, cumbia and
salsa, Bikini Jazz sizzle on tracks from
their self-titled debut CD La Receta
de la Felicidad (The Prescription for
Happiness). Juan Ricardo’s double-
tracked trumpet and trombone and If you get the sense from his music that Eric Hansen has had a guitar in his hands for
Eddie Montilla’s piano add even more much of his life, you’re correct. He developed an early taste for
heat to “No Se Puede Vivir sin Coger,” (“I classical, jazz and flamenco, and studies in his teen years led
Can’t Live Without Sex”), our selection. to professional gigs and studies at Florida Atlantic University
Pena’s irrepressible congas and Sound’s and then the New England Conservatory of Music. Boasting a
piquant leads provide the perfect discography that dates back a dozen years, Hansen has lived up
backdrop for La O’s sensual vocals. to his promise, with two of his albums tarrying on Billboard’s
New Age chart. Now firmly ensconced in the contemporary-jazz
American trumpeter Randy Brecker world, the South Florida-based guitarist continues to perform
and Polish pianist throughout the region. On his most-recent release, String Theory (Hansenhaus), Hansen
and composer displays remarkable chops on a set of originals and a couple of well-chosen covers
Włodek Pawlik (“Nature Boy” and “Hotel California,” both of which are a natural fit). Throughout, the
initially played guitarist — who doubles on bass — receives expert rhythmic support and color from
together dur- drummer Matt Calderin and percussionist Rick “Rico” Geragi, as well as violinist Randi
ing a concert in Fishenfeld and keyboard ace Tony Monaco. Hansen reveals how skillfully he folds
Germany in 1994. classical and flamenco styles into contempo-jazz on “Back in the Groove,” our selection.
They collaborated His pristine playing converses eloquently with Calderin’s strong R&B pulse, and a bed
again in 2008 on the very personal CD of handclaps reminds listeners of the music’s Iberian influence.
Nostalgic Journey: Tykocin Jazz Suite,
which included music Pawlik had writ- ancestry, which led to Tykocin. On their Philharmonic. Ironically, the title
ten to honor Brecker’s mother’s family latest collaboration, Night in Calisia song, our selection, has a definitively
roots in Poland. Brecker had turned to (Summit), the pair salute yet another modern arrangement. Pawlik sets the
his Polish friend a few years earlier, af- Polish locale, the ancient town of Kalisz, tone with a swift-moving piano vamp
ter his brother, the late sax star Michael which recently celebrated its 1,850th flowing beneath the proceedings. The
Brecker, had been diagnosed with anniversary. Once again, Brecker and excitement is amped by the edgy and
leukemia. Hoping to find a good ge- Pawlik work with Pawlik’s jazz trio insistent string section, modern-sound-
netic match for a bone-marrow donor, — featuring bassist Pawel Panta and ing horn charts, liquid electric bass,
Brecker asked Pawlik to pinpoint the drummer Cezary Konrad — as well as sparkling vibes and, of course, Brecker’s
specific area of his maternal family’s a local orchestra, this time, the Kalisz warm, burnished brass.

OnDisc
38 fall 2013 jazziz  Photo by Geoffrey McDonald

OnDisc
OnDisc
For more information regarding this and more than 100 other JAZZIZ discs available for purchase, go to
Acoustic-guitar virtuoso Earl Klugh
once again show-
cases his warm
tone and ar-
ticulate fingering
on HandPicked
(Heads Up), a
quietly radiant
set of jazz and
pop gems played solo and in collabora-
tion with guests. Duet partners include
fellow six-stringer Bill Frisell, ukulele
ace Jake Shimabukuro and guitarist
and vocalist Vince Gill. In a career
spanning more than 40 years, Klugh
has recorded with the likes of George
Benson, Return to Forever and Bob
James. Besides his dazzling technique,
the Detroit-born guitar great is known
for his interpretations of melodies from
the jazz and pop worlds, even as he’s
established himself as a fine song-
JAZZIZ ON DISC is a 2-CD music compilation from the artists of yesterday, today and tomorrow, bundled in the subscriber copies
of the print editions of JAZZIZ Magazine. For this issue, we’ve made Disc One a compilation of music by artists who have appeared at
JAZZIZ Nightlife, this magazine’s sister nightclub, in Boca Raton, Florida. Disc Two features fresh jazz from a diverse range of artists.
32 fall 2013 jazziz
Flip and Zoom Pages … Touch Album Covers … Play Music … Watch Videos
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Launch on your device from www.jazziz.com
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Fall Into JAZZIZ Nightlife
smith in his own right. For HandPicked,
Klugh, who turns 60 in September, dips
into the songbooks of The Beatles, The
Eagles and The Everly Brothers, as well
as Thelonious Monk, Vince Guaraldi
and Rodgers and Hart. He also penned
three tunes for the session, including
the sprightly “In Six,” included here.
Klugh conjures the shimmer of moon-
light, as his fingers deftly dance to the
rhythms he pulls from his strings.
Costa Rica has been much in the public
eye these days,
its burgeon-
ing economy
acknowledged
by a visit from
President Obama
earlier this year.
More evidence
that the verdant nation is growing in so-
Earl Klugh
www.jazziz.com
phistication is the increased prominence
of its Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional. In
March of this year, 72 members of the
symphony collaborated with a contin-
gent of South Florida jazz musicians
on Bossa Nova Sinfónico: Recordando a
Antonio C. Jobim, which captured their
performance at the Teatro Nacional in
San José. Pianist Michael Orta, bassist
Jamie Ousley and drummer Carlomagno
Araya form a core rhythm section
behind vocalist Rose Max and guitarist
Ramatis Moraes, the South Floridians
teaming up with the Costa Rican orches-
tra on a set of standards by Brazilian
maestro Jobim. Conductor and arranger
Jeremy Fox assures that the intimate
acoustic music is never overpowered by
the orchestra. Rather, brass, strings and
woodwinds add color, texture and cin-
ematic sweep to Jobim gems. The group
borrows a Claus Ogerman arrangement
Photo by Tanner Photography
LISTEN
Following her 2009 Burt Bacharach Songbook
CD, vocalist Carol
Duboc returns to
music of her own de-
vising on Smile (Gold
Note). The Kansas
City, Missouri, native
first established
herself as a composer,
penning songs for R&B singers Patti Labelle,
Chante Moore and Stephanie Mills, but
revealed jazz roots on her own 2001 release
With All That I Am. On Smile, Duboc displays
her prowess in the contemporary-jazz idiom.
Well-crafted original material draws from
bossa nova and samba rhythms in a way that
will sound familiar to fans of Michael Franks
or Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen. And she’s
certainly in great company here. Duboc once
again calls on flutist Hubert Laws, who ac-
companied her on her Bacharach CD, and re-
cruits top session players including keyboard-
ist Jeff Lorber, bassists Brian Bromberg and
Jimmy Haslip, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and
percussionist Luis Conte. The singer’s cool,
understated vocals deftly ride the swaying
rhythms of the clever “Elephant.” Included
here, the song makes use of the “pachyderm-
in-the-room” metaphor to describe a couple’s
unaddressed difficulties.
for their read of “Wave,” included here.
Moraes’ and Orta’s sparkling opening
statements ride Ousley’s and Araya’s
insistent groove, while Rose Max’s velvety
vocals effortlessly surf the rhythmic tide
and gentle swells of brass and strings.
Contemporary-jazz guitarist Chieli
Minucci recently
celebrated his
30th anniversary
recording under the
Special EFX rubric.
As evidenced by his
latest CD, Genesis
(Shanachie), the
group has undergone significant person-
nel changes over the decades, having
started out as Minucci’s duo with percus-
If you purchased this magazine without the CDs or would like additional copies, e-mail service@jazziz.com
or log onto www.jazziz.com.
SHARE
sionist George Jinda. The pair have long
since parted, but Minucci recruited
A-list players including keyboardist Jay
Rowe, bassist Jerry Brooks and drum-
mer Lionel Cordrew. All are on hand
for the new release, which spotlights
Minucci’s often-exotic compositions
and remarkable playing. Minucci also
features standout contributions by
violinist Karen Brigg, pianist Lao Tizer
and vocalist Xu Feiyu. On “Till the End of
Time,” our selection, the guitarist offers
some intriguingly bent, bluesy notes, as
well as agile lead lines that call to mind
Wes Montgomery. Brooks and drum-
mer Omar Hakim maintain a slinky
backbeat, and saxophonist David Mann
blows unison lines and a fiery, albeit
too-brief solo to close out the tune.
WATCH
JAZZIZ OnDisc FALL 2013
FALL 2013
Fall Into JAZZIZ Nightlife
Disc 1
 Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Costa Rica
 Chieli Minucci and Special EFX  Earl Klugh
Victor Espinola  Nanami Morikawa and Phillip Strange
Andrew Neu  Palo! Jeff Lorber Fusion
 Patrick Lamb  Bikini Jazz
 Eric Hansen  Carol Duboc
 Randy Brecker/Włodek Pawlik
Disc 1
 Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Costa Rica
“Wave” Bossa Nova Sinfónico: Recordando a
Antonio C. Jobim [Centro Nacional de la Musica]
 Chieli Minucci and Special EFX
“Till The End of Time” Genesis [Shanachie]
 Earl Klugh “In Six” HandPicked [Heads Up]
 Victor Espinola
“Somewhere in Mediterranea”
Army of Angels [Harpara Music]
 Nanami Morikawa and Phillip Strange
“UMMG” Open Spaces [New Truth]
 Andrew Neu “Date Night”
Everything Happens for a Reason [CGN]
 Palo! “Tabaco y Ron Pa’ Mi Santa”
This Is Afro-Cuban Funk [Rolling Pin Music]
 Jeff Lorber Fusion “Corinaldo”
Hacienda [Heads Up]
 Patrick Lamb “Sweet Tea”
It’s All Right Now [Patrick Lamb Productions]
 Bikini Jazz “No Se Puede Vivir sin Coger”
La Receta de la Felicidad [self-released]
 Eric Hansen “Back in the Groove”
String Theory [Hansenhaus]
 Carol Duboc “Elephant”
Smile [Gold Note Music]
 Randy Brecker/Włodek Pawlik
“Night in Calisia” Night in Calisia [Summit]
Mastered by Tod Levine at Magnetic North Studio, NY
jazziz fall 2013 33
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 Chick Corea

OnDisc Fall Into JAZZIZ Nightlife

For more information regarding this and more than 100 other JAZZIZ discs available for purchase, go to

Science fiction and fantasy have long
provided inspira-
tion for the music
of Chick Corea.
On his latest
release, The Vigil
(Concord Jazz),
Corea once again
turns his childlike
sense of wonder to the cosmos, while
also remaining rooted in terra firma
and saluting jazz masters Roy Haynes
and John Coltrane with a pair of gor-
geous, heartfelt compositions (“Royalty”
and “Pledge for Peace,” respectively).
Alternating between electric and acoustic
keyboards, Corea leads a stellar ensemble
including Tim Garland on reeds, guitarist
Charles Altura, bassist Hadrien Feraud,
drummer Marcus Gilmore and percus-
sionist Pernell Saturnino. On “Galaxy
32 Star 4,” the opening track and our
selection, the group fires the afterburners
and heads for the stars. Corea, Garland,
Altura and Feraud have plenty of space
in which to play, tethered to the craft by
Gilmore’s and Saturnino’s energetic, rock-
solid rhythms. Perhaps reinvigorated by
recent tours with Return to Forever, Corea
sounds excited and engaged, as he draws
otherworldly sounds from his electronic
instruments. At 72, the keyboardist seems
tireless, as he chases his muse wherever
it leads, on stage or in the studio. On the
CD’s back cover, he vows to “Flood the
market with music — refine the art of
living — defy the existing norm. Keep on
creating.” Sage advice for any artist with
an eye toward longevity.
Regular consumers of music criticism
may recognize
Tom Moon’s
byline from his
longtime gig at
The Philadelphia
Inquirer. Or maybe
they’ve followed
his work for Rolling
Stone, Spin and National Public Radio, or
read his book, 1,000 Recordings to Hear
Before You Die. But Moon’s career as a mu-
www.jazziz.com
sician stretches back even farther. Having
studied saxophone at the University of
Miami in the early ’80s, Moon performed
with some of South Florida’s top talents
and toured with Maynard Ferguson. In
2011, he realized a long-held ambition
with the release of Into the Ojalá, his
debut album with his Moon Hotel Lounge
Project. The album boasted a distinctly
nocturnal Latin ambience, thanks to
the leader’s evocative compositions and
film-noir tenor and Behn Gillece’s icy
vibraphone. Moon follows that record-
ing with Blue Night (Frosty Cordial), a
showcase for his Ensemble Novo sextet.
On a set comprising bossa nova classics
and a couple of original tunes inspired by
the Brazilian canon, Moon again evokes
nighttime in the tropics. Vibist Gillece
sparkles throughout. The rest of the group
— acoustic and electric guitarist Ryan
McNeely, bassist Mark Pryzbylowski,
drummer Eli Sklarsky and percussionist
Jim Hamilton — also beautifully comple-
ment the saxophonist. Moon’s smoke-
kissed tone is heard to good effect on his

JAZZIZ ON DISC is a 2-CD music compilation from the artists of yesterday, today and tomorrow, bundled in the subscriber copies
of the print editions of JAZZIZ Magazine. For this issue, we’ve made Disc One a compilation of music by artists who have appeared at
JAZZIZ Nightlife, this magazine’s sister nightclub, in Boca Raton, Florida. Disc Two features fresh jazz from a diverse range of artists.

40 fall 2013 jazziz Chick Corea by Arne Rostad; Roberto Fonseca by Carlos Pericas
 Cuban-born pianist and composer Roberto JAZZIZ OnDisc Fall 2013
Fonseca is a true fu-
sion artist, combin-
ing the sounds of
his homeland with
American jazz, and
African and Middle
FALL 2013
Fall Into JAZZIZ Nightlife

Eastern music. On his

Disc 2
most recent release,
Yo (Concord), Fonseca, who toured with the q ensemble novo wJeff richman
e David chesky r collier & Dean

Buena Vista Social Club, makes a truly per-

t cécile Mclorin salvant y chick corea
u Bill Frisell i lawson rollins o gregory Porter
aThe new gary Burton Quartet
s roberto Fonseca d kneebody
f Michel camilo

sonal statement of identity — in Spanish,

“yo” translates as “I.” The pianist connects
links in the chain of the African diaspora
from the mother continent to the Caribbean
to the New World, as he collaborates with
singers and musicians from Africa and Cuba
on a rich ethnic stew. At age 38, Fonseca has
also been inspired by generations of modern
jazz, and echoes of Herbie Hancock and
McCoy Tyner can be heard in his acoustic-
and electric-piano sound. The indigenous
sounds of Morocco pervade “Gnawa Stop,”
whereas Fonseca blends Afro-Cuban and Algerian influences on “Chabani,” our selection.
Disc 2
The track features bassist Felipe Cabrera, drummer Ramsés Rodriguez and percussionist q Ensemble Novo “Church Is Where You Are”
Joel Hierrezuelo laying down sizzling beats behind Fonseca’s thundering chords, which Blue Night [Frosty Cordial]

sometimes fly off into mad flashes of dissonance. The prayerful vocals of Rai singer Faudel, w Jeff Richman “Big Deal” Big Wheel [Nefer]

the talking drums of Baba Sissoko and the simmering guitar of Munir Hossn further e David Chesky “Jazz in the New Harmonic”
Jazz in the New Harmonic [Chesky]
contribute to the multicultural tapestry. The effect is nothing less than mesmerizing.

r Collier & Dean “Whistling Midgets”

composition “Church Is Where You Are,” our
selection, as he floats atop the simmering
rhythmic backdrop.
Whistling Midgets [DDP]
George Whitty; bassists Jimmy Haslip
t Cécile McLorin Salvant
and Dean Taba; and drummer Steve “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was”
WomanChild [Mack Avenue]
Gadd. Although the group tackles a

couple of covers — Stevie Wonder’s “That y Chick Corea “Galaxy 32 Star 4”

The Vigil [Concord Jazz]
Fusion guitarist Jeff Richman has honed Girl” and a lovely take on Lowell George’s
u Bill Frisell “Sing Together Like a Family”
his distinctive sound “Long Distance Love” — Richman Big Sur [OKeh/Sony]

on a discography composed the remainder of the program. i L awson Rollins “Point of Attraction”
that stretches back Texture and sustain reign supreme on Full Circle [Infinita]

nearly 30 years, “Big Deal,” included here. Without resort- o Gregory Porter “Liquid Spirit”
Liquid Spirit [Blue Note]
and a performance ing to flashy pyrotechnics, Richman
a The New Gary Burton Quartet “Caminos”
career that goes works soulful, understated magic on Guided Tour [Mack Avenue]
back even farther. this sultry groover, which also features a s Roberto Fonseca “Chabani” Yo [Concord]

His most-recent dexterous solo from bassist Taba. d K neebody “Cha-Cha” The Line [Concord]
release, Big Wheel (Nefer), strikes a balance
f Michel Camilo “Island Beat”
between ambitious soundscapes and Inspired by Third Stream innovators such What’s Up? [OKeh/Sony]

toe-tapping contemporary jazz, all of it as Gunther Schuller and John Lewis, as

played with razor-sharp acuity. Of course, well as the chamber-jazz artists who
it doesn’t hurt that the Berklee College of followed in their wake, pianist and
Music grad recruited a band of ringers in composer David Chesky set out to explore
keyboardists Jeff Lorber, Alan Pasqua and the confluence of modern classical music Mastered by Tod Levine at Magnetic North Studio, NY

If you purchased this magazine without the CDs or would like additional copies, e-mail service@jazziz.com
or log onto www.jazziz.com.

 jazziz fall 2013 41

 and jazz. The results can be found on his
richly atmospheric
recording, Jazz in
the New Harmonic,
released on his
own Chesky
imprint and
featuring an
excellent quin-
tet. With trumpeter Jeremy Pelt and
tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson on
the frontline, and rhythm vets Peter
Washington and Billy Drummond on
bass and drums, respectively, the music
frequently conjures the dark hues of
Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis. Chesky’s
often-dissonant chording provides the
glue as well as the template for these
structures, although his sparkling touch
is hardly jarring. Masters Drummond and
Washington provide the slinky backbone
for the somewhat anxious title cut, our A breakout star of 2013, vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant has been widely praised for her
selection, as Jackson’s smoky tenor and up-to-the-minute yet deeply rooted style. On her debut album
Pelt’s sinuous muted trumpet converse in WomanChild (Mack Avenue) — anticipated by jazz fans since
hushed tones. Meanwhile, Chesky spikes she won the 2010 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals
the mix with his understated presence, Competition — the Miami-raised singer displays a voice that evokes
his pianistic contributions appearing like Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Bessie Smith. At age 24, McLorin
the silvery glint of moonlight. Salvant injects youthful vigor into her mix of trad blues, jazz,
French chansons and even early 20th-century African-American
The musical team of Collier and Dean vaudeville. Her individualistic sound is further shaded by her
have been playing Francophone upbringing and classical training. But clearly her mom’s jazz record collection
together since the had an enormous influence on her aesthetic, as did a jazz-and-roots-savvy instructor at the
1960s, lending French conservatory where she studied. (See Jon Garelick’s profile of McLorin Salvant in
their talents to the Auditions section of this issue.) Throughout WomanChild, the singer receives excellent
a diverse list of support from pianist Aaron Diehl, bassist Rodney Whitaker and drummer Herlin Riley. The
artists including piano trio is subdued and simpatico on a read of the Rodgers and Hart standard “I Didn’t
both B.B. King and Know What Time It Was,” our selection. And the singer’s coy sensuality and languid phras-
Bobby Sherman. ing lend a sexy playfulness to her delivery à la Billie and Sarah.
The marimba-playing Tom Collier and
the bassist Dan Dean also worked with quartets and quintets, featuring saxo- Sense of place is all-important to
a number of A-list musicians while phonists Ernie Watts and Gary Herbig, guitarist and
living in Los Angeles in the 1970s, and keyboardist Don Grusin and drummer- composer Bill
recorded a batch of songs that resulted percussionist Alex Acuña, among Frisell. His music
in their 1981 LP Whistling Midgets. A new others. The title track, included here, is a has been inspired
CD release of the album, on the DDP prime example of just how sharp these by disparate
imprint, revisits the work but removes cats were. Playing at breakneck speed, locales includ-
what the new liner notes refer to as they ratchet up the intensity to fever ing Nashville,
“cheesy” synthesizer overdubs. Thus, pitch, leaving the soul stew boiling Mexico, Africa
listeners can appreciate the unadorned for Watts’ era-definitive blowing and and Arkansas, and has evoked
musicianship of these ridiculously tight Dean’s loose-limbed and funky solo. Depression-era photography, silent

OnDisc
42 fall 2013 jazziz  Photo by John Abbott
 films and early 20th-century rural
America. Frisell’s quilt of influences
cohere in fascinating ways, particularly
when he plays with the coalition of
frequent confederates he’s assembled
in recent years. Those players — violist
Eyvind Kang, cellist Hank Roberts,
violinist Jenny Scheinman and more
recent addition, drummer Rudy Royston
— join the guitarist on Big Sur (OKeh/
Sony), the music for which Frisell com-
posed at Glen Deven Ranch in Big Sur,
California. At once rustic and elegant,
the music continually subverts expecta-
tion — well, for anyone but Frisell fans
— weaving homespun Americana with
chamber-music sophistication, and spik-
ing the familiar and comfortable with
dark, ominous rumblings. Frisell wears
his inspirations on his (album) sleeve,
with song titles such as “Hawks,” “We
All Love Neil Young” and “Walking Stick
(for Jim Cox).” And, on “Sing Together
Like a Family,” included here, the guitar- In recent years, guitarist Lawson Rollins has covered a vast expanse of musical
ist and his close contingent conjure the terrain, his recordings incorporating influences from the
intimacy of playing music in the parlor deserts of Iran to the peaks of the Himalayas. Rollins’ pristine
with the ones he knows best. and masterful picking on acoustic and electric guitars is
the common thread running through all his work. His most
With his individualistic blend of jazz, recent recording, Full Circle (Infinita), emphasizes his play-
blues, gospel and ing, more so than the exotic settings, although certainly
R&B, vocalist the album has them in abundance. Flamenco, Latin jazz and
and composer Middle Eastern music reverberate through the North Carolina
Gregory Porter native’s mesmerizing string work, as well as through the expert backing of a group
created a sensa- of Rollins regulars. Keyboardist Dominic Camardella, bassist Randy Tico, drum-
tion with his first mer Dave Bryant, violinist Charlie Bisharat and cellist Cameron Stone all re-up for
two recordings another round with the maestro. The group’s dynamic is aptly displayed on “Point
for the Motéma of Attraction,” included here. Rollins displays his virtuosity atop a bed of skittering
label. On Water and its follow-up, last strings, propulsive percussion and, quite naturally, rhythmic flamenco handclaps.
year’s Be Good, the native Californian
displayed a warm, embracing aesthetic his back on musical forebears. A similar depriving people of musical nourish-
that’s respectful of and affectionate message permeates the gospel/soul- ment. “Un-reroute the rivers,” he sings.
toward jazz tradition, but by no means jazz hand-clapper “Liquid Spirit,” our “Let the dammed waters free/There’s
confined by it. On Liquid Spirit, his selection. Accompanied solely by Aaron some people down the way that’s
debut release for Blue Note, Porter con- James’ upright bass and the aforemen- thirsty/Let the liquid spirit free.”
tinues to borrow liberally from across tioned handclaps at first, then joined
the spectrum of African-American by a joyous chorus of horns, piano and Having turned 70 earlier this year,
music and to refine his excellent song- drums, Porter testifies that listeners vibraphone master Gary Burton main-
writing. He best explains his artistic are thirsty for soulful, substantial tains a vital presence in the jazz world.
credo on the rhythmic vamp “Musical music. But the healing waters are held Not only did he collect his seventh
Genocide,” steadfastly refusing to turn back by commercial interests, thus Grammy, but he also just published an

OnDisc
44 fall 2013 jazziz 
 autobiography and established the first
online courses for
Boston’s Berklee
College of Music,
where he taught
for decades
and served as
executive vice
president. Most
importantly, Burton continues to craft
excellent music. He sounds invigorated
in the presence of the superb young
talent he’s assembled for his New Gary
Burton Quartet, with whom he recently
released Guided Tour (Mack Avenue),
the band’s second recording. Consisting
of guitarist and Burton protégé Julian
Lage, bassist Scott Colley and drummer
Antonio Sanchez, the group converses
eloquently — and democratically —
with their leader. The four-mallet
innovator is in top form. His sparkling The name of the modern-leaning improvisational outfit Kneebody may be off-putting,
vibes are as articulate as ever, whether but their music is quite palatable. Keyboardist Adam Benjamin,
he’s providing colorful comps behind trumpeter Shane Endsley, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, saxophonist
his cohorts or unleashing his magic on Ben Wendel and drummer Nate Wood became good friends while
a quietly dazzling and thoughtfully studying at The Eastman School of Music and Cal Arts. They began
constructed solo. Burton also wisely playing as Kneebody on the Los Angeles music scene a dozen years
taps the compositional abilities of his ago, and released their eponymous debut album in 2005. With
bandmates. On the album-opening influences ranging from electric-era Miles Davis and Bill Frisell
“Caminos,” penned by Sanchez and to Elliot Smith and Radiohead, the band hardly subscribe to a
included here, the ensemble plays with traditional jazz mindset. However, improvisational detours and unexpected compositional
remarkable synergy. Burton and Lage twists do connect them to the more adventurous end of the jazz spectrum. As accom-
engage in sinewy unison lines before plished musicians, they can play just about anything, including a cha-cha, which they
the vibist breaks out on a solo run that do on the mid-tempo groover of the same name, our selection, from their latest recording
explains why his name has become The Line (Concord). Spiked by a second-line drum beat, and with the horns playing in
synonymous with his instrument. counterpoint, the tune starts off sounding like a laid-back New Orleans party anthem. But
Kneebody strays from the parade route and takes some intriguing side streets.
As anyone who’s witnessed pianist
Michel Camilo was required on his first unaccompa- the jazz-piano idiom. Quite naturally, it
in performance nied recording, 2005’s Solo, nor on the wouldn’t be a Camilo album without the
can tell you, new What’s Up? (Sony). Whereas Solo Latin and tropical influences that per-
the Dominican was mostly contemplative, What’s Up? meate his playing, and they’re pushed
jazz artist balances introspection with moments of to the fore on his compositions “Paprika”
hardly requires unbridled joy. So, while Camilo indeed and “On Fire.” His “Island Beat,” included
accompaniment delves into heartfelt ballads — as on his here, showcases not just the propulsive
to enthrall an gorgeous and moody “Sandra’s Serenade” qualities, but the stately elegance of the
audience. While his work alongside vari- or the deeply interior “A Place in Time” multi-faceted music of the Caribbean,
ous rhythm players over the years has — he also hangs fire on a set that shows which combines African and European
been exceptional — dig last year’s trio his mastery of and affection for blues influences in tantalizing ways that have
recording Mano a Mano — no sideman and stride and other styles that inform become indigenous to the region.

OnDisc
46 fall 2013 jazziz  Photo by Paulifornia
 traditions
A Fond Adieu
By Bob Weinberg

About two years ago, vocalist Catherine

Russell and her mom, veteran jazz bass-
ist, guitarist and vocalist Carline Ray,
paid a visit to the Louis Armstrong Archive
at Queens College in New York. Armstrong
scholar Ricky Riccardi greeted the pair and
played them a tape, challenging them to
identify the singer on the recording. They
instantly recognized Ray’s voice on the 1961
demo, which contained three songs penned
by Ray’s husband and Russell’s father, the
late Luis Russell.
One of those tunes, the charming love
song “Lucille,” appears as a historical
coda to Ray’s revelatory new recording
Vocal Sides (Carlcat). Produced by her
daughter, the album was the 88-year-old
Ray’s first-ever solo record. It was also “I f you put a bunch of musicians behind a curtain,
to be her last; the Harlem native died who’s gonna tell me who’s the female playing and
on July 18. Her river-deep contralto and
expert sense of swing were in excellent
who’s the male playing? You can’t do that. The
condition on a set of spirituals, standards music is the thing.” —Carline Ray
and time-tested pop tunes. The album
concludes with Ray’s original recording the Russells would visit the Armstrongs out a successful career of her own. She
of “Lucille,” from more than 50 years ago. at their unassuming brick residence, honors her legacy on recordings such as
Pops never did get around to waxing the which now contains the Louis Armstrong last year’s Strictly Romancin’ (Harmonia
tune, which was titled for his wife. House Museum. Film stills of Satchmo Mundi), interpreting tunes by her mom’s
“My dad had written these tunes and lifting a less-than-elated Cat Russell — a close associates Mary Lou Williams and
submitted them to Louis Armstrong, with cherubic toddler in a blue party dress and Rosetta Tharpe. Ray dueted with Russell on
a letter,” says Cat Russell, 57, from her barrettes — are posted on her Web site Sister Rosetta’s “He’s All I Need,” an album
home in her native New York City in April. (www.catherinerussell.net). highlight. And on 2010’s Inside This Heart of
“You know, ‘Hey Pops, if you record these “He’s picking me up and I’m a little Mine, Russell revisited “Slow as Molasses,” a
things, we’ll both be doing well in our old afraid,” the singer recounts, describing the song her dad had recorded with the Jungle
age,’ or words to that effect.” home movies of her and Armstrong taken Town Stompers in 1929.
Although Luis Russell and Armstrong by her dad, who died when she was 7. “You It’s easy to see why Luis Russell fell for
shared a history dating back to the 1930s, know, [Armstrong] was a very big pres- Carline Ray. A glamorous headshot of the
their careers diverged. Armstrong, of ence. But he was very nice to me. I remem- musician flashing a million-dollar smile
course, became a beloved global icon, ber that. He was a very nice man, and he graces the inside cover of Vocal Sides. Cat
while Russell labored at jobs away from loved his friends, and he loved to entertain Russell says it was among her mom’s first
the bandstand in later life. But the men and laugh and eat and just be silly and cut professional pictures, taken when she was
remained close, with the Armstrongs up. He and my dad were very good friends.” about 21 and a recent Juilliard graduate.
living in Corona, Queens, and the Russells As an expert purveyor of vintage As documented in Judy Chaikin’s fas-
living in Washington Heights. In fact, jazz and blues, Cat Russell has carved cinating documentary, Girls in the Band,

48 fall 2013 jazziz

 Personal Taste Bob Weinberg
Albert Ayler Live on the Riviera (ESP-
Disk) — A year after recording Music
is the Healing Force of the Universe,
saxophonist Ayler was still powerfully
performing music from the album. As
heard on this extraordinary artifact,
which captures a quartet concert
outside Nice in July 1970, Ayler found
fresh, resonant expression in those
tunes. On the title track, his smeary,
skronking tenor evokes the blues bands
with which he once performed and
frames Mary Maria’s recitation. His
performances on “Masonic Inborn” and
“Oh! Love of Life,” the latter featuring
his haunting vocals, are chilling, like
the cry of a trapped animal. Ayler, just
34, was found dead in New York’s East
River four months later.
New and Noteworthy
s Mary Halvorson Septet Illusionary
Sea (Firehouse 12)
s Matthew Shipp Piano Sutras
(Thirsty Ear)
s The Byron Allen Trio The Byron Allen
Trio (ESP-Disk)
s Melodic Art-Tet Melodic Art-Tet
(NoBusiness)
s Joey Calderazzo Trio Live
(Sunnyside)
Ray, a seriously skilled, second-generation
musician (her father played with the
legendary James Reese Europe) under-
stood that glamour was an important
component of staying employed, at least
for female musicians. From her vantage
on the bandstand, she observed the slinky,
sensuous Anna Mae Winburn, leader of
the International Sweethearts of Rhythm,
with whom she played guitar and sang.
“She was the director of the band,” Ray
recalled. “She was like a front for the
orchestra. She looked great all the time.”
Ray had been recruited in 1946 by the
Sweethearts, an all-female band with
roots in Mississippi’s Piney Woods Country
Life School. The largely African-American
group adopted the “International” moniker
because some members were of other races,
notably reed players Roz Kron and Willie
Mae Wong, who were white and Asian,
respectively. At the time, mixed-race bands
were vehemently opposed, particularly in
the South. And certainly African-American
musicians were greeted with hostility
below the Mason-Dixon line. Admittance to
hotels, restaurants and even restrooms was
often off-limits. The Sweethearts’ solution?
“The band had its own bus, upper and lower
berths, like a Pullman car,” Ray explained.
“And that was our home on wheels. It had a
little bathroom in the back.”
“The problems with traveling in the
South were the same for male bands as
they were for female bands,” Dr. Billy
Taylor relates in Chaikin’s documentary.
“But the women had it a lot rougher, just
because they were women.”
While she was able to find employment
with male bands — Erskine Hawkins’ and
Sy Oliver’s among them — following her
stint with the Sweethearts, Ray had to
work twice as hard to prove herself worthy.
“That was just an unwritten law that they
wouldn’t hire women,” trumpeter Clora
Bryant says in the film, explaining that
male musicians devalued their skills, no
matter how talented. Cat Russell says that
her mom used to tell her “that when she’d
come into a gig with her bass and her
instruments and her amplifiers, people
would laugh, like, ‘Little girl, what are you
doing? Where’s your husband, little girl?’”
“Females were not looked on with the
same attitude as male musicians were,”
Ray confirmed. “If you put a bunch of
musicians behind a curtain, who’s gonna
tell me who’s the female playing and
who’s the male playing? You can’t do that.
The music is the thing.”
The Girls in the Band culminates with
a 2008 reunion of Ray and other women
featured in the film, including several
surviving International Sweethearts of
Rhythm. The musicians assemble outside
the same brownstone used in the iconic
Great Day in Harlem photo, although
the ratio of male to female subjects —
only Mary Lou Williams and Marian
McPartland appeared in the 1958 original
— has been reversed. Seated between Billy
Taylor, who’s since passed away, and trom-
bonist Helen Woods, Ray smiles warmly,
secure in her place in jazz history.
That history is well-represented on
Vocal Sides, as Ray delved into spirituals
she sang with Mary Lou Williams, as well
as personal favorites such as Ellington’s
“Come Sunday” and Thad Jones’ “A Child is
Born.” And there are delightful surprises,
such as her melding of Charlie Parker’s
“Donna Lee,” done scat-style with bowed-
bass accompaniment, and “Indiana,” the
standard on which it’s based.
Daughter Cat, who sang on a couple of
tracks with Ray, wasn’t surprised at all by
Mom’s virtuosity. “Her ears, her knowledge
of everything — from classical to opera to
jazz — is so vast. She just knows all the jazz
changes,” she said, just a few months before
Ray’s passing. She also revealed that her
mom was often her toughest critic. “If she
doesn’t approve,” she said, “then I need to go
back and do some more work.” s
jazziz fall 2013 49
 contempo
The Kid Can Play
By Jonathan Widran

Andrea Bear calls shortly after she

and her daughter Emily began their
90-minute haul from Chicago back
their homein Rockford, Illinois. Emily,
a gifted 12-year-old pianist, had just
completed her weekly classical-music les-
son with her longtime instructor, Mary
Sauer, principal pianist for the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra. Later in the week,
back in the Windy City, Emily will take
her regular jazz instruction from Alan
Swain, an accomplished musician who’s
been teaching at his own Swain Music
Studios for more than 40 years.
Emily fits her piano instruction and
practice between thrice-weekly swim-
ming lessons at the YMCA and occasional
hang time with her friends, which has
become more precious since she switched
to home schooling earlier this year. Or,
seated at the piano, she’ll sometimes duet
with her 13-year-old sister, Lauren, who
plays harp, or she’ll trot outside for a ride
on her bike or scooter. If time permits, she
and her mom might make Emily’s favor-
ite snack, banana bread with chocolate
chips, or perhaps she’ll catch up on the
latest issue of National Geographic.
While all of this qualifies as routine
adolescent activity, it should be noted
that Emily is working with her teachers “She’s got her own thing, and she’s got it all — bossa
to master “Rhapsody in Blue” (with Sauer) nova, jazz, blues, classical. Did you know she’s been
and “Satin Doll” and other Ellington
classics (with Swain) for two upcoming
writing since she was 5? Staggering.” —Quincy Jones
symphony concerts in Connecticut. And
while waiting for her mother to cook din- composing music for commercials. her Carnegie Hall debut a few years ago
ner, Emily’s often upstairs in the family’s By now, this high-wire balancing act with a 110-piece orchestra and a 220-piece
home studio, using Logic Pro to complete between intense dedication to music choir performing her composition “Peace
her assignments from NYU, in New York and just wanting to be a normal kid is — We Are the Future.” Emily was recently
City, where she’s studying film scoring pretty much old hat for Emily, who made invited back to China — where she first
while also taking jazz, orchestrating and her concert debut at Chicago’s Ravinia performed at age 8 — to play during the
classical music lessons from three Julliard Festival at 5, performed with Ramsey opening of a new music school. For what
instructors. Also, she’s recently started Lewis at the White House at 6 and made it’s worth, she’s also appeared on big fan

50 fall 2013 jazziz


Personal TasteJonathan Widran
Global Noize Sly Reimagined (Zoho
Roots) — Rock and Roll Hall of Famer
Sly Stone turned 70 earlier this year,
and Global Noize — the jazz/R&B/
world-fusion trio led by composer/
producer Jason Miles — makes his
old-school funk sound trippy, other-
worldly and fresh on a powerhouse
set featuring notable guests such as
Roberta Flack and original Family
Stone drummer Greg Errico.
s Steve Tyrell It’s Magic: The Songs of
Sammy Cahn (Concord)
s Jeanette Harris Summer Rain (J&M)
s Lawson Rollins Full Circle (Infinita)
s Chieli Minucci & Special EFX
Genesis (Shanachie)
Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show six times.
“I think the most fun part of my life
is the traveling, especially to New York,
where I have a lot of free time to hang
out with my cousins and see shows,” she
says after Andrea hands her the phone in
the car. “My favorites recently were War
Horse and Pippin. The hard part is staying
focused because every other 11 year
old wants to go out with their friends
every single day. While I love practicing
and playing piano, I wish I could spend
every moment with them. I miss being
in regular school. And I wish I could run
around more outside with our dog — in
summer, of course — and go jet-skiing on
the river more.”
Emily’s professional career is seriously
heating up now that she’s signed with
a booking agent and released her label
debut on Concord/Qwest. (She previously
released five home-recorded solo-piano
albums dating back to 2007.) True to its
title concept, Diversity is a spirited mix
of short, moody pieces; spicy Latin romps
(“Hot Peppers,” “Salsa Americana”); the
Spanish-flavored “Peralada,” named for
the Catalan city where she first per-
formed the piece at a music festival; and
swinging straightahead jazz. She’s joined
throughout by her rhythm section of
bassist Carlito Del Puerto and drummer
Francisco Mela. Guest cellist Zuill Bailey
adds harmony on four pieces. Emily dedi-
cates the spirited closing number, “Q,” to
the album’s producer — and her manager
and mentor — Quincy Jones.
Jones got wind of Emily’s prowess via
an event she played in Los Angeles that
was sponsored by a company that made
his limited-edition signature watch. He
immediately added her to his jazz youth
showcase Global Gumbo All-Stars (joining
Nikki Yanofsky, Alfredo Rodriguez and
Esperanza Spalding) for performances at
the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Festival
Castell in Spain and an all-star retrospec-
tive of Jones’ career at the Hollywood Bowl.
John Burk, Executive VP of A&R for
Concord, met Emily backstage at the Bowl
and then stayed in touch with her and
Andrea. A few months later, after Jones’
company began managing Emily, Burk had
a meeting with Quincy and former label
owner Norman Lear to discuss new ideas.
The notion of signing Emily was raised,
and everyone expressed enthusiasm about
creating her first ensemble recording.
It was amusing to hear the well-
traveled Jones gush about Emily backstage
before her recent showcase at Musicians
Institute in Los Angeles. “She’s got her
own thing, and she’s got it all — bossa
nova, jazz, blues, classical. Did you know
she’s been writing since she was 5?
Staggering. All I do is enhance her if she
needs it, but she doesn’t need much en-
hancement. It’s divinity, definitely. She’s
beautiful, a good student, and we’re just
there to help with orchestration and nota-
tion so she can be a complete musician.”
Andrea, a former music instructor who
recalls that her daughter was 3 when
she first needed mom’s help notating her
compositions, is used to Emily’s version
of “normal,” so her marveling is tempered
by a more practical view: “She’s 100 per
cent a normal little girl who just happens
to have music flowing through her. She’s
humble, down to earth, with no airs, but
then she morphs into this other thing
onstage. When she’s not at the piano,
she’s running around like a maniac.”
Emily says she enjoyed playing with
other musicians in the studio for the first
time — “and being in the studio with
Quincy was awesome.” The pianist, who
cites George Gershwin, Claude Debussy,
Stan Getz and Oscar Peterson as her chief
influences — but who also loves rock and
pop music by Imagine Dragons, Coldplay,
Rihanna and others — is enjoying all
the classic Michael Jackson albums Jones
worked on, especially Off the Wall. But
her favorite album right now is the one
Jones sent her as a gift: Sinatra at the
Sands, with Count Basie & the Orchestra,
which features Jones’ arrangements.
Emily seems equally impressed with
someone else she met through Quincy.
“He was really nice to introduce me to
his sister-in-law, who showed me how to
make jewelry, stringing beads together
with a crimping tool and catches. This is
one of my new hobbies, and I love it.”
Although the word “prodigy” is right
there at the top of Concord’s press release,
Andrea says “the whole family” is uncom-
fortable with the term. “It’s overused and
has a lot of negative connotations,” she
notes. “It has a lot of anti-social implica-
tions, but Emily loves people. The chal-
lenge for me and my husband, Brian [an
orthopedic surgeon], is to keep a balance
on every level. If music went away tomor-
row, she would still be a well-adjusted
child with the values we have taught
her. I have to say it’s fun being her mom,
though. Every single day is a wig-out,
jaw-drop day. There’s not a day that she
doesn’t do something that makes me
think, ‘You’re kidding.’ The key is to keep
her learning, growing and sharing music
so she develops a 60-year career rather
than become another flash in the pan.” s
jazziz fall 2013 51
 blu notes
Andy Bey’s
Other Side
By Larry Blumenfeld

Andy Bey descended the stairs from his

dressing room at Manhattan’s Blue Note
one Sunday night in June, clutching a
black binder packed with sheet music and a
notebook of handwritten lyrics. He settled
in at the piano, alone onstage. Thus began
an hour or so of mostly hushed calm in the
packed club despite the waitresses serving
drinks and dinners.
Bey began with complex, dark chords
and unusual intervals, an introduction that
gave little clue he was about to ease into the
Rodgers and Hart standard “It Never Entered
My Mind.” Ease he did, in a daringly slow
tempo, as is his custom these days. His piano
playing is gentle and serene but never rote.
The song itself seemed elongated, stretched
as if defined more by meaning than meter, in
this case the loneliness of longing: “Now… I….
even… have to… scratch my back… myself.” “Range doesn’t determine what you are. It’s the color of
Over the course of his set, perform- your voice that matters. No matter what note on the scale
ing material from his new CD, The World
According to Andy Bey, (HighNote), Bey
I’m singing, my voice is very dark, very deep.” —Andy Bey
sounded like many things. He was a gentle-
man whispering in your ear, an old-school
crooner caressing a lyric, daring inter- of everything else. “Range doesn’t determine The youngest of nine children, Bey
preter testing a song’s limits, a horn player what you are,” he told me later, during an performed boogie-woogie piano from the age
improvising bebop. The latter guise came interview. “It’s the color of your voice that of 5 at Newark clubs and dances. He recalls
via a scatted vocal that’s listed on the CD matters. No matter what note on the scale sharing the stage of Newark’s Lloyd’s Manor
as “Dedicated to Miles,” and is Bey’s take on I’m singing, my voice is very dark, very deep.” with saxophonist Hank Mobley when he was
Miles Davis’ playing, as recorded alongside Range and depth of tone are not the only just 8. His cut his first record, ‘’Mama’s Little
Charlie Parker, on Parker’s classic “Cheryl.” wondrous aspects of Bey’s singing. At 73, Boy Got the Blues” at 13. He left Newark’s
Bey’s voice sounds as silky and manly as he’s still at the top of his game. His notes Arts High School in his senior year to tour
a baritone can. Yet during George Gershwin’s seem to leap higher and move with more with his sisters, Salome and Geraldine, billed
“But Not for Me,” he dipped down to notes grace than those of other singers. From as “Andy and the Bey Sisters.” The trio was a
that would challenge any natural bass vocal- an elegant vibrato, he can shimmy down regular attraction at the Blue Note in Paris,
ist. Then without warning, he leapt up an bluesy chromatic steps or simply let his voice where ex-pat jazz heroes Bud Powell and
octave to tenor range, into a rich and punchy dissolve. By now, he’s long since mastered Kenny Clarke anchored the house rhythm
sound he calls his “power voice.” Near the the singer’s dream — perfect breath support. section. In the 1970s, Bey recorded and per-
end of an original tune, “Being Part of What’s Sarah Vaughan had it. She was among Bey’s formed in groups led by pianist Horace Silver,
Happening Now,” he slid yet higher, into a earliest heroes, and a classmate of his older saxophonist Gary Bartz and drummer Max
falsetto that sounded like a logical extension sister’s in jazz-rich Newark decades ago. Roach. He says that’s when he developed his

52 fall 2013 jazziz

 power voice, to counterbalance the attack of So, from 2007, was recorded a decade earlier and-loss of, say, “But Not For Me.” His “The
the horns and the dynamic rhythm sections. at Manhattan’s Birdland. It captured some Demons Are After You” starts with a sinister
Yet Bey didn’t gain a spotlight beyond the of Bey’s intimacy before an audience, while left-hand piano figure and densely clotted
jazz-insider community until the mid-1990s, leading a trio with bassist Peter Washington chords. The lyrics reference “evil forces trying
with a series of CDs that showcased his mix- and drummer Kenny Washington. to take complete control” and, ultimately,
ture of virility, tenderness and spiritual heft. These CDs reinvigorated his career to an relate a life philosophy that Bey says is drawn
He was 57 when Ballads Blues & Bey, a 1996 extent. To me, they’re evidence that Bey is the largely from the writings of spiritual teacher
solo recording of mostly familiar standards, greatest living male jazz singer. “Yet they’re Vernon Howard. (“It’s an individual journey,”
came out. Another Evidence Music release, only one side of me,” he says. “And I wasn’t he sings, “it will never work for the masses.”)
1998’s Shades of Bey, involved an expanded getting the part of me that I wanted to get This may come across as jarring to some
cast, including his old friend Bartz and a out there.” Six of the 11 tracks on The World listeners. So may the harmonies of “Being
string quartet. Tuesdays in Chinatown, from According to Andy Bey are relatively familiar Part of What’s Happening Now,” which
2001, featured a star-studded ensemble and a repertoire, albeit colored by Bey’s own idio- never quite resolve in expected manner.
widened repertoire (composers ranged from syncratic impulses. He transforms the melody “I’ve been writing tunes since the 1970s,
Bix Beiderbecke to Sting). The best of the lot of “Our Love is Here to Stay,” for instance, into which is when these tunes were written,”
was 2004’s American Song, which began with something far more challenging, staggering Bey says. “But I’ve been changing them
just finger snaps and deep sighs but built the song’s phrasing and sliding in and out of around ever since, changing the chord
into fairly lush arrangements by pianist Geri notes, punctuating it just so with a crashing structures and even the lyrics. Even though
Allen, who played on several tracks. On that piano chord. But what Bey needs to get out is some of these are blues-based, even if I
CD, when Bey moved from a whisper to his best expressed by the album’s five original use a conventional introduction, once I get
“power voice” on “Caravan,” his voice explod- songs. These are delivered with the same moving I take it somewhere else, some-
ed like Dizzy Gillespie’s horn. Scatting softly at alluring technique as the standards, but the where influenced by Bartók and Stravinsky
the end of “Lush Life,” he seemed adrift in the melodies are wildly unconventional and the and just my own desires. I don’t know if
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despair he’d just described. It Ain’t Necessarily lyrics 8/19/13
depart from2:52:16 PM
the sophisticated love- the world is ready for that, but I am.” s

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jazziz fall 2013 53

Picking on The Beatles
Al Di Meola sets his sights on the Fab Four.
By Bill Milkowski

jazziz fall 2013 55

 “Even though you could view the Beatles as more simplistic music
compared to Astor Piazzolla, it’s in the way that you approach it.
And some of this Beatles stuff busted my ass, actually.”
56 fall 2013 jazziz
After four decades as a bona fide guitar hero, Al Di Meola has
come full circle back to his roots withAll My Life (Valiana Music),
a stirring and highly personal take on the Beatles music
that he grew up with in Bergenfield, New Jersey. Recorded at
the Fab Four’s fabled Abbey Road Studios in London, it is an
intimate, all-acoustic one-man show, with Di Meola injecting
his flamenco sensibilities, signature rhythmic syncopations
and virtuosic string-skipping abilities on familiar Beatles
fare ranging from earlier tunes like “And I Love Her,” “If I Fell”
and “Michelle” to Sgt. Pepper numbers like “A Day in the Life,”
“She’s Leaving Home” and “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” to
The White Album’s “I Will” and “Blackbird.” And while putting
together this potent tribute album, Di Meola had a seren-
dipitous encounter with a former Beatle — a nudge from the
universe informing him that, indeed, he was on the right track
in recording All My Life.
A former member of the trailblazing fusion group Return
To Forever as well as a member of The Trio with fellow gui-
tar virtuosos John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia, Di Meola
has been touring behind the new album lately, performing
expanded arrangements of the tunes with his World Sinfonia
group augmented by a string quartet in a show titled “Beatles
And More.” Plans are afoot to document the larger ensemble
in concert for an upcoming DVD release. I spoke to Di Meola by
phone on the verge of his 2013 European summer tour.
Bill Milkowski: What was the genesis of this Beatles project?
Al Di Meola: It was really a spur of the moment thing that
happened last year, though it was in the back of my mind to do
it for a while now. What happened was, last May I found myself
with a lot of spaces in my European tour. I was in London
and had four days off before we were going to play at Ronnie
Scott’s, so during that downtime I thought it would be really
cool to go see Abbey Road Studios, just as a tourist, strictly for
nostalgia’s sake. I asked a friend of mine in London if he could
check it out and see if it was even still operating. He called me
back and said they were in full swing, doing soundtracks and
commercials, primarily. All three studios, including the one
where the Beatles did most of their stuff, were intact, like in
their heyday. Then I asked him, “Hey, man, see if it’s possible if
we could book a day or two. That would be a dream come true!”
It turns out only one day was available, which later turned into
three days when two more days opened up. And that’s how
those first three songs for this project emerged — “If I Fell,”
“Because” and “Blackbird.” And I’m telling you, it was not only
emotionally nostalgic to record there, I actually felt like a little
kid again to be surrounded by all of this incredible history and
sentiment. But beyond that, the sound was mind-blowing. It
was the best sound I’ve ever gotten on the instrument.
You ended up recording the album in stages then?
Yes. I recorded those first three tracks in May. And then
after the European tour I went back to the States, thinking
that I would try to finish the album in my home studio or in
one of the top studios in New York City. Since I was paying for
it myself — I wasn’t doing it with a label at first — I figured
I’d try to do it inexpensively. So I tried to record it at a studio
in the city, a reputable one, and then at my own studio. And
we couldn’t get near the quality of Abbey Road. The bar was
raised so high in terms of sound quality that I had to go back
there. So I returned for a second time in November of 2012 and
recorded four or five more tracks. Then I went back in February
of 2013 when I had some time and completed it. It turned into
an expensive labor of love, for sure. But the sound of the guitar
on this recording is so much better than anything that I’ve
done before that it was well worth it.
Was this Beatles project triggered by you recording
“Strawberry Fields Forever” on your last album, 2011’s
Pursuit of Radical Rhapsody ?
It kind of was. Like, why stop there? These tunes are loved
by all, you know? There’s not a day that goes by that we’re not
somehow touched by the Beatles, whether it’s a story online
or something we hear. It’s almost every day that we see some
connection with the Beatles. And they’re pretty much the
reason why I started playing music when I was a kid.
Yeah, you and about a million other kids.
Yeah, maybe 10 million around the world. And had the
Beatles not existed, I probably would be, who knows, a fireman
or some other job. In fact, I don’t think the world would be the
same. What they did to modern pop music in the ’60s really
changed everything. If you think of all the spokes of influence
and how they affected the world — it’s staggering.
Do you have any memories of seeing them on The Ed Sullivan
Show when it aired on February 9, 1964, and 73 million
people tuned in? You were 9 years old then.
Oh, yeah, big time! That was a major, major event for
anyone in our age group. It seemed like the whole country was
watching. That really was a pivotal moment for a lot of us. A
lot of us started playing guitar because of it. But the hyste-
ria around the Beatles started prior to them playing The Ed
Sullivan Show. Their hits were all over the radio. And my sister
was a fanatic; she had all the records. So Beatlemania was
already penetrating my world before that show aired.
How did you settle on the tunes for All My Life?
I picked tunes that worked primarily as solo vehicles as
opposed to a piece like “Come Together,” which doesn’t work
quite as well because it’s basically a one-chord vamp. There’s
not a whole hell of a lot you can do with one chord, unless
you’re doing a massive production, which is something I didn’t
want to do for this project. I didn’t want to approach anything
in that area where I layer all kinds of sounds and everything.
Plus, who has the budget to do that at Abbey Road to begin
with? So I picked tunes that felt good in a solo-guitar context.
And, really, there’s enough material for five records. But these
are the ones that sat the best initially, and I just worked on
those. Some of them took a lot of time and work just to get
jazziz fall 2013 57
them to feel right. “She’s Leaving Home” is a very simple piece
but very effective, sentimentally. “Blackbird” had its own
complexities. And I really just wanted to do my own thing
with it.
On “And I Love Her” and “With a Little Help From My Friends” it
sounds like you might have had a cajón player accompanying you.
That’s me slapping the top of the guitar. I just kind of kept
it really organic, as much as possible, throughout the process.
There is a string quartet on “Eleanor Rigby,” but other than
that it’s all me with a few overdubs.
It sounds like on some tunes you are splitting the stereo mix
with nylon-string guitar on the left and steel-string guitar on
the right.
Yeah, I love the separation. Things always sound better
when they’re not cluttered together and everything’s panned
in stereo. So there are quite a few tunes where I alternate
between a Gibson steel string on pieces like “I Will,” and then I
had my 1948 Martin flown over. That really added a nice touch
to blending in with the nylon because if you have two nylons
all the time it’s not as effective as having that shimmering
steel-string quality in there.
What nylon-stringed guitar did you play on these sessions?
It was a combination of different Conde Hermanos guitars.
On “She’s Leaving Home,” it was the full-body Conde, which
is the rich-sounding Brazilian rosewood one. But my favorite
nylon-string guitar sound on the album was on “In My Life”
and “And I Love Her.” That was an actual Al Di Meola signature
model Conde Hermanos guitar, which is a model they are
marketing now. On pieces like “Because,” “Blackbird” and “If
I Fell,” it was an Al Di Meola model Conde Hermanos, but a
different guitar. On “In My Life” and “And I Love Her,” it’s a
newer model that has even a better sound, by far. But all in all,
the Abbey Road tracks, man, it’s the sound of the room, it’s the
rewiring of the converters, it’s the analog mixing board. The
microphones were actually once used by the Beatles. I mean,
when you walk in these rooms, you can feel it. You know right
away, “Oh, my God, this is serious!” But the whole experience
— I’m telling you, I felt like a kid for the first time since I was
a kid, you know? It was like that the whole time I was there. It
was like, “Man, this is so great!”
I noticed you didn’t take many liberties with the harmony or
melody on any of these tunes.
I was always trying to keep the essence of the tune intact in
terms of the melody. There’s been a lot of jazz guys who have
recorded Beatles tunes, and you would never even know they’re
Beatles tunes because of all the reharmonization and everything
going on. And I did not want to do that because every time you
alter stuff harmonically, it just doesn’t work at all. So for me, it
was about trying to bring in the sophistication through rhythm
as opposed to tremendous altering of harmony, which really
would take the prettiness away and the beauty.
58 fall 2013 jazziz
How did you map out your arrangements or storyboard each
piece, so to speak. It seems like at most you used three
guitars on each tune, or were you using more?
On “Blackbird” and “If I Fell,” it’s just one guitar. “Because”
has three guitars because I had the melody, the syncopated
arpeggiated part and then at the last moment I thought of
adding a little bit of 12-string Ovation guitar to give it a slight
harpsichord sound. So on the album there are tunes with two
guitars, there are tunes with three guitars and there defi-
nitely are tunes with just one. “Michelle” was primarily one
guitar, except for that moment where I had a little solo happen
toward the end on top of it. But let me tell you, some of the
tunes like “Penny Lane,” “Michelle” and others were as hard to
practice and get right in terms of the way that I syncopated it
as any of the Piazzolla compositions that I’ve recorded. Even
though you could view the Beatles as more simplistic music
compared to Astor Piazzolla, it’s in the way that you approach
it. And some of this Beatles stuff busted my ass, actually.
I can imagine “I Am The Walrus” must’ve been difficult with
all of those interlocking patterns that you have going on.
On that one, the arpeggiated part was simple. That was a
rare example of it not being hard, except for the melody —
because I’m playing the harmonies in the melody, which was
tricky. But that one wasn’t one of the more complex tunes.
“Penny Lane” sounds like it was difficult, what with all the
intricate cross-picking going on.
That was a bitch. That was really tricky to get right. So was
“Michelle.”
“She’s Leaving Home” sounds challenging, almost like a Bach piece.
Simple. Piece of cake. That one, out of all the pieces, was …
there was nothing to that. In fact, I put that in front of
Gonzalo Rubalcaba one night in a concert and asked him to
read it down. And now we do an interpretation of it that’s far
different than the one on the record. He likes to do everything
rubato, and that one’s cool to do that way.
I understand that during the long process of making this
album, you had a very special encounter.
Yes, and it was an amazing coincidence. I had those three
tunes that I was really happy with, the first three songs that I
had recorded at Abbey Road, and I got the idea to rent a house
for Labor Day weekend out in the Hamptons, where I could
work on arrangements for the rest of the tunes. It was like a
day or two before the big weekend, and here I am like a nut
trying to find some place at the last minute and something
affordable. My friends who were looking for me couldn’t find
anything and then the realtor couldn’t find anything, unless
it was like a fortune. Finally, we found something in the paper
that looked kind of decent, so we called and we got the price
we could afford to pay and we worked out the deal. And then
the guy says, “Oh, by the way, your next-door neighbor is a
famous pop star. I was real curious so I asked my wife to look
Fab Tributes
Because of their harmonic sophistication and timeless melodies, Beatles tunes have made
good fodder for interpretation by jazz, pop and even classical artists over the years. Here are a
dozen discs well-worth hearing, all inspired by the Fab Four. —BM
s Count Basie Basie’s Beatles Bag (Verve, 1966) —
Drummer Sonny Payne, guitarist Freddie Green
and the Count drive Chico O’Farrill’s big-band
arrangements of “Help,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “She
Loves You,” “Michelle” and seven others.
s Chet Atkins Picks on The Beatles (RCA, 1966) — The
Country Gentleman applies his signature thumb-
and-fingerstyle guitar technique to his tasty inter-
pretations of “She’s a Woman,” “I Feel Fine,” “Can’t
Buy Me Love,” “And I Love Her” and eight others.
s Ramsey Lewis Mother Nature’s Son (Cadet, 1968) —
Accompanied by members of the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra, Lewis brings his piano prowess to bear
on 10 songs from The White Album, including “Julia,”
“Rocky Raccoon,” “Sexy Sadie” and the title track.
s George Benson The Other Side of Abbey Road
(A&M, 1970) – The jazz-guitar great turns in
winning vocal and instrumental renditions of the
Beatles’ classic album Abbey Road. Includes delight-
ful medley’s of “Golden Slumbers/You Never Give
Me Your Money” and “Because/Come Together”
along with a soulful “Oh! Darling” and a swinging
“Octopus’s Garden.”
s Sarah Vaughan Songs of The Beatles (Atlantic,
1981) — Sassy has her way with “Eleanor Rigby,”
“Fool on the Hill,” “You Never Give Me Your Money,”
“Blackbird,” “Yesterday,” “The Long and Winding
Road” and other contemporary pop/R&B arrange-
ments (by Marty and David Paich) of familiar
Beatles fare. This 1977 recording, which wasn’t
released until 1981, features guitarist Lee Ritenour
and harmonica ace Toots Thielemans.
s Various Artists Come Together: Guitar Tribute to
The Beatles (NYC Records, 1993) — A highly original
six-string salute to the Fab Four featuring Mark
Whitfield’s take on “Come Together,” Toninho
Horta’s “She’s Leaving Home,” Ralph Towner’s
“Here, There and Everywhere,” Larry Coryell’s
“Something” John Abercrombie’s “And I Love
Her,” Leni Stern’s “Norwegian Wood” and Allan
Holdsworth’s “Michelle.”
s Various Artists Come Together: Guitar Tribute
to The Beatles, Vol. 2 (NYC Records, 1995) — More
six-string takes on the Beatles, this time by such
cutting-edge guitar slingers as Wayne Krantz
(“Tomorrow Never Knows”), Philip deGruy
(“Strawberry Fields Forever”), Charlie Hunter
(“Drive My Car”), Adam Rogers and David Gilmore
(“I Am the Walrus”), Robert Quine and Jody
Harris (“Yes It Is”), David Tronzo (“Because”)
and David Fiuczynski (“Tomorrow Never
Knows (Slight Return”)).
s Various Artists Blue Note Plays The Beatles
(Blue Note, 2004) — This winning compila-
tion culled from the Blue Note archives
includes Stanley Turrentine’s grooving
“Can’t Buy Me Love,” Buddy Rich’s dynamic
big-band take on “Norwegian Wood,” Tony
Williams’ “Blackbird” and Grant Green’s
funky “A Day in the Life,” along with Stanley
Jordan’s virtuosic “Eleanor Rigby,” Cassandra
Wilson’s sultry “Come Together” and Bobby
McFerrin’s astounding solo vocal version of
“Drive My Car.”
s Various Artists The Beatles Tribute: An All-
Star Jazz Celebration (GRP, 2004) — Includes
George Benson’s “The Long and Winding
Road,” McCoy Tyner’s “She’s Leaving Home,”
Diana Krall’s “And I Love Her,” Chick Corea’s
“Eleanor Rigby,” Spyro Gyra’s “In My Life,”
Dave Grusin’s “Yesterday” and “While My
Guitar Gently Weeps” by Russ Freeman &
The Rippingtons.
s BeatleJazz With a Little Help From Our
Friends (Lightyear, 2005) — Pianist Dave
Kikoski, bassist Larry Grenadier and drum-
mer Brian Melvin are joined by guests John
Scofield (“Piggies,” “I Will”), Randy Brecker
(“Imagine”), Michael Brecker (“Working Class
Hero”) and Mike Stern (“A Hard Day’s Night”).
s BeatleJazz All You Need (Lightyear, 2007)
— The core trio of pianist Dave Kikoski,
bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Brian
Melvin is augmented by special guests
Richard Bona (“All You Need Is Love,” sung
in his native Duala language), Joe Lovano
(“The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”)
and Toots Thielemans (“Fool on the Hill”).
s Carlos Barbosa-Lima & The Havana
String Quartet Beatlerianas (Zoho, 2013) —
The Brazilian guitarist performs Leo
Brouwer’s arrangements of classic Beatles
tunes like “Ticket to Ride,” “Here, There
and Everywhere,” “Penny Lane” and
“Got to Get You Into My Life” with the
renowned string quartet from Cuba.
 JAZZ
into it. And when she found out who it was, she just turned to
me and screamed, ‘It’s Paul McCartney!’ because she knows
that it was one of my dreams to meet him and she also knows
what the Beatles meant to me growing up and how signifi-
cant it was for me in reconnecting with their music on this
project. And when she said Paul McCartney, I got chills, man!
AT T H E B O W L So we drove out to the Hamptons and found the place. I
pulled up into the driveway and … he was right there! His
driveway was right next to mine, almost touching, and he
was just standing there — no security, no nothing. We got to
AN EVENING WITH meet the third day I was there. I saw him pulling out of the

NATALIE COLE AND ORCHESTRA

driveway in an old Ford Bronco, and I went out and said hello
to him. He rolled down the window, and we talked for a little
while. I told him I was recording at Abbey Road and told him a
CHUCHO VALDÉS little about my history. I mean, it was like a dream. I went out
there to work on arrangements of Beatles tunes, and here I am
right next door to Paul McCartney. Come on!
AUG 14
Did he hear any of it then?
No. I had to play it kind of cool because he was going
SMOOTH SUMMER JAZZ
somewhere the day I met him, so I didn’t push it. Of course,
Dave Koz & Friends in hindsight I wish I had said this and offered that. But he’ll
Summer Horns Tour 2013 with special guests hear it. Surprisingly enough, one of his managers for the last
Mindi Abair, Gerald Albright, Richard Elliot 20 years or more who has been promoting all the McCartney
shows all over the world actually broke into the business with
Morris Day & The Time
me, John and Paco in 1980 when we were doing the Guitar
Jonathan Butler • Yellowjackets Trio tours. She came down to Abbey Road and heard some of
AUG 18 the tracks and loved it. There is that possible connection, so
I’m sure Paul will hear it at some point.

BUDDY GUY
QUINN SULLIVAN
WITH SPECIAL GUEST
These are such familiar tunes and yet you put your own
stamp on each one.
Yeah, that was the point. It’s my little world meets their big
world. And at first I thought about adding more sounds and
things, but everyone that heard it said, “No, man, keep it simple.

FUNKY METERS Just guitar. Just the way it is is great.” So I was kind of buying
into that after a while. But sure, if I had real budgets like back in
AUG 21 the heyday, it would’ve been a much bigger production. But then
again, it’s kind of nice to hear just the guitar without all the
fluff, especially as rich as they sound on this record.

WAYNE
Wayne Shorter Quartet with Danilo Pérez,
John Patitucci, Brian Blade and special guest I think people are going to appreciate what you’re doing with
Herbie Hancock and Imani Winds
these tunes.

SHORTER
ACS: Geri Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington, Yeah, I’m really proud of this one. Look, they’re not my
Esperanza Spalding
compositions but I feel so close to them. As I said, it was a labor
Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas Quintet: of love. I’m really happy with the way it came out, especially the
8 0 T H B I RT H D A Y “Sound Prints” guitar sounds. I wanted to go analog the whole way. There’s no
CELEBRATION AUG 28 comparison to digital; it’s far superior. Why doesn’t everybody
record this way? But this whole experience — recording at
Abbey Road, living next door to Paul McCartney, who is probably

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Coming
On
Strong
The sudden emergence
of Gregory Porter.

By Ted Panken
Photos by Shawn Peters
“At this point I don’t know if
there is anyone who writes
lyrics as well as him. And, if
anybody has as good a voice
as he does, let me hear it.”
 —Chip Crawford

jazziz fall 2013 63

 Water pouring down the sidewalks
Cleaning windows clear to see
Washing gumdrop down side gutters
Rusting chains and cleansing me
Growing gardens, drowning ants
Changing rhythms, bruising plants
Graying vistas soulfully
And it’s saving me.
 —Gregory Porter’s “Water”
It rained torrents in Brooklyn on the first Friday in June, so
much rain that at 3 p.m. water was flowing through crevices in
the cornice atop the stoop of Gregory Porter’s Bedford Stuyvesant
brownstone into the cramped vestibule. It was also, Porter
said, seeping from the back into his ground-floor kitchen. No
respite was in sight until well past Porter’s scheduled 7 o’clock
flight to Pittsburgh, so it promised to be a long day. Still, the
singer, sheathed in the black balaclava and Kangol cap that is
his sartorial trademark, seemed stress-free as he escorted me
upstairs, where it was dry.
In truth, the weather seemed an apropos backdrop for a
discussion framed around Porter’s September Blue Note release,
Liquid Spirit, which follows on the heels of his Grammy-nominated
2010 leader debut, Water, and its Grammy-nominated successor,
Be Good. Both generated uncommon levels of crossover buzz for a
release by a “jazz” singer. One reason is Porter’s dazzling toolkit — a
resonant voice, multi-octave range, conversational projection and
soulful feel. Another is his luminous songwriting — 27 well-crafted
originals on the three CDs that convey both grand metaphysical
themes and intensely personal narratives in precise, symbolic,
soul-baring language that evokes such late 20th-century masters
as Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Bill Withers, Abbey Lincoln, Donny
Hathaway and Gil Scott-Heron. It’s also intriguing that the source
of these introspections is a strapping, full-bearded ex-linebacker
who, after moving to New York in 2005, built his Q-rating in the
old-school, grassroots manner — several years of weekly Tuesday
night appearances in the raucous confines of St. Nick’s Pub in
Harlem, then a year of Thursday night three-setters at Smoke, the
Upper West Side jazz club.
“Some people told me, ‘Stop doing that damn gig,’” Porter says,
recalling reaction to his appearances at St. Nick’s Pub. “But I dug
that regular people would come in and buy a $3 beer and hear live
jazz. So this lab that is St. Nick’s Pub — that is community, that is
tourist — became this soulful place for me and the band as well.
We enjoyed ourselves there for that little $30 or $40.”
64 fall 2013 jazziz
These days Porter commands much higher fees. In five days, he
would fly to Los Angeles to play the Hollywood Bowl, launching
a summer itinerary of North American festival appearances and
engagements in Europe, where he’s toured without respite during
the past year. His fan base spans the United Kingdom and extends
to elsewhere in Europe, as well as to the former Soviet Union and
Japan, where he was packing rooms well before Water launched
his recording career. Increasingly his admirers also include peers
and elders, among them stylistically divergent artists like Wynton
Marsalis, who in March cast Porter in the Trickster role originally
inhabited by Jon Hendricks in a high-profile restaging of Blood On
the Fields at the Rose Theater, and David Murray, who recruited
Porter to sing lyrics by Ishmael Reed and Abiodun Oyewole of the
Last Poets on Murray’s recently released Be My Monster Love.
“The hook-up with Gregory was one of the greatest things I
could do with a vocalist,” Murray told me over the phone. “He can
reach deep down, but also get up there, like the tenor or cello — he’s
got power in all areas. He can sound like people, too. He can do all
those things, which is phenomenal, and he’s a thinking man. I have
total respect for him.”
“He has the spirit of the ’70s with a jazz aesthetic,” says Chip
Crawford, Porter’s pianist from his earliest St. Nick’s Pub days.
“I’m getting more and more amazed at his writing ability, plus his
melodies are as good as anyone’s. At this point I don’t know if there
is anyone who writes lyrics as well as him. And, if anybody has as
good a voice as he does, let me hear it.”
“I try to be organic,” Porter says of his approach to making
albums and writing lyrics. “I’m not calculating in terms of, ‘I want
to write some modal music and connect it to Gregorian chant,’
which is a dope way to be as well. I open up my chest and arms and
see what falls in there inspirationally, and these are the things that
come out at the point of the release of energy. After everything is
on the page, I look and say, ‘OK, this is what that is.’”
Having eased into the conversation, Porter adds, “I don’t mean
to be throwaway about it, or like I’m not really thinking about
everything.” He offers a creation story for “Wolf Song,” one of
several pieces on Liquid Spirit that he generated during a fortnight
in Europe shortly after his son was born and immediately before
the mid-March recording session. “I had to get it done,” he recalls.
“Concepts and even some lyrics formulated on the train across
France. I remember looking at sheep on a hillside, and thinking: I
wonder, are there any wolves? And then the thought: Boy who cried
… boy who cries wolf. No. Girl who cries wolf. … Hmm. Have I had a
girl cry ‘wolf’ for me about a love situation? Ah! The song started to
write itself, right there on the train.”
Porter turned his attention to the title track, also conceived in
France, while sitting in a coffee shop. “This piece of poetry flowed out
of me quite easily,” he says, before reciting, plain-song: “Un-re-route
the river, let the dammed water be, there’s some people down the way
that’s thirsty, so let the liquid spirit free. The folk are thirsty because of
man’s unnatural hand. Watch what happens when the people catch
wind of water hitting the backs of that hard, dry land.
“It came from people saying, ‘Where can I get some more of this
kind of music? Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you.’
That energy, the music, love, culture and soul is somewhere, being re-
routed or diverted. I wanted to be in front of people, and I didn’t have
a gig. Now I’m gigging, and I sing, and people say these things to me.”
“Music is subliminal,” Porter told a sold-out room at Sub-
culture, a new basement space on Bleecker Street where he was
presenting a showcase for Liquid Spirit the Monday after his
Pittsburgh weekend. He’d just flown in, and it was raining again, as
was evident from the soaked lapels on his beige sport jacket, which
draped a white shirt, black vest and olive bowtie that complemented
his black headgear. “It’s hypnotic, in a way,” Porter continued. “No
matter how tired my voice is, no matter how I’m dressed, I can sing.”
Porter had performed infrequently in New York over the past
year, so, as he said in a later chat, this appearance spurred “a bit of
pent-up demand.” He added that the attendees — roughly three-
quarters of whom were African-Americans, an unusually high
proportion for a downtown jazz event — “were real fans; I didn’t
stuff the house with just my friends from down the street.”
From the very first tune, they signified allegiance with a call-
and-response that continued throughout the 75-minute set. On
the title track, a blues stomp with an Oscar Brown-ish feel, Porter
had no need to augment the exhortation “clap your hands now”
with a crash course on finding the beat. “Work Song,” which he
addressed with stylized rawness, elicited shouts of “Unh-uh,
child!” from several enthusiastic women. The “congregants”
imposed their own master plan on the set-closer, transforming
“1960-What,” a soul-stirring, socially conscious number from the
Les McCann-Eddie Harris “Compared to What?” playbook, into a
collective sing-along.
Between songs, Porter, who is 41, testified at some length. After
“Work Song,” for example, he spoke of Bakersfield, California, the
dusty agriculture-and-oil city where Porter moved at 8 from Los
Angeles with his siblings and mother, a pastor in the Church of God
and Christ, who, he told me, circumvented doctrinal proscriptions
against female practitioners by “calling every church that she
66 fall 2013 jazziz
established a ‘mission’ so that she could be the head missionary
and, essentially, the head preacher.”
Onstage at Subculture, he told the room: “My mother had
a real desire to go to the churches with older congregations —
small storefront, no-air-conditioning churches. If the music I
heard there disappears, then it will be — watch this word, it’s
kind of heavy — a kind of musical genocide.” Having landed on
the next song’s title, “Musical Genocide,” Porter’s simultaneously
wrenching and affirmative delivery of the lyric encapsulated a
sensibility that he internalized while singing at those churches
while his mother preached.
Give me a blues song
Tell the world what’s wrong
And the gospel singer giving those messages of love
And the soul man with your heart in the palm of his hand
Bringing his stories of love and pain.
“Black people came to Bakersfield from the South, and all the
black ministers were thick, farmer-hand preachers,” Porter had
told me while seated on a couch in his living room. “They were
singing a lot of deep Southern gospel blues. So I was singing with
these old men who had great voices. Ted Johnson sounded like Lead
Belly. Elder Kemp and Elder Duffy had the style of James Brown,
and Pastor Richardson sounded like dead-on Sam Cooke. Others
sounded like John Lee Hooker, and others like Bobby Bland, except
for that snorting thing he does between phrases.
“Many times I hated it because it was hot in the church, and here
I am on my knees with all these old people, singing these blues.
Yeah-esss, Yahyaess, Yesss, Yes, Yehhhs. Now, that chord progres-
sion, you’re singing it a hundred times over an hour, but each time
it’s slightly different. ‘Yes, you will; Yes, He will; Yes, we will. Save
my children. SAY-YA-VE my child-dreh-ehn. SAYVE MAH CHIL-
dren.’ On and on and on. Very much like jazz. Deviating from the
melody. These voices were constantly harmonizing. We would all
do it as a group. And it’s just happening. Nobody’s saying, ‘You get
this part, and you get this part.’ I appreciate that steeping of music
now. Sometimes in a song, I’ll go to that place, and that’s the energy
that fuels that moment.”
Porter’s ability to make musical decisions in real time in func-
tional, ritualized contexts allows him to mix and match genres
that don’t always coalesce in jazz expression circa 2013. “I’m not
saying this because I’m a black man trying to take ownership of
any music,” he says, “but when I heard jazz, certain saxophone
players playing the blues or something, I was like, ‘I hear my
grandfather preaching; that’s my grandmother moaning over
it when she cooks.’ It wasn’t, ‘I want to get with that.’ I heard
myself, and I was like, ‘There’s something for me there, too.’ Then
I opened myself up to wider things.”
Not only did Porter directly experience and absorb the gospel-
blues tradition, but also his mother’s social-gospel practice of
“always going wherever the need was deepest, wherever the battle
was.” As Porter describes it, she fed and clothed and cleaned the
indigent, answered calls from denizens who had overdosed on
heroin or a “Sherman” — a cigarette dipped in PCP.
 “Some way, people would find a way to call her when they
got in the deepest situations,” he says. “My mother would some-
how drive to the rescue, pull somebody into the back seat of her
brand-new Cadillac, wrap them up in a sheet and pour water
on their head until they came to after two or three hours. In a
way, we were in the trenches with her. That sticks with you.” He
quotes “When Love Was King,” from Liquid Spirit: “He lifted up
the underneath/and all this wealth he did bequeath. There’s a bit
of my mother, Martin Luther King and Jesus Christ in that song.
Redemption was a big thing for her. Her water sermons were very
important when I was a child, which is probably where all these
water themes are coming from in my music.”
What primarily distinguishes Liquid Spirit from its predeces-
sors is the pithiness of the 14 tracks — the track-lengths are
shorter, the solo interludes fewer. Some have asked Porter whether
this decision was to facilitate airplay for his “major label” debut.
“Not really,” he says. “It’s a feeling of ‘Let me hit these blues and
come off of them.’ I don’t put myself in the category of my influ-
ences — of great Japanese poetry or even the blues yet. But I want
to get out these little ideas, restate them, and then rely on the
energy it leaves to strike to the heart quickly, which to me is what a
dope short blues song does.”
Porter’s path to blues expression as an avocation and not a side-
line began in 1993, when his mother, on her deathbed with cancer,
urged him “to really give singing a try.” He was then a 21-year-old
undergraduate at San Diego State, where he’d matriculated on a
football scholarship in 1990. A shoulder injury ended that dream, and
Porter was focusing on city planning and “a nice government job so
she’d think I was doing something positive as she was leaving us.”
Eventually he started attending local jam sessions, which had a
bebop flavor, “trying to get with Eddie Jefferson, King Pleasure and
Jon Hendricks,” sitting in with adept locals like trumpeter Gilbert
Castellanos and saxophonist Daniel Jackson. One night, after he
“tried to scat something over ‘Giant Steps,’” the master trombonist-
composer George Lewis, a recent addition to the UC-San Diego
faculty, invited him to his class.
“There were no vocalists there, and George started using me
liberally from the beginning,” Porter says. “The students were
dismissing the voice, but he said, ‘No, no, the voice is important; it
does different things, it has its own qualities.’”
One day Lewis had to miss class, and called saxophonist-
keyboardist-arranger Kamau Kenyatta to sub. “Kamau immediately
brought me to his crib for lunch,” Porter says, recalling the begin-
ning of an important and ongoing friendship (Kenyatta produced
Water, and co-produced Be Good and Liquid Spirit with Brian
Bacchus). “He did 12 charts, in my key, of different songs he thought
would be good for me to learn. Kamau is from Detroit, and the
relationship was in the tradition of that scene. You have lunch, do
music, talk about it, play a bunch of songs. You live the music.”
In 1998, Porter, who was working at a Deepak Chopra Center
for Wellbeing, (“personalizing body treatment oils and doing a
bit of cooking in their kitchen”) went to a Hubert Laws recording
session of Nat “King” Cole repertoire that Kenyatta was producing.
The Cat in the Hat
“My editor wanted me to ask you one question,” I told
Gregory Porter at the end of our first conversation. Before
I could mention that it was a query about his headgear, he
interjected, “I know what the question is.” Then he laughed
long and hard.
“Please tell me,” I said.
“It’s my jazz hat. I used to wear berets.”
“Do you wear it all the time? Are you wearing it just for me?”
“This is just for you. No …”
“How many do you have?”
“Many.”
“What’s the brand?”
“Well, this is a Kangol Summer Spitfire.”
“How many Kangols do you have?”
“These, I must have eight.”
“All the same?”
“No. I have a brown. I have five black. I have a red, a blue.
… But the balaclavas, I have many, many, many. It’s my look,
man. I’m recognized at a great distance.”
“How did the look begin?”
“Since I’ve been in Brooklyn. It’s been about six years.”
“What was the inspiration?”
“You do something one day, and you’re like, ‘This is my look.’”
“And you used to wear berets.”
“I used to wear berets. I still do every now and then, when
I’m in church, you know.”
“Is the hat and the balaclava a sort of prop …”
“No.”
“...to sing? I mean, does it kind of put you in character or …”
“When I go out with my wife, I’m dressed like this, too.
Now, when we come home and we’re relaxed, no. But this is
my look, my public look. It is a jazz hat. The first time I went
to Russia, they asked me about it, and the next time I came,
the kids came to the concert dressed like me. This was over
five years ago. I remember they were taking pictures with
their cell phones. And the next time I came, they came to the
concert looking like me.” —TP
jazziz fall 2013 67
Kenyatta asked Laws to listen to his protégé; Laws immediately
invited Porter to sing a tune. His daughter, Eloise Laws, who was
present, then urged Porter to attend a Los Angeles audition for the
musical revue It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues. Porter, who had already
appeared in the doo-wop musical Avenue X, was hired on the spot
and joined the production for an 18-month run on Broadway. Then
he did a national tour with the musical Civil War, returned to Los
Angeles and started writing a musical — both songs and script —
based on his relationship with the music of Nat Cole.
“I heard my mother’s Joe Williams and Nat Cole records when
I was 5 or 6,” he recalls. “My father wasn’t around, and I’d look at
Nat Cole’s LP covers and imagine he was my daddy. On mic checks
and warm-ups for It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues, I’d sing ‘Mona Lisa,’
‘When I Fall In Love,’ ‘Too Young,’ and the cats would comment that
I should do something with it. I’d tell them how I got into him, and
they’d respond that it was an interesting story, and at some point I
realized that this was the story I had to tell.”
Nat King Cole and Me ran for two months at the Denver Center
Theater, before 700-800 people a night. “They were responding to
my songs as well as the Nat Cole songs,” Porter says. “That’s when
the confidence in my songwriting began. Doing Ain’t Nothing But
the Blues, I got so much exposure to great blues music, country
to city, very sophisticated to just gutbucket. Just like jazz, I heard
myself in it. Abbey Lincoln’s songs, her personal stories, made me
realize that, sometimes, the more personal, the more universal.
Then, too, the Bible and the style of speech in sermons convert well
to song. Traveling around Europe, all those medieval cities, you feel
like you should talk that way.”
Nat Cole and Me didn’t make it out of Denver, and its closing
coincided with the end of a love affair. “I had a pocket full of
money, and no place to go,” Porter says. “My brother was just set-
ting up a coffee shop in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and he said, ‘Come
68 fall 2013 jazziz
here.’ So I came and worked in his shop, making soup. My idea
was to stop going out and doing these small theater gigs that
sustained me and kept insurance, to let me go broke, be hungry,
but try solely to do the music thing.”
With all the momentum that Porter has generated in New
York, for all the charisma he possesses, and, as Liquid Spirit
co-producer Brian Bacchus says, with “nothing to prove in terms of
jazz credentials,” it’s curious that Porter still “feels like on the outside
looking in,” quoting “The In Crowd,” which he covers on Liquid Spirit.
“I chose it after I knew this would be on Blue Note,” Porter says. “It’s
a little commentary to myself, like, ‘Am I in that crowd now?’ I don’t
know. At St. Nick’s, Frenchmen and Spaniards came who said, ‘You
should be in France, you should be in Spain.’ I felt it, but I didn’t have
a passport yet.” He references “Bling Bling,” a song from Be Good: “I’m
so rich in love and so poor in everything that makes love matter/I’ve
got gifts to give, but no place for those gifts to live. Eventually I started
to get the opportunities, and once they came. … But you don’t have
confidence right off the bat. In a way, you build to it.”
Porter is “increasingly comfortable in the fact that I can only
be me. He cites sage advice from Marsalis. “Wynton told me,
‘There are some things you have that can’t be learned; I’m sure
there are some things you could know that would be instrumen-
tal to you. Whether you have them or not, get them, put them in
your back pocket and access them. But at the same time, use the
facility that you have.’
“I have many things that I desire to do,” Porter says. “Coming
to the public eye slightly formed, people almost thought, ‘There
are 10 records I can get somewhere, right?’ And there’s not. I say,
‘If you want 10 records, you’ve got to wait. You have to wait that
eight years or however long it takes.’” s
As In a Dream
Thirty years on, Michele Rosewoman’s
New Yor-Uba continues to evolve.

By Larry Bumenfeld
 “I started hearing these two kinds of music as one,
but they would meet only in my dreams. In my
real life, they were parallel, but I literally dreamed
this union — these folkloric, spiritually powerful
songs in a contemporary jazz setting.”

On an unseasonably warm April night, 11 musicians fill the
stage at Roulette, an auditorium in Brooklyn, New York,
known for cutting-edge music presentations. Up front sits a
trio of percussionists: Pedrito Martinez, Roman Díaz and Abraham
Rodriguez, with their conga and batá drums. Just behind the per-
cussionists are bassist Yunior Terry and, at his trap set, drummer
Adam Cruz. At the rear, five horn and reed players stand in a row.
Center stage, somewhat enveloped by the other musicians, Michele
Rosewoman sits at a piano, a Fender Rhodes keyboard at her side.
Rosewoman is a petite woman, still somewhat girlish at 60. She’s
barely visible from the audience and yet clearly in charge, directing
the action with a turn of her head, a firm nod or hand motion.
Rosewoman’s music spills out over the course of three hours,
sounding by turns playful, intense, cacophonous, melodic,
meditative and nearly always densely percussive. Her piano
playing draws equally from the bluesy drama of Randy Weston
and the ardent yet grounded freedom of Cecil Taylor. Her grasp
of Afro-Cuban tradition enables her, when she chooses, to make
her instrument function like a set of tuned drums. At times, she
trades phrases with percussionists as if one of them. All three per-
cussionists sing, as does Rosewoman. Martinez, a wondrous musi-
cian, displays mesmerizing abilities on hand drums. His voice,
which manages to be simultaneously searing and comforting,
cuts through and soars above Rosewoman’s rich arrangements.
Instrumental voices command attention, too. Alto saxophonist
Oliver Lake plays pleading figures, hard-swinging statements and
well-placed squeals. Trumpeter Freddie Hendrix crafts concise
and smart solos, sometimes pulsing a single note through the
swirl surrounding him. Díaz lends tiny inflections and subtle
innovations to each pattern of beats; he shifts rhythms in ways
that seem (and may well be) mystical. In matters of Afro-Cuban
ritual traditions, he is spiritual and musical guide to Martinez
and many others on the New York scene.
Yet no one player or singer is the focus here. Rosewoman’s music
unites players with distinct personalities into a communal voice,
much in the mold of Mingus or Ellington, even as she adheres to
Afro-Cuban traditions. It sounds bold, swinging, ceremonial and
formal — all at once, in many cases. It carries the air of something
ancient, which makes sense since so many of these compositions de-
rive from ritual rhythms and cantos, or chants, for orishas, the deities
of West African Yoruba tradition that are essential to Cuban folkloric
music, and signaled by the batá — three two-headed drums that,
when played correctly, are said to speak the Yoruba language. Yet
the music also sounds urgent, new. Some of these pieces were in fact
recently composed, and all of them involve not just the structured
call-and-response of Afro-Cuban folkloric music but also spontane-
ous exchanges in the improvised language of New York jazz.
There are several histories packed within Rosewoman’s music,
none more so than her own creative arc. She first presented “New
Yor-Uba: A Musical Celebration of Cuba in America” at Manhattan’s
Public Theater on December 12, 1983. The 14 musicians that surround-
ed her onstage then included Lake, who she counts among her men-
tors, and Cuban percussionist and singer Orlando “Puntilla” Ríos, her
most profound influence, who died in 2008. Between songs, she says
from the stage, “A lot of this repertoire was written around Puntilla’s
voice and spirit.” In the decades since its debut, Rosewoman has
presented several editions of her New Yor-Uba ensemble at festivals
and in clubs. But she’s never recorded the group. That situation is
about to be remedied. In three days, Rosewoman and New Yor-Uba
will head into Brooklyn’s Systems Two Studio.

Photo by Chris Drukker jazziz fall 2013 71

The views from Rosewoman’s ninth-floor Lower East Side
apartment are expansive. Out a south-facing window, cars
ceaselessly stream back and forth across the East River via the
Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. Through another window,
facing north, in the distance, stands the Empire State building, a
steady reminder of towering ambition made tangible. Rosewoman
composes her music here. A Steinway grand piano dominates the
living room. Beside it stand three conga drums. Next to them,
her batá. These instruments, which Rosewoman has mastered,
denote her music’s roots (she’s long sworn off playing percussion in
performance). She has lived in this apartment since 1978, when she
moved to New York City.
Though it was half her life ago, Rosewoman recalls that 1983
Public Theater concert as if it happened yesterday. “You could see
the horn players listening to the drummers with their mouths
hanging open and the drummers staring at the horn players
with wide eyes,” she says, sitting at her kitchen table with her cat,
Matteo, at her feet. “At intermission, we came together like athletes
in a huddle who were about to win a championship. We were all
thinking the same thing: This is something we’re doing here, you
know? The musicians had never heard anything like it.”
Even in a Manhattan then buzzing with fresh iterations of jazz
and renewed Afro-Cuban influence, New Yor-Uba’s balance of
unfettered improvisation and undiluted Cuban folklore within a
complex, swinging and often grand structure was startling. The
music had both stylistic swagger and spiritual heft. Especially
noteworthy was Rosewoman’s use of batá drums, of which Ríos
was an acknowledged master and which were rarely heard be-
72 fall 2013 jazziz
yond private religious ceremonies. Her own pianism was equally
distinct. In his book Latin Jazz: The First of the Fusions, author John
Storm Roberts recalled reviewing Rosewoman’s early New York
performances for The Village Voice: “Using none of the montunos
that provide Latin references in most jazz fusions,” he wrote,
“she welds broken, tumbling melodic phrases, fiercely chopping
full-hand chords, Bud Powell runs and a constant Afro-Cuban
rhythmic undertow into a totally coherent whole — the first
purely jazz playing I’ve heard that meshed with Latin rhythms
instead of riding above them.”
Rosewoman backtracks in her mind through the overlap-
ping influences and seeming coincidences that led her to both
jazz and Afro-Cuban culture. “How do stories start?” she asks.
Hers begins in Oakland, California, surrounded by music,
most obviously because her parents owned a record shop but
also due to a community that was, she says, “seething with
culture and politics.” She began playing piano at age 6. “I took
some lessons, but I never really studied classically,” she says.
“I liked blues. I seemed drawn to things that were rhythmi-
cally and harmonically complex. And pretty soon I wanted to
improvise.” After high school, she took some classes at Laney
Junior College, where she met pianist and organist Ed Kelly,
who became her first mentor. “He taught me jazz the old-school
way,” she says. “He also shared the pure joy of music with me.
He would come in, lay his hands on the piano and let it ring.
‘Music is sound,’ he’d say, ‘before it becomes anything else.’”
Soon after, she began studying Afro-Cuban percussion. She
felt drawn to these ritual traditions as powerfully as to jazz.
They both felt natural. “But they were still parallel experiences,
separate things,” she says.
Rosewoman’s concept of jazz widened through association
with trumpeter Baikida Carroll, who was her next-door neighbor
in the Bay Area, and who would play in the original New Yor-Uba.
Through Carroll, she met Lake, who, along with Carroll, shared
with her ideas about creativity and purpose, some drawn from
their experiences in the influential Black Artists Group, in St. Louis.
As Lake recalls, “It was unusual to meet someone who could play
both piano and hand percussion. And here she was, this young
woman, determined and sure of herself and already with a unique
approach. But she also seemed to be open to everything. These are
the ingredients for growth.” While in the Bay Area, Rosewoman
performed at the now-defunct Keystone Korner, then a hub of jazz
activity, and led groups with Lake, Carroll and others, including
trombonist Julian Priester and saxophonist Julius Hemphill. A
local jazz critic, Philip Elwood, called her up one day and asked her
if she’d like to hear Cecil Taylor at the Keystone Korner. “I ended
up going back the next three nights,” Rosewoman recalls. “I went
through a real process those four nights. He impacted me deeply, in
ways I didn’t really even understand for years to come.”
By the late 1970s, Rosewoman knew she needed to move to
New York. Musicians had been urging her. She first arrived at her
current building, which then housed a garment factory on its
bottom four floors, to teach percussion to a woman on the ninth
floor. The apartment across the hall was available, she was told.
“I didn’t think,” she says. “I just told them ‘I’m in.’” She moved six
months later and never looked back.
Once in New York, Rosewoman straddled two worlds. Her first
live performance was in a jazz ensemble led by Lake. Her earli-
est recording session was with the Cuban songo group Los Kimy
(which also featured Paquito D’Rivera). Yet she felt a desire, a need,
for these worlds to combine. “I started hearing these two kinds of
music as one, but they would meet only in my dreams,” she says.
“In my real life, they were parallel, but I literally dreamed this
union — these folkloric, spiritually powerful songs in a contempo-
rary jazz setting. I said, ‘What? How?’ I heard this in my head, and
I needed to work it out.”
Rosewoman would need further inspiration and instruc-
tion to accomplish that goal. In the early 1980s in Manhattan,
a multi-cultural performance space on West 52nd Street called
Soundscape was the place to be on Tuesday nights to experience
Afro-Cuban music. There she met Orlando “Puntilla” Ríos, who’d
arrived in the United States from Cuba via the Mariel boatlift —
the mass emigration of Cubans who departed from Cuba’s Mariel
Harbor for the United States between April and October of
1980 — and then settled in New York City. It’s hard to overstate
the impact Ríos had in and around New York toward building a
community around the West African traditions, transmitted via
Cuba, of the Yoruba people (from what is now Nigeria) and then-
less-known rituals of the Arará people, from the former kingdom
of Dahomey (present-day Benin).
“Puntilla was rough,” Rosewoman says. “He had to create his
world in order to do what he wanted to do. He was a scout. He was
always looking to see who could get it. And the drummers really
had to hang. I hung.” Ríos welcomed Rosewoman into his circle. He
invited her to batá classes, which were not particularly hospitable
to women at the time, and into ceremonies. “He understood that
I needed certain information to do what I wanted to do,” she says.
“I was suddenly in this whole other world that was an extension
of everything I had been dreaming, and that allowed me to grow
more quickly and get more deeply immersed.” New Yor-Uba began
largely as a celebration of Ríos’s eminence and a direct outcome
of his influence. “I had all these cassette recordings from batá
classes, with Puntilla’s voice,” she says. “I started to build music
around his voice, and featuring him.” Some compositions used
the folkloric material as foundation. Others were purely original
creations into which elements of folklore organically fit. “By 1983,”
she says, “I had built a repertoire.”
Through the past three decades Rosewoman herself has influ-
enced an ever-widening sphere of musicians. Alto saxophonist Greg
Osby played on two of her early recordings (and she is featured on
his 1987 debut CD). “Her music challenges you in a very particular
way,” he says. “You can’t rely on what you think or you know or
what you think you know. She delves into Afro-Cuban folklore as
deeply as someone can, but she doesn’t get swallowed up by its
enormity. I can still hear her in the middle of it. It sounds like her.
And what she has done turned me on to a lot of questions. She
opened up new worlds of possibility in my own music.”
Drummer Tyshawn Sorey studied with Rosewoman in the late
1990s, while still in high school, through Jazz House Kids, a summer
institute in Montclair, New Jersey (she also teaches at Manhattan’s
New School University). “The way the drums function in Michele’s
music was different from what I’d heard before,” Sorey says. “And
she changed the way I functioned as a drummer. She told me not
to just play time. She forced me to play my whole drum kit, and to
think about its possibilities.” Pedrito Martinez began touring with
Rosewoman soon after he moved from Cuba to the United States in
1998. “I’d never heard anyone combine Yoruba and jazz that way,”
he says. “I thought, ‘This is why I came here.’”
Rosewoman led a quartet for her first recording as a leader,
1984’s The Source. That album’s original compositions hint at the
direction she was headed. She’s since recorded twice in piano-trio
format, including 1994’s widely acclaimed Blue Note outing The
Spirit. The clearest expression of her aesthetic on record is her
five-piece group, Quintessence, through which several noteworthy
players, including Osby, have passed. It has evolved in brilliant
and unconventional fashion across five albums, beginning with
an eponymous 1998 release on the Enja imprint and through
to 2006’s The Inside Out, on her own Advance Dance label. That
group’s repertoire overlaps to some degree with that of the larger
New Yor-Uba ensemble. Quintessence allows for more extended
improvisation, she says, and more emphasis on changing meters.
The larger band is more clearly shaped by a balance between the
formalities, structures and rhythmic requirements of both jazz
performance and Afro-Cuban folkloric ceremonies. If Quintessence
is the vital laboratory for her concept, New Yor-Uba is the orchestra
that transmits its fullest expression.
jazziz fall 2013 73

Batá, in brief
Rosewoman considers the batá “the heart of New Yor-
Uba,” Here she explains the role of these drums in Yoruba
tradition through text she wrote with her frequent collabora-
tor, percussionist Eddie Bobé:
Through the drums, human beings become connected to
all of nature and to the supernatural, and thus, the drums are
honored and celebrated. The
batá drums hold, to those who
believe, divine power. They are
used to communicate with the
deities known as Orishas, and
with the spirits of the ancestors,
known as Eguns.
The batá are the orchestra of
the Yoruba temple. They are the
most important drums in the
Afro-Cuban form of the Yoruba
religion, known in Cuba as
Santeria (also known as Regla de
Ocha). Santeros are practitioners of this religious form.
The batá are three two-headed drums, each head with its
own distinct tone. In Cuba, ‘un tambor batá’ does not exist.
The three constitute the batá (los bata son tres). A ceremony
where batá drums are played is called un toque de batá.
To play batá means to play these three drums together.
Combined, they constitute ‘a conversation of six hands.’
The batá drums play complex rhythms called toques,
which correspond with the different phases of the cer-
emonies. They are considered talking drums because they
actually speak the Yoruba language through the call-and-
response conversations that occur between the two largest
drums. The toques themselves are highly sophisticated
rhythmic patterns that are passed on to the aspiring
drummer through the oral tradition. Bata drummers must
be able to memorize hundreds of toques and their variants.
They are able to retain such a great amount of information
through melodic memorization, as the various combina-
tions of rhythmic patterns create distinctly different
melodies. Improvisation occurs, depending on the drum-
mer’s ability to rephrase these patterns.
The challenge of New Yor-Uba comes at Rosewoman in waves —
literally. On her computer screen, she’s looking at the wave forms
created by her music as seen through Pro Tools software, while work-
ing with producer Liberty Ellman on the mix of her new double-CD
with New Yor-Uba,A Musical Celebration of Cuba in America (Advance
Dance). “I can see clearly here what I’ve always known,” she says, refer-
ring to patterns on the screen. The jazz musicians are playing behind
the beat; the percussionists, playing Afro-Cuban folkloric rhythms, are
in front of the beat. “It’s a tug of war,” she says, “and I’m sitting in the
middle, trying to make sure things don’t ever get too far out of align-
74 fall 2013 jazziz
ment. There’s also a challenge presented by the nature of the drums,
an energy that naturally accelerates. You don’t want to step on that
but you also need to think about keeping a tempo for the group.
Meanwhile, the precision of the batá calls for incredible precision in
every other seat, especially the bass and drums.”
Rosewoman had considered making a solo-piano recording to
celebrate her 60th birthday this year. Over dinner, a friend persuaded
her to document New Yor-Uba instead. “Right after he suggested it,”
she says, “I realized that now was the moment.” Like so many musi-
cians these days with ambitious ideas and limited corporate support,
she opted for a campaign on the Kickstarter website to generate a
core budget. By mid-March, she had reached her goal, and raised more
than $23,000. For posterity, she wanted to honor what she’d created
30 years ago. She also wanted to document how it has evolved. Ríos’
death in 2008 was a turning point for New Yor-Uba. The current group
includes two original members — Lake and, on tuba and baritone sax-
ophone, Howard Johnson. The newer members, especially those in the
rhythm section, create a changed context for her project. “These guys
have a fluency in both jazz and Afro-Cuban languages,” she says. This
opens new possibilities. “Puntilla was a pure folklorist,” she explains.
“His presence made sure that I stayed grounded in tradition and that
my foundation was correct, that elements were presented in the right
sequence and on the correct side of clave. With Pedro [Martinez] and
Roman [Díaz], it’s a much more interactive thing. They’re reacting to
the energy and to the soloists. That’s a new dimension for the group.”
Ellman, who has more than a decade’s experience as guitarist in
Henry Threadgill’s groups, was fascinated while working as producer
in the studio with Rosewoman. “One of the great things about the
situation is that everyone is a little out of their element at some level,”
he says. “There was this interesting back-and-forth that had to do
mostly with humility. Everyone had moments where they had to
defer to someone else. Everyone was aware of everyone else’s role.
Everyone had to give a little of themselves to the whole in order for it
to succeed.”
Rosewoman knows that beyond rhythmic tensions and the disso-
lution of individual egos, her music suggests disparities, perhaps even
conflicts, for purists of jazz and Afro-Cuban folklore. She doesn’t see it
that way. “Jazz is a world of extending and expanding tradition,” she
says. “The rhythmic traditions of Cuba are about maintaining tradi-
tion. But the idea of obscuring things seems fundamental to both. The
idea is to know something so well that you don’t have to state it.”
For Rosewoman, such mystery, emboldened by knowledge, releases
her most deeply held desires — the stuff that first bubbled up within
her in the Bay Area, when she was simultaneously studying jazz and
Afro-Cuban drumming, and then took firmer shape decades ago, in
New York. She senses these desires manifested in small details on the
new CD, such as the way Hendrix begins a trumpet solo just right on
“Praise for Ancestors (for Eggun)” and the batá pattern that mimics a
tenor sax run later in that tune. She hears it most clearly of all near the
end of “Where Water Meets Sky  (for Yemaya),” in brief horn improvisa-
tions that seem to float into place above chants and rhythms, only to
dissolve and make way for the precise and accelerating fury of batá
drumming. “It’s otherwordly when you hit that zone, the one you’ve
been searching for,” she says. “You’re floating. You’re somewhere you
dreamed of being but didn’t know you’d ever reach.” s
THE BEST OF BRAZIL AND BEYOND
Ricardo Silveira & Mike Marshall
Vinicius Cantuária & the
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 Vintage
Ink Rediscovering
the cover art of
David Stone Martin.

David Stone Martin, self-portrait
David Stone Martin was an American artist, best known for the over 400
album covers he illustrated during a prolific period that lasted from the
late, 1940s until the early ’60s. His strikingly modernist work, a dazzling visual
refraction of the energy and spontaneity of postwar jazz itself, graced the cov-
ers of albums by Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington,
John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Art Tatum, Stan Getz and many of their peers.
Like those artists, Martin, who died in 1992 at the age of 78, earned for himself a
well-deserved place in jazz history.
In recent years, no one’s done more to champion Martin’s achievements than
Vincent Gerard, the 48-year-old founder and creative director of Jazzartz.com.
Not long ago, Gerard, struck by the fact that few people had ever seen Martin’s
illustrations on anything other than old 12” x 12” album covers, began the
arduous process of transforming Martin’s work into the stuff of fine contem-
porary art. Today, he sells meticulously restored prints of more than 100 of
Martin’s album-cover illustrations. They come in four sizes, all square (14”, 24”,
36” and 44”), and each is printed on museum-quality fine-art paper stock that’s
been handmade in Germany. Prices range from $350 for the smallest pieces to
$1,750 for the largest. A 220-page book that includes excellent reproductions of
Gerard’s 100-plus prints is also available for $399 through his website. Jazzartz
also sells a custom leather-bound edition of 100 24” prints for $25,000.
“It’s really important that people understand these are not just big blow-
ups of old scanned album covers,” Gerard says. “We worked for over two years
digitally restoring archival artwork brushstroke by brushstroke, and giving the
color amazing fidelity. We worked with David’s son Tony Martin to get the color
perfect and everything true to his father’s vision. No one has ever seen David’s
art like this. The prints are of the highest quality.”
Had he lived, David Stone Martin would’ve turned 100 years old earlier this
year. As a centennial celebration of sorts, we offer a small sampling of his many
illustrations, each of them painstakingly restored.
All of David Stone Martin’s album-cover illustrations can be seen and
purchased at www.jazzartz.com or at Vincent Gerard’s newly opened Jazzartz
Gallery in Laguna Beach, California.

76 fall 2013 jazziz

Bird and Diz (Clef Records, 1952)

jazziz fall 2013 77

Art Tatum Piano Solos (Asch Records, 1955)

Lionel Hampton Big Band (Mercury Records, 1955)

78 fall 2013 jazziz

A Recital by Tal Farlow (Verve Records, 1955)

jazziz fall 2013 79

Jazz At The Philharmonic Vol. IV (Clef Records, 1946)

80 fall 2013 jazziz

Oscar Peterson Plays Cole Porter (Clef Records, 1954)

Buddy Rich & Sweets Edison (Norgran Records, 1955)

jazziz fall 2013 81

Charlie Parker Big Band (Norgran Records, 1953)

82 fall 2013 jazziz

 Billie Holiday Sings (Mercury Records, 1952)

Flip Wails (by Flip Phillips and His Orchestra, Clef Records, 1956)

jazziz fall 2013 83

Flip Phillips Collates No. 2 (Mercury Records, 1953)

Slide Trombone, featuring Lawrence Brown (Clef Records, 1955)

84 fall 2013 jazziz

Stan Getz at the Shrine (Norgran Records, 1955)

jazziz fall 2013 85

 The Fall Collection
Inside Subscriber Copies Only

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delivered inside every print issue.

THE FALL COLLECTION FEATURES

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Michel Camilo, Gary Burton, Cecil McLorin Salvant,
Randy Brecker, Bill Frisell and more …

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Call 561-910-7730 or log onto jazziz.com
 1946-2013
George Duke
When I interviewed George Duke on May 21 for the follow- recently released Dreamweaver) also had died while putting
ing story, I had no idea he was battling and being treated for together what would be George’s last recording. The final track
chronic lymphocytic leukemia. I called him at his studio in Los on that album, “Happy Trails,” stands as a moving farewell to all
Angeles and he seemed his old jolly self — forthcoming, animated three souls — and now, to George, as well.
and hilarious. On the phone, I pictured the big, ebullient cat I Just a week before Duke’s death, I watched a DVD that he had
remember hanging sent me shortly after
with at the musicians’ our interview. It had sat
bar at the Montreux around for a couple of
Jazz Festival back in months before I finally
1991, the year he sat screened it one evening.
in with Miles Davis’ It’s a live gig from 2011,
group. As we spoke, I filmed at the Agharta
recalled the hulking nightclub in Prague, an
keyboardist cavorting intimate, subterranean
with Frank Zappa at room I had visited
a Milwaukee concert while attending the
during a 1973 tour that inaugural Bohemia Jazz
had the Mahavishnu Festival in 2005. In the
Orchestra opening for video, George was his old
them. Every image of robust self on a funky
Duke that I had tucked rendition of his “Reach
away in my memory For It,” a jazzy take of
was of a vibrant, “Autumn Leaves,” a
smiling character medley of Frank Zappa
with a robust presence tunes (including his own
and an irrepressible signature number, “Inca
joie de vivre. It was Roads”) and a slamming
only after getting the P-Funk medley that also
shocking news that he highlighted the late
had passed away on guitarist Jef Lee Johnson
the evening of August and young powerhouse
5 that I saw the ashen drummer Ronald Bruner.
complexion and debili- It’s clear from watching
tated visage in recent this video that Duke was
photos of the Grammy- in his element on stage.
winning keyboardist, He beamed energy to the
composer, producer back row with his infec-
and bandleader. tious Kool-Aid Man grin and grimace during solos. And that’s
During my conversation with Duke, he talked about people how I prefer to remember him. —Bill Milkowski
close to him who had recently passed away, beginning with his
beloved wife, Corine, whose death a year ago sent George into a Editor’s note: Bill Milkowski’s profile of George Duke appeared in
deep depression that engulfed him for months. Guitarist Jef Lee the July digital issue of JAZZIZ, a month before Duke’s death. We
Johnson and singer Teena Marie (both of whom appear on Duke’s reproduce that story here, unchanged.

jazziz fall 2013 87

 Happy
Trails
After his wife died, George Duke was in a funk for months.
Finally, his mojo returned.
By Bill Milkowski • Photos by Toshi
George Duke is living proof that sometimes there is light
at the end of the tunnel of despair. Following the death of
his wife, Corine, the Grammy-winning keyboardist found
himself so consumed by grief that he couldn’t work on his
music. Artistic stasis had set in, and he didn’t see any way
out of his doldrums. Finally, when he was at his lowest ebb,
something clicked in him, sparking a flood of ideas and a wave
of momentum in the studio that culminated in the July release
of Dreamweaver (Heads Up), which Duke calls his “most honest
album in several years.”
“It was pretty difficult, actually, to begin,” he says, reflecting
back on that dark period when nothing seemed to be happening
for him. “My wife passed last July, and then I was supposed to
start the album right after that, but I didn’t feel like creating any
music. I have a studio in my home, and I’d walk in there and look
88 fall 2013 jazziz
at the console and my equipment and go, ‘Nah, not today.’ And
that kept going on. And that’s unusual because normally music
is my respite, but I just did not feel any creative urge. I could not
think of a single note to play or any groove that I wanted to do.
And it didn’t happen for a long time.”
During a Soul Train Cruise last October, Duke got his mojo
back. “I was there by myself. It was the first time I had done one
of those cruises without my wife, which was strange enough.
I didn’t have to play for a few days, so I had a couple of days to
just do nothing — listen to other bands and kind of just stare at
the sea. On the third day, something happened. I had watched
some bands and stayed up kind of late. It was around four in the
morning when I finally went back to my room. But I didn’t feel
like going to sleep, so I went out and sat on the deck and just
stared at the water go by until the sun started coming up. Then
suddenly some ideas started flowing. I mean, lyrics and melodies Sometimes I’d be awakened
and everything just came to me. I went back to my room, got “I wanted to go at three in the morning with
out my computer and started jotting down some things, mostly
lyrics and some melodies. And at least three of the songs on the
back to all of my the knocks on the wall from
the headboard of his bed
new album were written that night.”
One of them was the heartfelt ballad “Missing You,” dedicated
old instruments hitting against my wall.
And along with that I’d hear
to his late wife. “I actually had to change the lyrics around — the ARP Odyssey, walking bass lines, trumpets
because I just couldn’t get through a take without breaking up,”
Duke recalls. “So I changed the lyrics to make it more generic as
the Minimoog, and saxophones with the
piano and drums, which I
opposed to being specific to her, and that’s how I got through it.
But I know what the song’s about.”
the Prophet 5, tried to filter out from all
these other sounds. I learned
The rest of the material flowed from there when he got back the Memorymoog a lot about how this music
to his home studio in Los Angeles. “The main thing was, I wanted
to play a lot of synths on this record,” says Duke, who first gained
— all this stuff works just by listening to
whatever music this guy
accolades for his accomplished keyboard work during the ’70s
as a valued sideman to Frank Zappa and Cannonball Adderley.
that coughs and would play while he was
having sex. It was a very
“I wanted to go back to all of my old instruments — the ARP sputters when interesting, very educational
Odyssey, the Minimoog, the Prophet 5, the Memorymoog — all
this stuff that coughs and sputters when you turn it on. I wanted
you turn it on.” experience for me.”
While working toward a
to use all those things along with my old Fender Rhodes, the master’s degree in composi-
Wurlitzer, the Hohner clavinet, and make that be the meat of tion at San Francisco State
what this album is all about.” University, Duke and his trio
Those old-school synths are put to good use on the P-Funk- secured a gig as the house
inspired instrumental “Ash Tray,” the raucous 15-minute “Burnt band at the Half Note, where
Sausage Jam” and the full-blown synth manifesto “Brown Shoes,” he had his first encounter
which finds him running his Prophet 5 through an amp to get a with a major jazz figure, one who would later become his
nasty, distorted-guitar sound and soloing wildly on Minimoog employer and mentor. “I was playing there with my trio featur-
and ARP Odyssey. ing Al Jarreau on vocals, and right up the street was a place called
Duke’s 33rd recording under his own name and third for the the Both/And Club, where Cannonball Adderley played with his
Heads Up label was completed in record time. From its inception — quintet. Cannon and his brother Nat would come down to the
that serendipitous day on the cruise ship in October 2012 — to final Half Note, mainly because he liked Al. I remember him telling me
mastering, the project breezed by in just six months. “Once I got into years later that I sounded like a bad Ramsey Lewis. And so I asked
it,” the 67-year-old keyboardist says, “it was like going downhill.” him, ‘Why’d you hire me then?’ And he said, ‘Because you got
Sadly, two artists who appear on the record — singer Teena Marie better.’ So I met Cannon around ’65-’66, but I didn’t start working
and Philadelphia-based guitarist Jef Lee Johnson — passed away with him until 1971.”
before its release. “It’s been crazy, man, absolutely crazy,” says Duke, In 1966, just barely 20 years old, Duke recorded his first album,
reflecting on the deaths of two friends and a wife in such a short Presented by the Jazz Workshop, a standards quartet outing which
span of time. “But you know, it is what it is. Death is part of life.” he now dismisses as the product of a nervous youngster trying
Fittingly, the album closes with “Happy Trails,” a soulful too hard to impress. “For some reason I thought all I had to do was
remake of the old Roy Rogers theme song (Duke’s answer to Sly play the head of a tune real nice and then proceed to rattle off a
Stone’s take on “Que Sera Sera”). “I thought it would be a great bunch of notes at high velocity. This did not make for a pleasing
way to end the record by singing ‘Happy trails to you, until we result, but it was all I knew.”
meet again’ to these people, you know?” By 1967, Duke had begun experimenting with fusion in a
group featuring the Flying Frenchman, progressive jazz violinist
Jean-Luc Ponty. They held down a longstanding gig at Donte’s
A native of northern California, Duke was exposed to jazz in Hollywood and by 1969 were approached by Dick Bock of the
at an early age while growing up in a post-WWII housing Pacific Jazz label to record a live album at a Hollywood rock club
project for people of color, as he details in the lyrics of called Thee Experience. While Duke was accustomed to play-
Dreamweaver’s autobiographical song “Trippin.’” “There was ing only acoustic piano at that point, Bock supplied him with a
this single guy who lived in the adjacent apartment and he was Fender Rhodes electric piano for the live recording. In the audi-
a jazz fan with a good record collection,” he recalls. “At night he ence that night was Frank Zappa, who would later compose all
would play music — Ray Charles, Les McCann, Miles Davis — and the material for 1969’s King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music
it would seep through the walls and into my bedroom. So while of Frank Zappa, on which Duke played a key role.
I’d be lying in bed late at night, between all the sex noises going Duke ended up joining Zappa’s band in 1970, first appearing on
on over at his place, I would be hearing all this great music. Chunga’s Revenge and eventually playing on 13 additional Zappa

90 fall 2013 jazziz


Composing for the Prince of Darkness
George Duke composed two songs that appeared on Miles
Davis recordings during the ’80s — “Backyard Ritual,” on
1986’s Tutu, and “Cobra,” on 1989’s Amandla. Says Duke: “Miles
used to call me from time to time and say in that raspy voice,
‘Hey, George, this
is Miles. I want
you to write me a
tune.’ And when
I asked him what
kind of tune he
wanted, he’d yell
into the phone,
‘You know what
I sound like! Just
write me some-
thing like you
think I oughta be
doing NOW!’
“So first I
wrote ‘Barnyard
Ritual’ and sent
him a demo. Then
I didn’t hear from
him for three,
four weeks. So I
called him up and
said, ‘Hey, Miles, this is George. Did you get the tune?’ He told
me he got it and liked it, and I said, ‘Oh, great, man! When
we going in the studio to record it?’ And he kind of grunts,
‘It’s already recorded.’ And I said, ‘What are you talkin’ about,
man? That was a demo. At least let me change the sax and
the drum sounds.’ And he says, ‘No, I like it ’cause it sounds
funny.’ And it went on the record just like that.
“So my first experience working with Miles was a
demo. After that he’d call me from time to time, trying
to get me to come over to his house when he was living
in Malibu. And, basically, every time he called, he’d say,
‘I ain’t dead yet. Write me something.’ I wrote more than
he actually ended up recording because he passed in the
middle of all of this.” —BM
albums during the next several years, including such Zappa classics as
1973’s Over-Nite Sensation, 1974’s Apostrophe and 1975’s One Size Fits All,
which includes his bravura vocal performance on the time-shifting,
interval-leaping number “Inca Roads.” Duke says the late guitarist-
composer was a key figure in his career. “I never played synths
before Frank. He’s the one who got me to play synthesizer and also
encouraged me to bring my humor out, to be more tolerant of simpler
forms of music. I mean, he really opened up the doors of my creative
awareness. That’s why I’m in the shape I’m in, musically.”
Following an invaluable stint with the Cannonball Adderley
92 fall 2013 jazziz
Quintet in the early ’70s, Duke returned for a second tenure in
Zappa’s band, which lasted through 1975. The following year,
he formed the Billy Cobham-George Duke Band, a powerhouse
fusion outfit featuring former Weather Report bassist Alphonso
Johnson and guitarist John Scofield. “I had met Billy in 1973
when I was in Zappa’s group, and we opened for the Mahavishnu
Orchestra. On that tour is when we first talked about forming
a band. Billy was like a freight train running loose on the rails
back then. We only recorded one album [1976’s Live on Tour in
Europe] but we have lots of extra stuff from that tour that we’re
currently remixing and will be putting out soon.”
By 1980, Duke began pursuing a slightly different muse
when he formed the R&B flavored Clarke/Duke Project with
bassist Stanley Clarke, who appears as a special guest on
Dreamweaver, unleashing one of his signature upright-bass
solos on the lush, large-ensemble number “Stones of Orion.”
“I first met Stanley at a jazz festival in Pori, Finland,” Duke
recalls. “We met in the hallway. Actually, our Afros met in the
hallway. I was trying to pass by him to get to my room, and
our Afros touched. It was a very small hallway. Later I went
downstairs and heard him play. He was sitting in and just jam-
ming, and it was absolutely amazing. Chick Corea was playing
drums, Stanley was playing bass. I was there with Cannonball
Adderley, and he was there with Return To Forever. That’s the
first time we actually started talking, and he heard me play
there with Cannon. Eventually he played on my records, I played
on his, and it continues from there.”
While playing together in an updated edition of the Clarke/
Duke Project, the two old friends have also entered into a new
musical situation that has reaped musical rewards for both men.
“We have begun to do duo concerts, just acoustic bass and piano,
which allows me to stretch out and do some other things that
I don’t do on my normal records and in normal performance.
It’s very challenging. We tried it at the Blue Note in New York
for four nights. We did eight shows there, and it was absolutely
incredible. It actually worked. We kept the attention of the audi-
ence the whole time, just with piano and bass.”
Duke has also recently played several two-piano concerts
with Joe Sample, and they’re planning more. Chick Corea has
also expressed interest in going out with George for a series of
duo concerts. “We talked about doing a two-piano thing but I
said, ‘Man, I don’t want to go out and be embarrassed. I’m not
going out with Chick Corea unless we play the blues all night.’ So
I have a standing joke with him about that.”
Duke also plans to record his next orchestral project (a follow-
up to his triumph at the 1993 Montreux Jazz Festival, docu-
mented on the live recording Muir Woods Suite) by early next
year. “I’ve written a bass concerto for Christian McBride, which is
probably the most astute and mature orchestral writing that I’ve
done so far,” he says. “We premiered it here in Los Angeles a year
or so ago, and I think we’re going to go into the studio and record
it in January or February of 2014.”
While still grieving over the loss of his wife, Duke continues to
fill the hole in his soul with music. And if music is a healing force,
Dreamweaver is an impressive first step on the road to a full recovery. s
Photo by Sharon Alouf
94 fall 2013 jazziz

Playing Smart
Pondering the curious mind and music of Craig Taborn.
By Shaun Brady
Photos by John Rogers
Like many of his peers, Craig Taborn forged his sound, at least
partly, in college classrooms. Unlike most of his peers, how-
ever, he didn’t spend much time at college actually studying
music. Instead, Taborn majored in literature at the University of
Michigan and graduated with a general liberal arts degree, secure
in his belief that the non-musical knowledge he gained would
positively influence his playing. “I thought the exclusive study of
music was a waste of my time,” the 43-year-old pianist says today.
“It just felt like a collapsing spiral.”
A born polymath, Taborn had begun his own study of music
years earlier by digging through his father’s eclectic record
collection. As he grew older, he explored a diverse range of music
in the record stores and concert halls of his native Minneapolis,
taking in everything from jazz to heavy metal to electronic music
to hardcore punk. By the time he reached college, he had decided
to concentrate on other areas of study, the results of which are
evident in the intellectual content of his own music.
Thomas Morgan, the bassist in Taborn’s current trio, describes
Taborn as having “a very wide-ranging curiosity about music —
and just about everything else, too, as far as I can tell — and he
goes deep in his studies.”
All of his knowledge, Taborn contends, can be found in his play-
ing. “I always thought that music was enhanced by study,” he says.
“I had a sense that what you learn impacts your creative life, so I
just wanted to explore and understand a lot of different things.”
This story originally ran in the July 2013 online
edition of JAZZIZ magazine at www.jazziz.com.
That open-minded approach to creative inspiration may help
to explain how Chants (ECM), the new CD by Taborn’s trio with
Morgan and drummer Gerald Cleaver, seems to both reinvent
the piano-trio tradition while remaining indebted to it. The fo-
cused, intimate interaction between the three musicians exempli-
fies the format’s ideal, while the dense, mysterious intensity of this
particular group belongs to it alone.
“To make a contribution to that tradition, you have to chal-
lenge yourself to not make constant reference to the past out
of a space of total reverence,” Taborn says on a humid June day
over lunch at a Cuban restaurant near his home in the Flatbush
section of Brooklyn. “It’s just a balance of how much you’re tak-
ing from it and how much you’re offering to it, and I’m definitely
into trying to offer more.”
While Chants is this trio’s debut recording, Taborn has been
touring with Morgan and Cleaver since their first performance
together at the 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival. He’s been playing with
them individually for even longer. The group’s singular, almost
cryptic sound on Chants, Taborn says, is the result of working
through the music, night after night, over the past six years. “It just
takes risk. You have to risk failing and then working it through.
With this trio, it’s always worked to a certain extent, largely
because it was conceived around Gerald and Thomas, and they’re
not normal thinkers anyway.”
The band continues to develop, according to Cleaver. “Chants rep-
jazziz fall 2013 95
resents a particular moment,” the drummer says. “It’s not meant to
be a definitive statement. In fact, the performances of those songs
now are almost unrecognizable from the originals at times.”
At the Philadelphia Art Alliance in early May, the trio
demonstrated how it had grown since recording Chants nearly
a year earlier. Fluidly segueing from one piece to the next, the
band blurred the lines between composition and improvisation,
suggesting elusive forms without revealing the underlying
architecture. It maintained the delicacy of the interplay heard
on the album while revealing a more forceful element, seem-
ingly drawn from the audience’s enthusiastic reaction.
The band’s evolution is by design — or, maybe more ac-
curately, a lack thereof. “I don’t like settling on an aesthetic,”
Taborn explains. “I just don’t play jazz and improvisational
music to do that. It’s really through the process of playing that
a group identity forms, and if you’re willing to let that happen
then all this magic starts to happen. You can try to manufacture
it, to move toward an endpoint, but then you have to break up
the group because you haven’t allowed anywhere for it to grow.
My thing, particularly with this group, is the opposite of that. It
just keeps transforming and reinventing.”
Taborn has been transforming and reinventing himself
throughout a career that now exceeds 20 years. He first emerged
as a straightahead pianist accompanying saxophonist James
Carter before unveiling his avant-garde side with multi-reedist
Roscoe Mitchell in a band where he shared piano duties with
fellow forward-thinkers Matthew Shipp and Vijay Iyer. The
electronic-music world discovered him collaborating with Detroit
techno innovator Carl Craig; subsequently Taborn applied ele-
ments of their work to the sprawling, complex jazz compositions
of saxophonist Tim Berne. He is equally at home conjuring sci-fi
atmospherics for guitarist/producer David Torn or laying down a
Rhodes groove in Chris Potter’s Underground.
“I’ve never been a joiner,” Taborn says. Growing up, “I was
interested in everything. I was just as interested in rap and hip-hop
as I was in metal and punk rock and jazz and classical. I didn’t get
into anything exclusively. Ever.”
Taborn was born and raised in Golden Valley, Minnesota,
a suburb just outside of Minneapolis. His father, a psycholo-
gist, played the piano at home and had a healthy collection of
blues and jazz LPs by the likes of Ray Charles and Cannonball
Adderley. He began playing piano at the age of 11 and received
his first synthesizer soon thereafter.
In middle school, Taborn started to regularly attend concerts,
checking out everything from gigs by David Murray or the George
Adams-Don Pullen Quartet to hardcore punk shows. “I had a buddy
in eighth and ninth grade who had his own punk fanzine,” he
recalls. “I started going to see shows with him and realized how
eclectic and creative and strange that stuff could be. You never
knew what you were going to hear.”
Two-thirds of the jazz power trio The Bad Plus, bassist Reid
Anderson and drummer Dave King, also grew up in Golden Valley.
With them, Taborn began combing local record shops and playing
96 fall 2013 jazziz
in “stupid suburban basement rock bands doing Van Halen covers.”
Jazz didn’t necessarily exert a stronger pull on Taborn’s at-
tention than did other styles of music, but it did coincide nicely
with his experimental inclinations. “A lot of what I was doing
was improvisational,” he says. “I didn’t and still don’t make
much of a distinction in terms of the process, but I knew that a
lot of the strong examples of improvisation were in jazz. I can’t
say that I was more focused on it than on other music, but it
demanded a certain kind of attention because it was something
I had to learn how to do.”
When Taborn enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann
Arbor, he was resistant to the idea of transplanting his passion for
music into the classroom. He did begin studying jazz the old-
fashioned way, however — on the bandstand. While at university,
he met Gerald Cleaver and began accompanying the Detroit
native home to play alongside some of that city’s greatest jazz
talent: Marcus Belgrave, Rodney Whitaker, Donald Walden, James
Carter and others. At the time, Taborn says, Cleaver was a far more
straightahead player than his current aesthetic suggests. “He
was a very traditional bebop and hard-bop drummer when I met
him. His concept for and appreciation of free playing grew over
the years. He’s coming from a really strong place, but he’s also
very creative and non-traditional. We know so much about where
each other is coming from because we’ve gone through so many
developmental stages together. There’s a whole history there.”
The two met while auditioning for a jazz combo class — the only
music-related class Taborn attended during his college years — and
instantly found “a mutual recognition,” Cleaver says. “We both set
out on some rhythmic permutation on a standard and instantly rec-
ognized the alien in each other.” Since then, Cleaver has played in
two different permutations of Taborn’s trio (with Morgan or Chris
Lightcap), and the two have also played together in the trio Farmers
By Nature with bassist William Parker, in Danish saxophonist Lotte
Anker’s trio and in bassist Michael Formanek’s quartet.
Taborn’s trips to Detroit led to his first major break, an invita-
tion to join James Carter’s quartet. Subsequently he would ap-
pear on five of Carter’s CDs, beginning with the saxophonist’s
debut as a leader, JC on the Set. Taborn’s affiliation with that quartet
helped establish his early reputation as a straightahead player,
but Carter’s tastes were never so cut-and-dried. Take a CD like
1996’s Conversin’ With the Elders, which features guest appearances
by Hamiet Bluiett, Harry “Sweets” Edison and Lester Bowie, and
includes selections that range from bebop standards to gutbucket
blues to skewed takes on reggae and waltz music.
Carter’s quartet featured the rhythm section of bassist
Jaribu Shahid and drummer Tani Tabbal, both of whom were in
Taborn’s first trio and appeared on his self-titled 1994 debut. The
two were also playing with Geri Allen, Sun Ra, Cassandra Wilson
and others at the time. Together they ushered Taborn into his
next formative experience — playing with Roscoe Mitchell, one
of the leading lights of the Association for the Advancement of
Creative Musicians.
“That was an aesthetic sea change,” Taborn says of playing

Possibilities and Limitations
While his own recent releases have concentrated on the acous-
tic piano, Taborn continues to split his focus between acoustic
and electronic playing. “I invest a little bit in each,” he says.
The major difference between the two, Taborn explains, is
the open-ended definition of “electronics.” To him, the word
signifies an approach more than an instrument, and it can
encompass electric keyboards, synths, laptops and all manner
of gadgets and programs. “I don’t view the electronics as one
instrument. I view it as more of a process of engaging with a
lot of different tools, so I always have to reinvestigate what my
instrument is at the time. The piano is always a piano, so your
concept may change but that stays the same.”
The constancy of the piano can be both a strength and a
weakness, Taborn says. When a piano and electronic instru-
ments are both present, the piano “becomes part of the larger
battery. Because you have all this stuff, the piano’s not going to
predominate. It tends to just blend in.”
Removing electronic alternatives, on the other hand, forces
Taborn to take a more inventive approach. “When the piano is
the only tool I have,” he says, “I have to really try to hyperex-
tend it to get some other sounds out of it. Consequently, some-
times I get more mileage out of just playing the piano than if
I have more synths. A lot more will happen sonically because
I’m forced to try to push beyond a boundary. I’ve often found
that with electronics, the more stuff I have, the less actually
happens. I’ve definitely noticed diminishing returns.” —SB
with Mitchell. “The lens on how I perceived making music was
definitely changed. Roscoe just had a different way of thinking
about improvising and putting together music. That affected ev-
erything I’ve done, even straightahead playing, since. I just think
really differently. To be honest, I can probably remember how I
would have thought back then, but I can’t remember why I would
have ever thought that way. It totally changed my awareness.”
Taborn says his experiences playing with Mitchell provided
him with the tools needed to play with Tim Berne. That op-
portunity came shortly after he moved to New York City in
1997, during which time he was working more frequently with
electronics in collaboration with Carl Craig. (Taborn plays on
the 1999 album Programmed with Craig’s Innerzone Orchestra.)
Berne says he first approached Taborn after regularly spotting
him in their shared Brooklyn neighborhood. “I used to see him
walking around the street, and I just thought he looked like
a space cadet — in a good way,” the saxophonist recalls. “And
every time I saw him, I would go, ‘I know I’d like to play with
this guy.’ I had this idea for an electronic thing that would cover
guitar and keyboard and bass at the same time.”
Taborn played electronics — including synth, laptop and
Rhodes — in Berne’s trio Hard Cell (with drummer Tom Rainey) and
his quartet Science Friction (which added guitarist Marc Ducret)
through the early 2000s, and the two continue to play together
98 fall 2013 jazziz
in bands led by Michael Formanek and David Torn. “He might be
one of the greatest electric bass players in the world not playing
electric bass,” Berne says of Taborn before also praising his acoustic
piano playing. “The thing that separates Craig from a lot of people
is that he has a real sound, a real command over the sound of
the piano. He has an incredible dynamic range and a variety of
touches; it’s not one dimensional. A lot of people just sit down and
play the piano, but with Craig his whole body goes into it. I’ve seen
a million different things come out of him, and I don’t hear a lot of
people who have that much variety in their sounds.”
While his previous work had led to different reputations in
different circles, from electronic music to straightahead jazz to
free improvisation, working with Berne finally brought those
worlds together. “It really forced me to negotiate all those spaces
at once, which I’d never had to do before,” Taborn says. “In each
of the other contexts, one of those elements was removed. I
improvised and played challenging written music with Roscoe,
but on piano; with Craig, I was using all these electronics but
it didn’t require me to deal with so much stuff flying at me. So
that was a huge growth period.”
Taborn’s association with Berne led to opportunities to play
and record with Dave Douglas and Steve Coleman, and to mix it up
with other forward-thinking musicians in New York. He became a
regular at saxophonist David Binney’s Tuesday night sessions at 55
Bar in Greenwich Village. It was there that he met Morgan for the
first time, which he calls “a revelation,” and also where he played
with Chris Potter in a bassless format that led directly to the
formation of Potter’s long-running electric band Underground.
“I love Craig’s attention to detail and his commitment to being
uncompromising about what he really wants to sound like,”
Potter says. “He’s such a bright guy and so well-versed in so much
music, especially music that’s kind of far from the mainstream.
And you can hear it in his playing. Somehow, even when you’re
playing a blues, you’ll hear these references from contemporary
classical music or death metal or whatever he’s into. It’s inspiring
for me to be around.”
Following the release of his 2004 electric quartet CD Junk Magic,
Taborn didn’t release another album under his own name until
2011’s magisterial solo breakthrough Avenging Angel, his debut
on ECM Records. Initially he talked to the label about recording the
trio that eventually made Chants, but misaligned schedules led to
the decision to record a set of solo improvisations instead.
Despite the differences between Avenging Angel and Chants —
one solo, one trio; one improvised, one composed — the two albums
share a similar feeling of fragile intensity and an otherworldly air of
elliptical mystery. Taborn himself sees “a lot of cross talk between the
aesthetics” of the two albums. “They share certain ideas about static
versus dynamic space, engaging with sound in an environment.”
The acclaim that has met both discs appears to be a breakthrough
for Taborn, even as he refuses to settle on a fixed group sound. It’s a
testament to the one constant — an untranslatable beauty — that
runs throughout a music that constantly changes and deepens as he
and his trio continue to perform and we continue to listen. s
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This story originally ran in the August 2013 online
edition of JAZZIZ magazine at www.jazziz.com.

Nothing
But ’Nett
Charnett Moffett adds a remarkable
solo disc and more to his stellar résumé.
By Bob Weinberg Photos by Rebecca Meek
Charnett Moffett looks positively beatific as he pulls rich,
sonorous notes from the strings of his black-lacquered upright
travel bass. Onstage at North Miami’s Luna Star Café in April,
he beams at guitarist Jana Herzen, with whom he’s touring in
support of their duo recording Passion of a Lonely Heart, add-
ing layers of harmonic and emotional resonance to the music.
Moffett’s sensitive accompaniment is particularly adept during
Herzen’s read of Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird.” The bassist fingers
a graceful counter-melody, then smoothly transitions to an ach-
ingly beautiful arco passage.
Of course, Herzen is savvy enough to feature Moffett
prominently each set, turning over the stage to her collabora-
tor so he can work his solo string magic. Nattily attired in a
black suit, bolo tie and sparkly silver vest — the latter of which
he cherry-picked from the formal-wear store next door to the
venue — the bassist digs in on a buoyant medley of Monk
tunes and delivers a bravura reading of his composition “Free
Your Mind.” Both numbers appear on his first-ever solo-bass
CD, The Bridge, which arrived close on the heels of his duo disc
with Herzen and presaged the release of his full-band record-
ing, Spirit of Sound, which came out in July. All were released
on the Herzen-owned Motéma imprint.
In the liner notes to Passion of a Lonely Heart, Herzen likens
improvising with Moffett to “rafting down a fast-flowing river
... refreshing, ever-changing, sometimes dangerously deep ... and
always exhilarating!”
“It’s a challenge, but it’s actually an easy challenge,” Herzen
says by phone from her home in New York City in late June. The
musician and label exec had just returned from a festival in
Morocco with Moffett and fellow Motéma artists Will Calhoun
and Marc Cary. “You really have to stay in the moment and
keep going. Charnett’s very fresh in that way. He just feels the
moment very well and pushes things in a certain direction. It’s a
certain talent he has.”
And it’s a talent that’s kept Moffett in demand for decades,
from his 1985 star-making turn on Wynton Marsalis’ Black
Codes (From the Underground) through his work with legendary
leaders Art Blakey, Ornette Coleman, Tony Williams and McCoy
Tyner to more recent forays alongside Melody Gardot, Kenny
Garrett, Nicholas Payton and label mate Calhoun, to whose latest
recording, Life in This World, he lends his seasoned skills. Moffett
welcomes — no, craves — the variety of situations in which he
finds himself playing these days.
“Each time you perform — whether it’s with a vocalist or you’re
performing solo or you’re supporting a trio or quintet — your roles
change,” he explains during a phone conversation from his home
in Pennsylvania’s Poconos in May. “You have to find the balance, to
figure out the best way to express your creative moment.”
Free-jazz drummer Charles Moffett made some spectacular music
with Ornette Coleman. Their collaborations can be sampled on
classic live albums such as Coleman’s Town Hall 1962 and
the two-volume Ornette Coleman Trio at the Golden Circle
Stockholm, recorded late in 1965. The saxophonist, composer
and jazz visionary had such a powerful influence on Moffett
that the drummer named a son, born in 1967, “Charnett,” a
blend of the two men’s names.
Charnett grew up in a creatively stimulating environment, sur-
rounded by his dad’s colleagues and four musical siblings: Mondre,
a trumpet player; Charles Jr., a tenor saxophonist; Cody, a drummer;
and Charisse, a vocalist. After taking a run at drums and then
trumpet, Charnett finally settled on bass, assuming his rightful
place in the Moffett Family Band led by his dad. He proved so adept
that he began recording and touring with the group at age 7.
But Charles Moffett wasn’t a musical didact, preferring to allow
his progeny to come to the music naturally. “You got your research
just from daily activities, from being around the music,” Charnett
explains. “And then, as you became more serious about it, knowing
that it was a trade and studying it in school, of course you would have
to do your homework. But the way it happened for me was really quite
natural — whatever music I heard around the house. … And a lot of it
was on-the-bandstand training, to be honest with you.”
That training continued when the Moffetts moved from
California to New York in the early 1980s. While he was obtaining
formal knowledge at LaGuardia High School of Music and Art (the
school from the movie Fame), then at Mannes College of Music,
then at Juilliard, to which he earned a scholarship, Charnett contin-
ued his education on club and concert stages. His dad’s colleague,
saxophonist Kenny Millions (a.k.a. Keshavan Maslak), hired father
and son to form the rhythm section of his Loved by Millions band.
Millions’ avant-punk-jazz group, with which Charnett played
electric bass and toured Europe, proved worlds apart from his
experience with his subsequent employer, Wynton Marsalis.
“Seventeen-year-old Charnett Moffett is shocking in his
swing and his sound,” Stanley Crouch raved in the liner notes to
Marsalis’ now-classic Black Codes (From the Underground), “never
losing his place as [pianist Kenny] Kirkland and [drummer Jeff
‘Tain’] Watts reorder the accents and superimpose other time
signatures.” Moffett did hand over the reins to the legendary Ron
Carter on one track, but Marsalis thought enough of the young
bassist to include a bonus track duet of just trumpet and bass,
showcasing Moffett’s already-mature mastery.
His remarkable chops also won him a coveted spot in Art
Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. “That was an amazing academy that
allowed the artist to get seasoned and then move on,” Moffett
says. “There’s a great Art Blakey record, I can’t remember the name
of it, but he makes a speech — it was one of the live records with
[announcer] Pee Wee Marquette — and Art says, ‘When these guys
get too old, I’m gonna get some younger ones.’ It’s classic.”
And move on Charnett did, finding employment in bands led by
Stanley Jordan, Tony Williams and, later, McCoy Tyner, with whom
he played for more than six years — as well as with the all-star
Manhattan Jazz Quintet. He released his debut album as a leader,
1987’s Net Man, on Blue Note, featuring Jordan and Kirkland and
fellow heavyweights Michael Brecker, Mino Cinelu and Al Foster.
Charnett soaked it all in, particularly the knowledge imparted
to him from the disparate bandleaders for whom he worked. Their
methods and conceptions were not as different as one might
imagine. “No one person has the perfect formula,” he says. “The
jazziz fall 2013 101

only thing you can do is be honest with yourself. You know, it’s
still all a matter of taste at the end of the day, what appeals to
someone or what doesn’t appeal to someone. But certainly artists
like Buhaina [Blakey] and of course Ornette Coleman and McCoy
Tyner all have a common denominator. And the common denomi-
nator, really, is the love of the music and sharing the knowledge
in a way that elevates the artistic performance.”
Besides marking Charnett Moffett’s first-ever solo-bass record-
ing — a rarity in the jazz world and elsewhere — The Bridge
also serves as musical autobiography and curriculum vitae.
Moffett revisits songs from his lengthy history, recasting num-
bers that he performed with the Manhattan Jazz Quintet, Tony
Williams and Wynton Marsalis or that were inspired by heroes
such as Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman and Bobby McFerrin
(see sidebar). His lyrical, melodic touch and exquisite tone in
various registers keep the proceedings highly accessible, but he
hardly sacrifices emotional expression or technical brilliance.
Even listeners who generally retreat to the bar or restroom during
bass solos will find plenty to enjoy.
“That’s where producers come in,” Moffett says. “For the artist,
creatively, we’ll just keep on making music until we can’t make
anymore. We don’t really care about time in that capacity. But
when you’re making a product, and you have to be played on the
radio and you have to market it, you have to be conscious of it.
That’s why, on The Bridge, we actually kept all the pieces short.”
For her part, Herzen had no trepidation about releasing a solo-
102 fall 2013 jazziz
“No one can force
you to be
a musician. Either
you’re interested
in doing it or
you’re not. It’s a
full-time life
dedication.”
bass record — at least not one by Moffett. “I thought, for him, it
would be an excellent thing to do,” she says. “Because, for the type
of talent he is, this is where you can really hear it. And we’re al-
ways looking for a way, at the label, to showcase the artist, where
you can really hear the specialness of their talent. Do I think we’re
going to have a runaway radio success with a solo-bass CD? No,
but I have to say we’ve gotten terrific radio play, much more than
anybody thought. I think this is a repertoire that will be with him
for the rest of his life.”
On his other new Motéma release, Spirit of Sound, Moffett
did something else that comes naturally to him — he played
with family members. In addition to his wife, Angela Moffett,
who plucks a long-necked Asian lute, or tamboura, and delivers
potent spoken-word performances, the bassist also called on his
son Max, 20, to supply drums and tabla, and daughter, Amareia,
who just finished her freshman year at Marymount Manhattan
College, to lend vocal backing.
“It’s the next generation of a tradition that’s being kept based
on the love of the music,” Moffett says. “No one can force you to be
a musician. Either you’re interested in doing it or you’re not. It’s a
full-time life dedication. There’s no half-steppin’ about it. For me,
it’s been a full-time life. It’s the only life I’ve known.”
Moffett views the music on The Bridge and on Spirit of Sound as
two parts of a whole. In fact, the final song on the former, “Free
Your Mind,” serves as a prelude of sorts to the first song on the
latter, “Bassland.” Adding subtle electronic effects to his bowing on
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A View from the Bridge
On his solo-bass release The Bridge, Charnett Moffett
recontextualizes tunes he’s played throughout his
career. In addition to revisiting “Caravan” and “The Slump,”
numbers on which he was prominently featured with the
Manhattan Jazz Quintet and Tony Williams, respectively, he
also nods to major influences such as Jimmy Blanton, Paul
Chambers and Jaco Pastorius. Here, Moffett explains the
roots of a few selections from The Bridge.
s “Eleanor Rigby” — “That’s a song that I always loved from
my run with Stanley Jordan — he’s an amazing artist. So I
always had an interest to know what it would sound like in
a solo-bass capacity, playing that melody on the bass and
improvising from the melodic theme.”
s “Nature Boy” — “I’d always been a big Nat ‘King’ Cole fan.
I put ‘Mona Lisa’ on my first album, Net Man. And I always
wanted to get back and do something in that vein. It’s very
short — only 44 seconds. But the point was making the sound
of the melody from a bass perspective, as opposed to having
another lead instrument to express it as an idea.”
s “Oversun” — “During the time I did spend with Mr.
Pastorius, we used to talk about how the sound was in your
fingers and your hands. ‘Oversun’ has a melody counter-
bass piece that was influenced by my experience with Jaco.
There are sliding harmonics on that particular piece. I play
the melody. Then it’s accompanied by a supported bass
figure, like a call-and-response.”
s “Haitian Fight Song” — “I had a chance to meet Charles
Mingus in Berkeley, California, and perform for him. It was
quite an experience. Mr. Mingus made a comment about,
‘Yeah, yeah, keep playing!’ or something like that. He had such
a strong personality that I actually shied away from listening
to his music for a period of time. And as I got older, I began to
check out some of Mingus’ music so I could understand it. It’s
free yet structured. We came up in the Moffett family with the
concept of discipline with freedom — the discipline to have the
technique to share the idea, but the freedom to play free of the
form and to create a new form as you improvise.” —BW
104 fall 2013 jazziz
“Free Your Mind,” Moffett expands the sonic palette of the piece,
which he originally recorded on his 1994 album Planet Home. The
dazzling “Bassland,” also performed solo but pizzicato and sans
effects, echoes “Free Your Mind” in tone and technique, while also
serving as an introduction to the music on Spirit.
The opening track’s alluring Eastern inflections ring
throughout the album. Utilizing the complementary spices of
tamboura and tabla, and the Middle Eastern flavors provided by
reed player Oran Etkin, Moffett switches among upright acous-
tic, fretless electric and piccolo basses. The instrumental array
allows him a range of tonal possibilities, sometimes suggesting
oud or sitar, as on the tune “Swing Raga” and a saffron-scented
read of Ornette’s “Lonely Woman.”
While he’s certainly amenable to the notion that he’s soaked
up influences from his global rambles and the musicians he’s
encountered, Moffett dismisses categorizations of music as
“Eastern” or “Western.” “The whole point is that the notes are
each equal to their own space,” he says. “If you go up one whole
step, it can be Western, but if you go up a half step, it can be
Eastern. But that doesn’t mean you can’t go up a half step and
have a Western sound or go up a whole step and have it be an
Eastern sound. So, once you know that, you use the combination
of sounds any way you choose.”
Among his most recent international encounters, Moffett
witnessed — and took part in performances with — Gnawa
musicians at a festival in Morocco. The bassist had been invited
to perform with drummer Will Calhoun and pianist Marc
Cary on the last night of the event, which took place in June
and celebrated the indigenous Gnawa music of sub-Saharan
West Africa. During their performance, the trio welcomed a
maâlem, or master musician, onstage to play the signature
three-stringed lute known as the gibri or hajhuj. “It was quite a
triumph, actually,” says Herzen, who was in attendance. “The
audience went really crazy over it.”
Moffett regularly engenders such reactions with his open-
hearted approach and jaw-dropping virtuosity, particularly during
his solo-bass gigs. This spring, he promoted the release of The
Bridge with a series of unaccompanied performances in New York
City, and he anticipates booking a few solo gigs attendant to his
spot at the Monterey Jazz Festival in September, as well.
“I must say, I’m glad I’m a string player,” Moffett says,
looking back on the sum of his experiences. “What I love about
playing the bass is the overtones. And what I love about hearing
the drums is when you can hear the overtones in a drummer’s
playing, where you can hear the tone resonate. For me, that’s
a very warm and beautiful music quality. When you tune an
instrument and you tune a string, there are vibrations happen-
ing, which are based on touch. But that means there has to be
life in that touch that goes back to the spirit, yet there has to be
an intellectual thought process.
“It’s all connected, it’s all a lineage,” he continues. “If we
separate it too much, then we’ll lose our humanity. So it’s more
important to keep that element of love in all the things we do,
so that we can share the beautiful gift of life with each other.
That’s what music is.” s
 This story originally ran in the August 2013 online
edition of JAZZIZ magazine at www.jazziz.com.

106 fall 2013 jazziz

Moving
Right
Along
David Murray sets
his sights on a larger
audience and the neon
lights of Vegas.

By Shaun Brady
Photos by Rebecca Meek
The gig at New York City’s SubCulture Arts Underground in
mid-June was billed under David Murray’s name. It was the
veteran saxman’s Infinity Quartet that took the stage, and
material from his latest album, Be My Monster Love (Motéma),
that comprised most of the set. But after leading the band through
two tunes, Murray stepped to the microphone to self-effacingly
announce “the one you’ve been waiting for” — namely, Macy Gray.
The crowd’s raucous response to the eccentric-voiced singer,
best known for her 1999 pop hit “I Try,” argued in favor of Murray’s
modest assessment of his own relative stardom. As did Gray’s
outsized diva demeanor, as she towered at least a full head over the
rest of the band in a purple spangled dress, elbow-length gloves
and feather boa (at least at first — this was the rare jazz show that
featured three costume changes).
Murray’s slight ceding of the spotlight at this point in his
almost 40-year career is a calculated move. He credits the idea
for his collaboration with Gray as well as his last project, the
audience-friendly Plays Nat King Cole en Español, to his wife and
producer, Valerie Malot. “She’s trying to open me up to a wider
audience, and I’m going with it instead of being stuck in my tun-
nel vision,” Murray says.
“I could live on the East Side and go play at the Vision Festival
every year. I like those people, those are my friends, I was part of
the creation and the evolvement of all that, but that’s not what I
want to do anymore. If you want to know the truth, I would like
to play in Las Vegas with Macy and my big band. I’m 58 years old,
man. It’s time to move on with my life.”

With its vocal tracks featuring Gray and rising star Gregory
Porter, Be My Monster Love may represent a bid for greater pop-
ularity, but it could hardly be termed a sell-out. For one, Murray
surrounds himself with a stellar quartet featuring pianist Marc
Cary, bassist Jaribu Shahid and drummer Nasheet Waits. For
another, his playing is as rock-solid and venturesome as ever, mar-
“If you want to know the
rying as he always has the burly tenor rumble of a Ben Webster or truth, I would like to play
a Coleman Hawkins with the tightrope-walking sound of the ’70s
avant-garde loft scene, in which Murray played a key role. in Las Vegas with Macy
“I’m not playing any different,” Murray insists. “I’m getting bet-
ter, but you’ll still hear all those elements. I’m just not going to bore
and my big band. I’m 58
you with all of my extended this and that; I’m not going to play a years old, man. It’s time to
45-minute solo anymore — although I could.”
In addition, while Gray may be more of a household name move on with my life.”
than Murray, she’s still a curious star to hitch one’s wagon to. Her
off-kilter, raspy purr has always been an acquired taste, while
her career has followed a rather erratic path, from forgetting the
lyrics to the national anthem at a football game to covering Stevie arrangements that step all over each other but still make sense,”
Wonder’s Talking Book in its entirety. As Murray observes, “Macy is she says. “It’s exciting. So I asked him to do an arrangement on
a cult figure. She’s not Madonna or Beyoncé. She doesn’t have that one of my own songs.”
kind of notoriety, but she’s got her own fans all over the world. I’m The result was “Love Lockdown/Buck,” a mash-up of songs
just happy that she’s come over to our side.” by Kanye West and Nina Simone that appeared on Gray’s 2012
Murray met Gray while both were touring with “Questlove’s covers album, Covered. That same year, Gray began performing
Afro-Picks,” an eclectic tribute to African musical history with Murray’s big band, followed by a tour this summer with his
formed by The Roots’ drummer in 2011. Gray says she instantly newly formed Infinity Quartet. The singer, who cites jazz influ-
recognized a kindred spirit. “I noticed he had these really wild ences ranging from Simone and Nancy Wilson to Frank Sinatra

108 fall 2013 jazziz

and Michael Franks, says that she appreciates Murray’s restraint
in comparison to what she sees as other jazz players’ indulgent
soloing. “He loves playing horn,” she says, “but he has a really
great sense of melody, so he’s not always just jacking off on the
horn playing scales and boring everybody.”
Speaking of Gray, Murray says, “To me, Macy is the woman of
the moment. She’s my kind of girl. She’s down, she’s rough and
she’s got a voice that nobody else has. As far as I’m concerned,
she’s a 21st-century avatar diva.”
The lyrics for Be My Monster Love were contributed by writer
Ishmael Reed and by Abiodun Oyewole, a founding member
of The Last Poets. More unusually, the CD booklet features a
short story inspired by the title track, written by British crime
novelist Robert Wilson. Murray met Wilson in Portugal, where the
writer lives and where Murray has a house in a small fishing vil-
lage on the Atlantic where he stays when not in Paris and where
he and his family have lived for the past 17 years.
The album is far from the first time the prolific saxophonist has
jazziz fall 2013 109

Macy’s Music
In addition to “A Dangerous Kind
of Love,” the short story printed
in lieu of liner notes inside Be My
Monster Love, author Robert Wilson
also tried his hand at songwriting for
the first time at David Murray’s behest.
The result didn’t make the album,
however; it was one of two songs that
Macy Gray rejected of the five that
Murray presented her.
“Every song ain’t for Macy,” Murray
says. “And she’ll let you know right
away. She’s not the kind of person who
can sing something that’s not true to
her. She’s very gracious, though. What
she always says is, ‘It’d be better if
y’all did that instrumental.’”
When considering lyrics, Gray
says, “I just look for songs I can relate
to, songs that mean something to me
when I sing them and I can translate
honestly.”
In addition to the title song on Be
My Monster Love, Gray’s repertoire
with the quartet includes two of her
songs — “Relating To a Psychopath”
and her 1999 hit “I Try — as well as
Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up,” which she
recorded on 2012’s Covered; “Green
Satin Dress” and “Red Car,” two
songs by Lawrence “Butch” Morris
for which Murray penned lyrics af-
ter his longtime friend and collabo-
rator passed away in January; a new
Murray composition, “Naturally”;
and “Army of the Faithful,” a
song which Murray previously
recorded as an instrumental called
“Missionary” and which Gregory
Porter sings on the album.
As for Wilson’s song, Murray says
that he’s glad Gray passed. “His song
is about a woman boo-hooing about
losing a man. Perhaps I’ll give that
song to another female who could
sing about losing a guy, but Macy
ain’t gonna sing that kind of shit. That
would have been an embarrassment.
She ain’t gonna sing nothing out of
her mouth that she don’t feel.” —SB
110 fall 2013 jazziz
worked with vocalists or with lyrics. He’s re-
corded in the past with the likes of Fontella
Bass and Cassandra Wilson, written two
operas, and arranged an album’s worth of
Grateful Dead songs. “I’ve written many dif-
ferent kinds of songs,” he says. “I work out of
the song form even in my quartet. I can tell
players that actually know and appreciate
the song form. Ishmael Reed told me that
you can tell if writers can rhyme even when
they write prose. It’s the same in music; you
can tell if guys are comfortable with the
song form even if they’re playing totally
avant-garde. I have it in my back pocket
because I grew up with music.”
Catherine Murray was the musical
director, pianist and organist for the Church
of God in Christ in Berkeley, California,
and was her son’s first music instructor.
David went on to attend Pomona College in
Southern California, where he would study
with trumpeter Bobby Bradford (who makes
a guest appearance on Be My Monster Love),
saxophonist Arthur Blythe and writer/critic
Stanley Crouch. “I wanted to be a writer,”
Murray recalls. “That’s why I wanted to
go to Pomona College and be a student of
Stanley Crouch. When I was in high school
I had done my English class thesis on his
book of poetry called Ain’t No Ambulances
For No Nigguhs Tonight. When I showed it
to Stanley, he took it, marked it up, threw it
on the floor and said, ‘Man, stick with the
fucking saxophone. You ain’t no writer.’ So
that was the end of my writing career.”
The name of Murray’s Infinity Quartet
immediately calls to mind Studio Infinity,
the loft that he and Crouch operated after
arriving in New York City in 1975. But Murray
says that the name reaches even further
back, to Crouch’s group Black Music Infinity,
founded while both were still on the West
Coast. “It gives me a chance to talk about our
history,” Murray says of the name. “The his-
tory of me and the history of our movement
from California. I asked Stanley if I could use
the name because I thought it was impor-
tant, and he agreed that it was important
because it would spur conversation.”
The year after he moved east, Murray
founded what would become his most
long-lived band in a career that has seen
him constantly working in new situa-
tions on more than 150 recordings. The
World Saxophone Quartet placed Murray
alongside three members of St. Louis’ Black
Artists’ Group: Oliver Lake, Hamiet Bluiett
and Julius Hemphill (who passed away
in 1995 and has since been replaced by a
number of other saxophonists, most notably
James Carter).
“They’re like my uncles,” Murray says.
“They’re a little bit older than me, so I’ve
always treated them like uncles, not like
brothers, because I have respect for their
eldership. We’re all leaders, so there’s a lot of
heavy personalities. We love each other, but
we may not be able to take each other but in
spurts. I think that’s just a sign of maturity.
Everybody’s got their own career to pursue
and is very creative in their own right. I
have the utmost respect for them.”
As for whether the quartet will play
together again in the near future, Murray
simply shrugs. “Maybe the next time we
get together it’ll be at one of our memorials,
because we’re very close to 40 years. Every
few years somebody comes up with a big
gig, and we get together and sound great.
Meanwhile we’re all going on with our
careers, so it’s just a matter of somebody
wanting to see us again and putting the
financial commitment down. The three of
us are all alive and kicking.”
While Be My Monster Love is Murray’s
first quartet recording since 2007’s Sacred
Ground and the first with this new unit
(which has since changed again, Cary be-
ing replaced by pianist/organist Thornton
Hudson Jr.), the saxophonist says that it’s
not exactly a return to the quartet format.
“The quartet is my vehicle. Everything
revolves around that. If I’m not recording
with my quartet, we’re still on the road.”
Of the members in the current group,
Jaribu Shahid has been in Murray’s orbit
the longest. Neither man can say exactly
how long they’ve been working together,
though 15 years seems to be a fair estimate.
Murray calls the bassist “my confidante in
this group. He’s good at hearing, he knows
as much about sound as all these sound
men that we encounter, and his personal-
ity is so intellectual, he’s able to speak to
people on whatever level. So he helps me
in a lot of ways, not just playing the bass. I
always say that he’s my number one guy in
this band and one of my best friends.”
 “What I like about playing with David is
he’s not afraid to logically take the music out
there,” Shahid says. “There are good players
who play in, there are good players who
play out, but to me the interesting shit is in
between. To me, after Dolphy, David’s the cat.”
As for Nasheet Waits, Murray simply says,
“I got him because he’s the best.” While the
drummer has only been playing with the
quartet for the past year, Murray knew his fa-
ther, the late drummer Freddie Waits. The two
worked together when the World Saxophone
Quartet played with M’Boom in the early
1980s, when the elder Waits was a member of
the Max Roach-led percussion ensemble.
“I’ve been aware of [Murray’s] presence
since I was a child,” Waits says. “His artistry
has one foot in the past and tradition and
another foot going forward. It’s rare in im-
provised music, or any music for that matter,
to find someone who can really tell a story
every time they have their axe in hand, but
he’s definitely one of those people.”
The newest member of the quartet is
32-year-old Thornton Hudson, Jr., whose
father was a doo-wop singer who penned
the classic song “Goodnight, Sweetheart,
Goodnight.” He met Murray through the
saxophonist’s childhood friend, Dr. C.
Anthony Bush, an economist with the
FCC who also plays drums in the same
Washington D.C. church where Hudson
regularly performs. Murray initially enlisted
him to play for his opera “The Sisyphus
Revue,” co-written with Amiri Baraka. When
it became clear that Marc Cary’s schedule
wouldn’t allow him to continue with the
quartet, Murray called on Hudson, who was
touring at the time with Dr. John.
“I was shocked,” Hudson recalls. “David
Murray is an idol. He’s such a huge influ-
ence in the jazz world and even outside of
the jazz world, so for him to call me and
say ‘I need you’ was like a heart attack.
I thought, ‘He must have been drinking
three bottles of that French wine.’ But he
was serious, and I’m living a dream.”
The closest Murray has yet come to his
goal of playing Vegas came when he
performed the music of Nat King Cole en
Español at the Salle Pleyel in Paris with
legendary Cuban singer Omara Portuondo
of Buena Vista Social Club fame. It was the
most populist engagement of a populist-
minded project, inspired when Murray was
recording at Havana’s Egrem Studios several
years ago and spotted a picture of Cole
hanging on the wall. He decided to delve
into Cole’s two obscure Spanish-language
recordings, parts of which had been re-
corded at the studio before being disrupted
by the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
“Nat ‘King’ Cole represented something
for me,” Murray says. “He had his own TV
show, and it was one of the first times I had
seen a black man on TV looking dapper and
singing as smooth as milk. He was one of
those figures who people worshiped and
championed. He was a positive image.”
While that project was Murray’s main
focus for more than two years, it’s now be-
ing eclipsed by the Infinity Quartet and his
collaborations with Macy Gray. The music is
ready to be revived, however, anytime that
Vegas, or anyone with the appropriately
sized checkbook, should come calling. “I
have different bags,” Murray says. “I’ve got
a bag for the quartet, a bag for the big band,
a bag for my string project, a bag for the Nat
‘King’ Cole project. They’re all stacked up.
I grab a bag and go out of town. Shifting
music like that keeps me awake and alert.”
With projects in the last five years
alone ranging from opera to big band to a
tribute to the Black Panthers to touring with
Guadeloupe’s Gwo Ka Masters, Murray should
be alert enough to give up caffeine for the
foreseeable future. And even if this latest ef-
fort is not the one to land him on that neon-lit
strip in the desert, his tireless creativity won’t
allow him to rest until it happens. s
jazziz fall 2013 111
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 Auditions

Woman-child
in the
promised land
Cécile McLorin Salvant knows what time it is now.
By Jon Garelick

114 fall 2013 jazziz

How big a deal is Cécile McLorin Salvant right now? The
24-year-old winner of the 2010 Thelonious Monk International
Jazz Vocals Competition was signing autographs for her new
CD, WomanChild, after a gig in San Francisco when she found
herself looking into a familiar face that she couldn’t quite place.
Could it be? Yes, it was Metropolitan Opera diva Natalie Dessay. “I
looked into those big eyes and said, ‘No! No!’ And she looked back
and said, ‘Yes! Yes!’”
It’s not surprising that McLorin Salvant and the French-born
Dessay might cross paths. Raised in Miami, the daughter of a
French-Guadeloupian mother and a Haitian father, McLorin
Salvant studied classical vocal technique at the Conservatoire
Darius Milhaud in Aix-en-Provence, France. But there she also fell
under the tutelage of the the school’s jazz teacher, saxophonist
and clarinetist Jean-François Bonnel. The instructor inundated her
with a wide range of vocal styles, from folk, blues and vaudeville
to modernists like Sarah Vaughan, Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter.
And the student delved even deeper.
Those roots are reflected in the broad range of material on
WomanChild. McClorin Salvant interprets everything from Bessie
Smith’s “St. Louis Gal” and the pre-jazz song associated with African-
American vaudevillian Bert Williams, “Nobody,” to the early-20th
century worksong “John Henry” and the more common jazz standard
“I Didn’t Know What Time It Was.”
“I listened to a whole lot of music for possible repertoire,”
McLorin Salvant says. “What ends up happening is that I hear a
song that’s unusual in lyrical content or music or both, and that’s
what grabs me. I like to choose repertoire that’s maybe a little
bit different. I try to incorporate humor and irony into what I’m
doing. And at the same time, it’s very serious. It takes a long time
for me to pick songs, because I want something with a little meat,
something I can chew on and play with, a song that has different
ways that it can be sung.”
That explains in part her choice of “You Bring Out the Savage in
Me,” a piece originally recorded by Valaida Snow in 1935 that pro-
moted racial stereotypes. “It’s such a layered song,” says McLorin
Salvant. “There’s so much going on, on so many different levels. It’s
racist and funny and sexual, and it makes me think about a lot of
things about today and how people react to that kind of politically
incorrect message.”
The singer says that her version of the jazz standard “What a Little
Moonlight Can Do” was not inspired by Billie Holiday’s iconic record-
ing, but by Betty Carter’s interpretation — “how she made it explode!”
As a kid growing up in Miami, McLorin Salvant was used to
hearing her mother’s collection of records by classic jazz singers at the
same time she was listening to pop, hip-hop, R&B and rock. One jazz
singer who hooked her was Vaughan. “She was so impressive to me
vocally that it wasn’t really the fact that it was jazz or not jazz. It was
the voice, and the endless possibilities she had with that voice.”
McLorin Salvant’s own extraordinary voice and interpretive
powers have been knocking out contest judges, critics and Natalie
Dessay. It’s a voice fully informed by tradition, but also individual
and new. Jazz, she says, is “a sacred legacy that we’re trying to keep
alive and, at the same time, change its nature a little bit and make it
our own. I’m trying to do that, but it’s hard!” s
Photo by John Abbott
Cécile McLorin Salvant
WomanChild
(Mack Avenue)
As you listen to Cécile McLorin Salvant’s luxuriant
voice and cultured technique, the legendary names
start flitting through your head: Sarah, Abbey, even
Billie. McLorin Salvant’s pipes and technique are so
secure that you never worry that she’s going to run
out of voice; no matter how big the sound, it seems
like she always has more to spare.
The 12 tracks on her Mack Avenue debut are incisive
arrangements of a wide variety of standards, origi-
nals, blues and folk songs. Those arrangements and
her interpretations mark McLorin Salvant’s identity as
unique. So, whereas Billie Holiday took the throwaway
song-plugger’s ditty “What a Little Moonlight Can Do”
and undercut its sentimentality with swing, McLorin
Salvant turns it into a bravura display of rhythm and
range, beginning with a free-tempo introduction by
singer and band, culminating in a lickety-split run of
syllables up to a soaring high note, a là Betty Carter.
McLorin Salvant’s intelligence matches her
chops, so her wide variety of sounds always serves
the song. Those sounds include a cavernous low
register that recalls Vaughan, especially when she
unwinds her vibrato on a long vowel. There’s wit as
well as fierceness in her un-ironic take on the ’30s
rarity “You Bring Out the Savage in Me” and a know-
ing little-girl purr in her response to the title of “I
Didn’t Know What Time It Was.” And she declaims
the original title track, with its post-Coltrane modal
surge, like one of Abbey Lincoln’s great affirmations.
She’s abetted by a terrific band that features
pianist Aaron Diehl, bassist Rodney Whitaker and
drummer Herlin Riley. And in a pair of duets, guitar-
ist/banjoist James Chirillo helps McLorin Salvant
conjure old blues and, yes, a bit of Bessie Smith. But
McLorin Salvant is no mere collection of well-learned
effects. She’s used everything she’s learned to make
something new. —Jon Garelick
jazziz fall 2013 115
BWB
Human Nature
(Heads Up)
The popularity of trumpeter Rick Braun,
saxophonist Kirk
Whalum and
guitarist Norman
Brown as solo artists
had impeded their
reunion as urban-
jazz supergroup BWB
— until now. The
team, which spawned a hit album in 2002,
emerged when all were signed to Warner
Jazz. While they covered a range of soul clas-
sics on their first recording, the new Human
Nature includes bright, clever arrangements
of a single R&B icon — Michael Jackson.
The 11-track set takes an expansive look
at MJ’s recording career, from Jackson 5
singles to era-defining hits on Thriller, Off
the Wall and Bad. BWB unleashes horn-
drenched R&B/funk on “Another Part of
Me” and “The Way You Make Me Feel,”
and delve into improv-heavy light bop on
“Billie Jean,” during which Brown engages
in some signature scat singing. They inject
116 fall 2013 jazziz
high-energy Latin jazz into “Shake Your
Body Down to the Ground” and introduce
a touch of ska with their imaginative
take on “Beat It.” Braun’s arrangement
interprets the latter as if it were covered
by The Police, with ample room for his
muted trumpet, Whalum’s punchy sax
and Brown’s nimble strings.
Whalum brings the spirit of Memphis
soul and blues to the Smokey Robinson-
penned “Who’s Lovin’ You.” Truly the
emotional centerpiece of the album, it il-
luminates an overlooked catalog gem. While
BWB’s elegant read of the title track isn’t
particularly imaginative, it does contain a
dreamy Braun flugelhorn solo and provides
a fine showcase for the dynamic range of
guest vocalist Sheléa.
With good reason, listeners will focus on
BWB’s song selections, arrangements, solo
spots and high-octane interactions. They
should also note the cohesive flow of moods
and grooves maintained by co-producer and
keyboardist John Stoddart, gospel organist
Ralph Lofton and Whalum’s regular rhythm
section of bassist Braylon Lacey and drum-
mer Khari Parker. — Jonathan Widran
Christian McBride & Inside Straight
People Music
(Mack Avenue)
On the heels of his Grammy-winning,
2011 big-band CD
The Good Feeling,
Christian McBride
returns to small-
ensemble interaction
with his Inside
Straight quintet.
People Music is the
second album from the veteran bassist
and his vibes-fueled band, who toured for
a couple of years behind the popularity of
2009’s Kind of Brown.
 The affable McBride has never ap-
proached the biting social commentary
of say, Charles Mingus. But he does take a
substance-over-style stand with his open-
ing composition “Listen to the Heroes Cry.”
Written in response to the shallow perfor-
mances he’d witnessed on a music-awards
show, it resembles a modern spiritual
through alto saxophonist Steve Wilson’s
melodic contributions and the heady solos
of McBride and pianist Christian Sands. The
Photo by Lori Stoll
bassist’s closing “New Hope’s Angel” is an
ode to R&B singer Whitney Houston that
breathes through Warren Wolf’s vibraphone
and Wilson’s soprano sax. Meanwhile,
McBride’s “The Movement Revisited” honors
civil-rights pioneers Rosa Parks, Malcolm X,
Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King Jr.,
its propulsive pace expertly set by veteran
drummer Carl Allen.
Additionally, Wilson pays homage to
poet Maya Angelou with his ballad “Ms.
Angelou.” Yet People Music is by no means
heavy or depressing. McBride’s buoyant “Fair
Hope Theme” befits its title, and Wolf’s “Gang
Gang” is at once playful and surging while
switching between 12/8 and 4/4 time. The
democratic bandleader also features a compo-
sition by each of Inside Straight’s alternating
pianists. Sands’ buoyant “Dream Train” shim-
mers, and Peter Martin’s “Unusual Suspects”
showcases a spacious arrangement and a
darkly funky tempo. All of this supports
McBride’s standing as a modern-jazz bassist
of and for the people. — Bill Meredith
Rich Halley Four
Crossing the Passes
(Pine Eagle)
Saxophonist Rich Halley’s Crossing the Passes
superbly balances
cerebral songcraft
with visceral expres-
sion. Halley demon-
strates his signature
cutting tone and a
bold improvisational
style on pieces such
as “Traversing the Maze,” his raw, passion-
ate tenor building intricate ad-lib poet-
ry. Mystical and often somber, the track also
features Michael Vlatkovich’s free-flowing,
growling trombone solo against rumbling
vamps provided by bassist Clyde Reed and
drummer Carson Halley, the leader’s son.
An introspective yet dramatic ambience
permeates the album. One of four tracks
credited to all four members, “Journey
Across the Land” spotlights sublime group
extemporization. Stylistic references to more
“conventional” genres lend spice to unfettered
flights of spontaneity. Reed’s bowed melan-
choly drone, together with the wind instru-
ments’ dark and stately refrain, contrast with
Carson’s bright, ebullient cymbal crashes, thus
creating a delightfully cinematic atmosphere.
A sophisticated expressionism elicits
an edge throughout, but stops short of
full-blown atonality. Imbued with a
baroque cello tone, Reed’s arco bass opens
“Smooth Curve of the Bow,” an enthralling
Halley original. Carson’s frenzied, thunder-
ous drums burst forth in exhilarating
polyrhythms infused with a funky groove.
Meanwhile, Vlatkovich ‘s soulful horn roars
and wails, and Halley’s honking sax echoes
big-toned tenors of the past. Their thrilling
duet becomes a deconstructed hard-bop
tune. And their gripping exchange with the
agile Reed concludes the track in electrify-
ing yet controlled cacophony.
As this elegant, accomplished recording
makes plain, a contemplative wisdom fuels
Halley’s art, enhancing his intellectual edge
without tempering his fiery zeal. The result
is a provocative yet exquisitely melodic
work that marks a high point in his consis-
tently splendid oeuvre. — Hrayr Attarian
Terence Blanchard
Magnetic
(Blue Note)
Terence Blanchard has built his impressive
career in an uncommonly low-key manner,
allowing his work to
speak for itself. He’s a
generous bandleader
in the tradition of his
mentor, Art Blakey.
And, on Magnetic,
he humbly features
the performing and
compositional skills of his bandmates and
the talents of several noteworthy guests
rather than insisting on the spotlight.
Not that Blanchard seems like a side-
man on his own recording. His trumpet is
unquestionably the lead instrument here,
and he wields it with aplomb. On the title
track, for instance, his midpoint solo has the
widescreen appeal of his justly lauded film-
soundtrack work. He nods to past masters
on “Central Focus,” all the while claiming
his place among them. And he brings bassist
Joseph Crumbly’s composition, “Jacob’s
Ladder,” to a stirring climax via a series of pas-
sages that are as heartfelt as they are precise.
Blanchard also makes room for drummer
Kendrick Scott’s adventurous, percussion-
heavy “No Borders Just Horizons” and
tenor saxophonist Brice Winston’s post-bop
workout “Time to Spare.” Additionally, he
incorporates three numbers by pianist
Fabian Almazan — the alternately stately
and frantic “Pet Step Sitter’s Theme Song,” a
reprise dubbed “Another Step,” and “Comet,”
an enveloping keyboard excursion on which
Blanchard doesn’t even perform.
Likewise, the trumpeter steps back on his
own “Don’t Run,” so he can better admire the
interplay between bass legend Ron Carter
and saxophone virtuoso Ravi Coltrane. And
he gives the floor to gifted guitarist Lionel
Loueke on several tracks, including the
beguilingly moody “Hallucinations.”
Blanchard’s confidence as an artist is
amplified by his willingness to surrender
so much space to his colleagues. This
album’s intelligence and verve flow from
Blanchard, even when he’s not front and
center. — Michael Roberts
Gilad Hekselman
This Just In
(Jazz Village/Harmonia Mundi)
The cheeky conceptual packaging of guitar-
ist Hekselman’s
This Just In is a
risky gambit. An
old-school War of
the Worlds approach
— complete with
headline-ready song
titles and interstitial
segments meant to function like musical
stings in news broadcasts — might cause
some listeners to dismiss the offering as
a gimmick. And yet, Hekselman crafts
some beguiling music that transcends the
somewhat hokey theme.
Main compositions share space with
sonic snippets dubbed “Newsflash” and
numbered one through five. But only the
first and the fourth, a pair of NPR-ready
mini-ditties, function in the manner
intended. In fact, the explosive stage-setter
“Newsflash #5” raises listeners’ expecta-
tions only to end after 44 seconds.
Fortunately, most of the other tunes are
allowed to reach their potential. The opener,
“Above,” begins quietly, with Hekselman
gently plucking around the theme, while
the rhythms of bassist Joe Martin and
drummer Marcus Gilmore intuitively
rise, fall and flow. Even better is the title
track, a swirling miasma that benefits
jazziz fall 2013 117
immeasurably from contributions by
saxophonist Mark Turner, whose solo clearly
gooses the leader. Thick, rich and aggres-
sive, Hekselman’s tone is controlled and
linear in what’s arguably the album’s most
impressive turn. But it’s hardly his only
notable performance. Also memorable are
the colorful flourishes heard on “Nothing
Personal” and the lyricism marking “Eye in
the Sky,” an Alan Parsons Project cover. The
latter may have been chosen because of its
concept-appropriate handle. Nonetheless, it
earns a place of privilege due to the players’
thoughtful reimagining.
At its best, This Just In proves Hekselman
and company don’t need contrivances to
make newsworthy music. — Michael Roberts
Jerry Bergonzi
By Any Other Name
(Savant)
Taking chord changes from one song and
inserting a newly
written theme as
the melody has been
common practice
in jazz from at least
the 1920s. A large
percentage of the
“originals” from the
bebop era used modernized chord changes
from swing standards with melodies that
cleverly disguised the source.
Jerry Bergonzi, a powerful tenor saxo-
phonist and an influential educator, has
long enjoyed creating new themes over fa-
miliar chord structures. By Any Other Name
features his quartet — with trumpeter Phil
Grenadier, bassist Will Slater and drummer
Karen Kocharyan — digging into eight of
his original lines. The liner notes make no
secret about which song each tune is based
on, but veteran jazz listeners will have
fun trying to identify the original. “Giant
Steps,” “Bye Bye Blackbird” (renamed “Of a
Feather”), “Lady Bird” (now “First Lady”) and
a well-disguised “How Deep is the Ocean?”
(“Deek”) are among the standards that
benefit from these modernizations.
Despite the potential novelty, there’s
nothing gimmicky about this CD. Bergonzi
(who adds some piano on “Deek”) and his
musicians play his complex melodies flaw-
lessly, and romp through the chord changes
with colorful solos and spirited ensemble
118 fall 2013 jazziz
interaction. Bergonzi, a major post-bop styl-
ist, has been celebrated since his days with
the Dave Brubeck Quartet during the 1970s.
And the Slater-Kocharayan rhythm section
remains tight, alert and swinging. Still,
trumpeter Grenadier sometimes steals the
spotlight. His playing is consistently inven-
tive, his sound is attractive, and he comes
up with a continual flow of fresh ideas. Also
quite impressive — these fine performances
are all first takes. By Any Other Name is a
success on all levels. — Scott Yanow     Two,” while sassy singer Roberta Donnay
 
Amos Garrett Jazz Trio
Jazzblues
(Stony Plain)
A sublime effortlessness pervades Jazzblues,
the debut jazz release
from veteran roots
guitarist Amos
Garrett, whose trio
includes fellow
guitarist Keith Smith
and bassist Greg
Carroll. The group’s
motto is “Bringing the blues back to jazz,”
and this live album achieves that goal. The
music swings with subtle elegance while
delivering plenty of old-school bebop.
Best-known as a bluesman, the 71-year-
old Garrett has long been a gifted session
guitarist who’s occasionally flashed some
jazz chops. His legendary solo on Maria
Muldaur’s 1974 hit “Midnight at the Oasis” is
certainly jazzy. Still, he displays a surprising
fluency in the jazz idiom here, as he tackles
straightahead standards recorded at various
venues in Canada, where the Detroit-born
Garrett has resided since childhood.
Garrett claims he’s always been a jazz
musician first and foremost, despite having
served as a sideman to more than 150 artists
in multiple genres and spending the past
few decades fronting his Alberta-based
blues band, the Eh Team. The selections
on Jazzblues — including mellow covers
of tunes by Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk,
Calgary pianist Bob Erlendson and others —
lend credence to his assertion.
A drummerless trio with two fingerstyle
electric guitarists is rare, and Garrett and
Smith prove highly distinctive instrumen-
talists. An apt analogy might be Freddie
King playing alongside Lenny Breau,
although Garrett has more affinity for jazz
than King did. Bill Frisell also comes to
mind when hearing the twang and sustain
in Garrett’s lines, which interweave beauti-
fully with Smith’s chordal tapestries and
Carroll’s string bass.
“Misterioso” and “All Blues” are high-
lights, while the treatment of Freddie
Hubbard’s “Little Sunflower” is particularly
deft, even inspiring Garrett to exclaim at the
finish, “That’s the shit right there!” Garrett
adds his baritone vocals to “Cocktails for
takes the mic on “Skylark.” Still, the instru-
mentals carry this album, and as covers go,
they are lyrical works of art. — Ed Kopp
Nicolas Bearde
Visions
(Right Groove)
Vocalist Nicolas Bearde straddles the line
between classic jazz
and old-school R&B.
Both his delivery
and his penchant
for mixing and
matching styles
call to mind the
alternately elegant
and jaunty performances of Lou Rawls.
The disc opens with Bearde’s “Falling
in Love Again.” An energetic horn section
joyfully blasts out on the chorus, with Bearde
easily matching their intensity. He also earns
bonus points for clever wordplay, such as
“Spring has sprung, and I’m done, falling
in love again.” Quickly changing gears, the
singer downshifts into Jon Lucien’s samba
“You’re Sensational.” Complete with strings
and backing vocals, the breezy number goes
down as smooth as a frozen cocktail on a
Bahia beach. A subsequent about-face reveals
Bearde and company dipping into a bluesy
read of the Erroll Garner evergreen “Misty.”
David K. Mathews’ B-3 provides counterpoint
to Bearde’s gutsy baritone, and the singer even
provides some of Garner’s trademark grunts.
Bearde takes “The Best Things in Life are
Free” at a gallop and forcefully declaims the
still timely lyric to Eddie Harris’ “Compared
to What.” He also renders a fiery version
of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Mighty Mighty”
(memorably performed by Doug and
Jean Carne back in the day.) But as many
pleasure as these tracks yield, Bearde truly
shines on the ballads. “Everything Must
 Roundup Etienne Charles

What’s New Under the Sun

Recent jazz releases find inspiration in
the tropics.
By Mark Holston

The lasting imprint of European colonizers, mixed with African,

indigenous and myriad global influences, makes the Caribbean
an endlessly fascinating corner of the world. As this quintet of releases
attests, musicians from the region — as well as others who view it
from afar — find much in its traditions to stimulate their creativity.
Extracts of a Desire, the self-produced recording by alto saxophon-
ist, composer and arranger Jonathan Suazo, once again reveals
Puerto Rico as a font of creative musicianship. The nine-track date is
technically accomplished, thematically daring and structurally com-
plex. Performances range from rhythmically dense, energy-packed
works like “Pace of Life” to the placid and introspective “Forgive Me.”
Working with a basic quintet — impressive guitarist Gabriel Vicéns
is the other primary soloist — and featuring guests such as percus-
sion ace Paoli Mejías, Suazo delivers a truly impressive debut disc.
Suazo’s session was co-produced by celebrated alto saxophonist
and composer Miguel Zenón, who offers his own stirred-up take
on the jazz-Latin hybrid on Oye!!! Live in Puerto Rico (Miel Music).
Accompanied by the Rhythm Collective, a group of boricua musicians
with whom he toured West Africa a decade ago, Zenón finds liberation
in a band that features no instrument to lay down harmony-defining that dealt this impoverished country yet another deadly setback.
chords. The trap drummer, percussionist, electric bassist and saxo- “In the Hot Sun” casts a happy, pre-quake tone via a calypso-type
phonist are particularly potent when they create urgent, interlocking work that features the group’s talented saxophonist, Stacy Dillard.
riffs that give new personalities to tunes like Tito Puente’s “Oye Como The next two tracks, “Earthquake” and “Voices in the Rubble,” cap-
Va.” Zenón’s fluency on his instrument mesmerizes, as does his ability ture the agony of the moment through means available to a small
to fashion haunting narratives seemingly out of thin air. ensemble — the crashing of Ismael Lawal’s drums and cymbals for
On What’s Up? (OKeh), his second solo recording in a three- the horrific event itself, followed by sparse, mournful cries from
decade-long career, Dominican pianist Michel Camilo delivers the sax. “Haitian Lament” becomes a celebration of life with the
an A-to-Z survey of the jazz, Latin and classical styles that he’s earmarks of ‘60s soul jazz, with the leader’s comping and soloing
assimilated. With his customarily high quotient of verve, warmth echoing influences such as Wes Montgomery and Grant Green.
and technical bravado, Camilo has fun with the elemental boogie- Trinidad-born trumpeter and composer Etienne Charles and
and-blues vibe of the title tune. His classical side comes forth on his group crystallize a kind of pan-Caribbean sound that draws
“Sandra’s Serenade,” an homage to his wife that unfolds dynami- its stylistic focus from the area’s English-speaking islands on
cally like a flower awakening to the warm kiss of the morning’s Creole Soul (Culture Shock). With Fender Rhodes, electric guitar
tropical sun. The piquant rhythms and melodic lyricism of “Island and tenor and alto saxophones strongly shaping the group’s
Beat” capture the pianist’s unconventional take on the region’s sonic identity, Charles and company easily transform calypso,
synthesis of African-grounded traditions and jazz. reggae and other regional idioms into a pleasing blend of jazz
From neighboring Haiti comes inspiration for the unusual and funk. The rhythmic formula coupled with Charles’ big tone
Photo by Laurel Ferreira

concept album First Black Nation (MLS Music), by guitarist and and fluid articulations are an effective combination. And his
composer Michael-Louis Smith and his quintet. The overarching reading of Thelonious Monk’s “Green Chimneys” confirms the
narrative that links the session’s 10 tracks is the 2010 earthquake trumpeter’s growing reputation as a first-rate soloist. s
Change” and “(And) It All Goes ‘Round and
‘Round” are particularly noteworthy, each
benefiting from Bill Ortiz’s muted trumpet.
The singer’s heartfelt reading of Stevie
Wonder’s plaintive plea for understanding,
“Visions,” closes the disc. The title track’s
acoustic guitars and electric piano provide
the perfect backing for Bearde’s quietly
impassioned delivery. — Ross Boissoneau

Preservation Hall Jazz Band

That’s It!
(Legacy)
Hot 8 Brass Band
Tombstone
(Tru Thoughts)
When one thinks of the Preservation Hall Jazz
Band, the image of
ancient New Orleans
musicians playing
“When the Saints Go
Marching In” comes
to mind. That was an
accurate portrayal of
the group during the
1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
But with the passing
of the original players
and of founder and
tuba player Allan
Jaffe, the group has Preservation Hall Jazz Band
evolved. Under the
direction of Jaffe’s son Ben (who also plays
tuba), Preservation Hall recently celebrated its this is not your grandfather’s Preservation vocal shouting — are often wild. Ironically,
50th anniversary. The band’s personnel have Hall Jazz Band. Tombstone will likely leave listeners eager
inevitably become much younger. Jaffe has One wouldn’t blame the members of Hot to hear this band live. — Scott Yanow
opened up the group’s repertoire, and their 8 Brass Band — one of the top modern brass
style has expanded while retaining its roots bands based in New Orleans — if their The Swallow Quintet
in traditional New Orleans jazz. recent release, Tombstone, were downbeat. Into the Woodwork
That’s It! is unprecedented in the group’s Four of the group’s original members have (ECM)
discography — all 11 selections are recent passed away — three violently — and Recorded in November 2011 after a three-
originals by band members. Whether any will many of this set’s 11 originals are dedicated week tour, The
become standards remains to be seen, but the to the fallen musicians. Although it incor- Swallow Quintet’s
overall set is enjoyable. The music includes porates a bit of storytelling and rapping, Into the Woodwork
novelties, such as “Rattlin’ Bones,” retro swing, the music is quite spirited and often joyful. was released just
ballads and trad jazz. Trumpeter Mark Braud Horn solos (from tenor saxophonist Wendell prior to the same
is the most impressive and prominent among “Cliff” Stewart and the trumpeters and personnel’s two-
the many soloists. Clarinetist Charlie Gabriel, trombonists) are generally accompanied by week tour of Europe
tenor saxophonist Clint Maedgen and Braud hot riffing from the ensemble that harks this past July. The
all lend their singing talents to the plentiful back to both the swing era and church set is a study in minimalist composition
vocal numbers, as well. The high-powered services. While the music is often funky and tastefully restrained performance,
title track, the gospel stomp “Dear Lord (Give and somewhat R&B-oriented, it contains especially considering the instrumentation:
Me Strength)” and “The Darker It Gets” are the spirit of classic New Orleans jazz. Steve Swallow on electric bass, Carla Bley
among the highpoints. I only wish there were Musicianship is topnotch while the ensem- on organ, Steve Cardenas on electric guitar,
more instrumentals. But, to quote the cliché, bles of this parade band — along with the Jorge Rossy on drums and Chris Cheek on

120 fall 2013 jazziz

tenor saxophone. If the electric rhythm
section brings to mind jazz-rock fusion of
the ‘70s and ‘80s, then the group’s poetic
expression may come as a surprise.
The opening “Sad Old Candle” is not
particularly energetic, but it’s an appropri-
ate place to start. As the listener soon learns,
this 12-song set of Swallow originals is
mostly programmatic. Many songs smooth-
ly segue one to the next, with segments of
melody carrying over.
The three-song mini-suite at the heart
of the album begins with “Grisly Business,”
a slow, 9/8 waltz featuring Bley’s Phantom
of the Opera-like organ. The intro’s ominous
sonorities evolve into tongue-in-cheek
allusions to 1940s film noir. The last phrases
emphasize Cheek’s saxophone in descend-
ing semi-tones, as he evokes the sound of
laughter with his horn. The waltz segues
into “Unnatural Causes,” a swinging, up-
tempo 12-bar blues. Solid soloing — espe-
cially from Cheek and Cardenas — and crisp
ensemble performance remain the focus.
Then the blues melds into a medium-groov-
ing “The Butler Did It,” Swallow’s tribute to
black-and-white murder mysteries coming
to a close with a demonic organ chord.
Besides this playful suite, the remainder of
the set is a solid effort spotlighting the subtle
interplay of a highly sensitive jazz quintet.
Unlike the bassist’s previous, critically touted
quintet recording, Real Book — featuring
rambunctious tunes built on standards —
Into the Woodwork relies on unusually light
and individual textures that evolve into a
musically sophisticated whole. — James Rozzi
Gary Peacock/Marilyn Crispell
Azure
(ECM)
While Azure marks the first duo recording
by pianist Marilyn
Crispell and bassist
Gary Peacock, the
veteran ECM artists
share a rich history.
They’ve frequently
toured as a twosome
and, with the late
drummer Paul Motian, recorded a couple
of well-loved trio albums under Crispell’s
name (1997’s Nothing ever was, anyway and
2001’s Amaryllis). It’s hard to imagine music
that wouldn’t be improved by Motian’s
presence, but Azure stands independently as
a duet album of substance and subtlety.
The record seems like an easy conversa-
tion between the performer/composers,
as touches of spacey dissonance and
free improvisation give way to heartfelt
melodies. Crispell’s “Patterns” opens the
disc in discordant fashion, yet, in spite
of its many angular twists and turns, it
never really jars the ear. Even the most
dissonant rumblings blend easily with
lovely songs such as the pianist’s “Waltz
After David M” and Peacock’s meditative
and too-short “The Lea.”
Although both musicians have strong
roots in the avant-garde, throughout their
careers, they’ve also drawn from an expan-
sive palette of sounds and styles. At times
here, Peacock’s bass creaks like a folk guitar,
even as Crispell’s piano alternates between
frenetic and soulful. Yet, for all the variety,
Azure never loses the feeling of a cohesive
whole. Each player has extended opportuni-
ties to stretch out unaccompanied. However,
the chemistry between them demands — and
rewards — close listening. —Warren Allen
Marc Cary
For the Love of Abbey
(Motéma)
In his stirring solo-piano tribute to Abbey
Lincoln, Marc Cary
pays homage to the
woman, her voice
and the bond they
shared. Cary served
as accompanist to the
singular jazz vocalist
and composer for 12
years — a stint that ended four years before
Lincoln’s death in 2010. Delivered with the
emotional depth and idiosyncrasy that defined
Lincoln’s career, Cary’s posthumous salute
affectionately recalls his friend and mentor.
Eleven of the 14 tracks on For the Love of
Abbey were composed by the late chan-
teuse, much of them culled from her post
-1990s recordings for Verve. Cary adds two
of his own, “For Moseka” and the rumbling
dirge, “Transmutate.” He also includes Duke
Ellington’s “Melancholia,” which he says
Lincoln loved to hear him play.
Cary’s intensity reflects Lincoln’s ability
to inhabit a song, as he balances expressive
restraint and bold emotion. Brimming
with introspective moments, For the Love of
Abbey stands as testament to the singer’s
elegant simplicity, depth and uncompromis-
ing approach. However, in the process, Cary
manages to reveal a unique lyrical voice
stemming from his brilliant harmonic base.
The pianist embarks on a melodic,
cathartic exploration of Lincoln’s celebrated
repertoire that leads to beautiful improvisa-
tions. His uplifting read of “Music is the
Magic” segues into the decidedly somber
standard “Down Here Below.” Slowly decon-
structing the latter, Cary imbues Lincoln’s
dark, postmodern lament with even more
drama and raw expression, using rich
chorded passages to restructure its depths
of emotion. Cary also does right by “Another
World,” offering an ethereal rendition that
shimmers and ripples with sonic lumines-
cence. With delicate articulation, he conveys
the innocence of “Conversation With a
Baby” and the reflective melancholy of
“Down Here Below the Horizon,” this final
selection truly capturing the essence of
Lincoln’s rich complexity. — Lissette Corsa
David Weiss
Endangered Species: The Music of Wayne
Shorter
(Motéma)
Wayne Shorter still earns critical plaudits
for his provoca-
tive soprano- and
tenor-sax playing,
and leadership of
bands including his
brilliant current
quartet. His work
as a composer —
stretching from his stints with Art Blakey
and the Jazz Messengers and with Miles
Davis through his co-leadership of Weather
Report and at the helm of his own groups
— is as praiseworthy and influential, if not
more so, than his legacy as an instrumen-
talist. Trumpeter-arranger David Weiss is an
old hand at shedding new light on familiar
works — as well as at creating innovative
compositions with his New Jazz Composers
Octet and other groups. With the help of his
12-piece mini-big band, Endangered Species,
he regularly revisits Shorter’s durable music.
The group, captured live last year at
Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola at Jazz at Lincoln
Center, takes on tunes from multiple eras of
jazziz fall 2013 121
Shorter’s career, including his Blakey period.
A surging and falling “Nellie Bly” is capped
by E.J. Strickland’s rolling, splashing drum
solo. The moody “Mr. Jin” benefits from tight-
ly clustered horns under a zigzagging melody
line and a rangy solo by alto saxophonist Tim
Green. And mellow-to-brash brass choirs,
vaguely reminiscent of late-period Stan
Kenton, bolster the ballad “Eva.”
“Fall,” from the late-‘60s pre-electric-Miles
period, is reborn as a sprawling, expansive
14-minutes-plus piece that showcases probing
solos by trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, tenor saxo-
phonist Ravi Coltrane and pianist Geri Allen.
The recent “Prometheus Unbound” (which
morphed from an earlier Shorter composi-
tion), also surpasses the 14-minute mark. As
the disc’s most ambitious piece, it contains
an eclectic variety of tonal textures, rhythms
and themes, from neo-symphonic passages to
jagged swing featuring Marcus Strickland’s
soprano. And Weiss’ own “The Turning Gate”
makes a fitting tribute to Shorter, who turned
80 in August — it’s alternately mischievous
and mysterious, and simultaneously catchy
and challenging. — Philip Booth  the past four-plus
Uri Caine and Han Bennink
Sonic Boom
(816 Music)
Pianist Uri Caine and drummer Han
Bennink have incor-
porated a wide range
of music in their
work individually,
including classical,
electronic, klezmer,
Dixieland and free
jazz. Accordingly, one
would expect a live duo recording to cover
plenty of ground. And indeed, Sonic Boom,
recorded in 2010 at Amsterdam’s Bimhuis,
does just that, in ways that are challenging,
surprising and ultimately engaging.
Abstraction abounds, from the dissonant
chords and thunderous crashes of the title
track, to the knotty contours of “Grind of
Blue,” to the way the duo disassembles
“’Round Midnight” until it nearly crumbles.
But even when they’re running wild, Caine
and Bennink often maintain a frame of
reference that makes itself evident.
Traces of melodies emerge from
the cacophony on several tracks. And
beneath Caine’s harmonic explorations
122 fall 2013 jazziz
and Bennink’s pounding, pieces such as
“Lockdown” and “True Love” swing easily
at times. Despite the pair’s preference for
unpredictable beats, on occasion they com-
fortably lock into a foot-stomping rhythm,
as on “Hobo,” with Bennink’s insistent kick
drum propelling Caine’s thick chords.
Credit the persistent energy of Caine and
Bennink for making this recording so enjoy-
able. There’s a sense of exuberance in both
musicians’ aggressiveness, as if they just can’t
contain the fun. — John Frederick Moore
June Tabor/Iain Ballamy/Huw Warren
Quercus
(ECM)
Susanne Abbuehl
The Gift
(ECM)
Generalizing about the “ECM sound” can
be a slippery slope,
considering the
European label’s
prodigious and
diverse catalogue of
decades. But certain
hallmarks run deep,
particularly in the
crafting of subtle,
introspective music
and spacious sonic
landscapes. These
qualities are very
much in evidence on
two mesmerizing, artful projects featuring
luminous female vocalists, in spare yet
aesthetically complete settings.
Instrumental “voices” serve as conver-
sational foils on both The Gift, a third ECM
release by Swiss-Dutch vocalist Susanne
Abbuehl, and on Quercus, a recording by
veteran British singer June Tabor’s trio.
The former features Matthieu Michel on
flugelhorn, while the latter employs the
ever-sensitive Iain Ballamy on tenor and
soprano saxes. Both albums find strength
and wisdom in an inspired blend of jazz,
folk and chamber music.
Abbuehl sings softly but surely, her
voice beautifully framed by Michel, pianist
Wolfert Brederode and Finnish drummer
Olavi Louhivuori. She digs deep into poetic
texts, leaning especially on the pained,
purifying intimacy of Emily Dickinson, as
heard on “This and My Heart” (two varia-
tions), the internalized mini-epic “Ashore
at Last” and “Wild Nights.” Wallace Stevens’
“In My Room” continues the running theme
of juxtaposing one’s world and one’s room
or experience, and it plays like a jazz-folk-art
song belonging to some still-unfolding,
yet-to-be-categorized idiom.
Quercus serves as both the album’s
title and the name of Tabor’s drumless trio
with Ballamy and fine Welsh pianist Huw
Warren. The British-born Ballamy can chan-
nel Nordic introversion or take wild, hairpin
turns. He contributes a bittersweet depth to
the Shakespearean setting of “Come Away
Death” and, on soprano, a crepuscular café
languidness to “Who Wants the Evening
Rose.” The loam of lovely-yet-gloomy British
folksong comes through the musical set-
ting of A.E. Housman’s “The Lads in Their
Hundreds” and a reading of the traditional
“Brigg Fair,” which is mesmeric in the lean
atmospherics of Tabor’s solo vocal plaint.
The most memorable bit comes last: a
haunting thing of beauty called “All I Ask
of You.” Its deceptively simple and lilting
melodic theme yields to a coda section with
unexpected, enriching harmonic shifts
beneath the soft melodic assurance of the
tenor sax’s melodic statement.
On their respective recordings, Tabor and
Abbuehl seduce listeners with contempla-
tive cool and musical immediacy at the
surface, but with elements of depth and
surprise below. — Josef Woodard
Black Host
Life in the Sugar Candle Mines
(Northern Spy)
Adventurous and inviting, Life in the Sugar
Candle Mines is
among the most
impressive debuts
in recent memory.
Led by powerhouse
drummer Gerald
Cleaver, Black Host
boasts an impres-
sive multigenerational cast, including
veteran pianist Cooper-Moore, acclaimed
young saxophonist Darius Jones from Little
Women, and guitarist Brandon Seabrook
from experimental-thrash trio Seabrook
Power Plant. On paper, the group might
look like another coruscating avant-garde
Roundup
Brother, Can You Spare a Vibe?
Collaboration’s key in the Chicago jazz
underground.
By Phil Freeman

Chicago’s unique artistic atmosphere manifests itself not just

in individual players’ creativity, but in a seemingly scenewide
mania for collaboration and organization. A hypercompetitive
hothouse like New York City could never have produced any-
thing like the AACM. Chicago musicians are constantly coming
up with new contexts in which to convene, new ways to team up
and share the spotlight.
Cornetist Rob Mazurek’s been among Chicago’s most brilliant
talents for decades. The Space Between (Delmark) debuts a smaller
version of his bombastic Exploding Star Orchestra. Although
Mazurek’s horn is occasionally featured, his presence is more
prominent as the program’s composer. Nicole Mitchell’s flute
is the primary wind instrument, bolstered by an ever-shifting
ocean of electronics, piano and percussion. Damon Locks recites
poems over it all, and the set also includes a DVD of accompany-
ing video art by Marianne Kim. It’s a gesamtkunstwerk, a sweep-
ing, shimmering, head-spinning multimedia experience. Dave Rempis
Mazurek has another new album out, as well. Skull Sessions
(Cuneiform) was recorded with an octet that includes players
from his groups Starlicker and São Paulo Underground. Members Rempis’ long-running Percussion Quartet, which features
include Nicole Mitchell, again; the highly regarded, in-demand bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummers Tim Daisy and
vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz; keyboardist Guilherme Granado Frank Rosaly, has released its sixth album, the double live set
(who also plays on The Space Between); and drummer John Herndon Phalanx, also on Aerophonic. A document of two shows in their
of the band Tortoise. The music is exploratory and sprawling, with entirety, it offers just four tracks, none shorter than 26 minutes
nods to electric Miles and Sun Ra. Even so, Adasiewicz’s vibes and one longer than 48. When experienced live, a great musical
sometimes lend a lounge/exotica feel. Particularly when the guitar performance can make 30 minutes feel like five. But listening
is dominant, the sound feels almost West African. Perhaps overlong from one’s couch is an entirely different experience — attention
— especially when contrasted with the disciplined and concise The wanders, and the urge to pick up a book grows stronger through-
Space Between — Skull Sessions is nonetheless compelling. out the inevitable, interminable bass solo. There are moments of
Adasiewicz reappears on Boss of the Plains, the debut CD by excitement, but they’re too few and far between.
Wheelhouse, a drumless trio featuring saxophonist Dave Rempis and On his own album, Cicada Music (Delmark), Frank Rosaly is
bassist Nate McBride that’s been performing since 2005. The disc was nothing if not disciplined. The disc arose from the drummer’s
released on Aerophonic, a new label run by Rempis. Wheelhouse’s score to a movie about scrap-metal scavengers, so the music
music is fully improvised, but sounds more conversational than scat- evokes various moods throughout. James Falzone’s clarinet
tered. Adasiewicz responds thoughtfully to Rempis’ sharp, somewhat and Adasiewicz’s vibes frequently dialogue, creating a rumble,
nose-wrinkling alto-sax lines, while McBride gives the music heft. squawk and clatter that calls to mind walking through a city
There’s plenty of scribbly free jazz, but the lack of a drummer keeps it at night. And while some pieces are long, several others flit by.
drifting along, chamber-music style, even when the notes come fast Rosaly never drives the band, which is rounded out by reed player
and furious. The players may have aimed for disruption and fierceness, Keefe Jackson and bassist Jason Roebke. Rather, he lets them
but they wound up meditative and even relaxing. wander and, in the process, unearth some real sonic treasures. s
ensemble. In reality, they combine their
talents to create lush and vivid music that
weaves electronics and psychedelia into a
shifting jazz tapestry that embraces both
groove and melody. 
The album kicks off with the insistent
backbeat and soaring saxophone lines of
“Hover.” The song seamlessly morphs into a
placid section of surf-inflected riffs before
culminating in an ecstatic and surging
lock-groove blowout. Thanks to its dynamic
structure, this 16-minute track seems only
a fraction of its length. “Ayler Children”
evokes the charismatic roil of saxophonist
Albert Ayler with ping-ponging guitar riffs
and churning piano. The musicians often
echo one another’s parts, generating an
off-kilter ensemble feel. 
The moving ballad “May Be Home” show-
cases the band’s traditional-jazz chops and
unfurls its gorgeous, stately melody in slow-
motion. Ambient and menacing, “Gromek”
offers shuddering echo and looped beats,
anchored by a plaintive horn refrain and
keening guitar outbursts. With such a varied
sonic palette, engineer and mixer Bryce
Goggin — best known for his magic touch
on albums by indie-rock icons Pavement —
deserves credit for ensuring that the music
always feels spacious and nuanced.
Black Host’s heady fusion is undermined
only by the album’s demanding 80-minute
length. It would be greatly improved by cut- Eugenie Jones
ting the shorter tunes and focusing listeners
on the band’s key statements. Nonetheless,
its considerable pleasures are wrapped in as “Ordinary Weirdness,” they blend the In the process, Eisenstadt helps create a
unexpected textures. — Jeff Jackson two, but for the most part, they choose one work that prizes freedom and structure
approach or the other. equally and that demonstrates the great
Harris Eisenstadt September Trio The group members’ individual beauty in both. — Phil Freeman
The Destructive Element voices are perfectly suited to one another.
(Clean Feed) Eskelin’s tenor sound is reedy, frequently Eugenie Jones
Drummer Harris Eisenstadt is joined by inhabiting the upper midrange of the Black Lace Blue Tears
saxophonist Ellery horn. In fact, it sounds like an alto much of (Open Mic)
Eskelin and pianist the time. Still, he goes low and throaty on Eugenie Jones may be a newcomer to the
Angelica Sanchez “Cascadia,” arguably the album’s best track. active music scene,
for this set of nine When he lines up with Sanchez, whose pi- but the divorced
pieces, recorded ano playing is patient and careful without mother of two
in Portugal in late ever dissolving into diffidence, the results teenage boys, who
September 2012. are beautiful. Despite having written every boasts an MBA and
The players shift tune on the album, Eisenstadt is maybe experience as a
between blues-suffused ballads (the the most relaxed drummer/bandleader business consultant,
opening “Swimming, Then Rained Out” since Paul Motian. Most of the time, he lets is no newcomer
and “Back and Forth”) and subdued but free his companions lead, and his rhythms are to life. That’s why so many of the self-
explorations (“Additives” and the two-part rarely aggressive or commanding. Instead, penned tunes on her debut recording bear
“From Schoenberg”). On a few tracks, such he provides a platform for their interaction. the signs of personal authenticity.

124 fall 2013 jazziz Photo by Steven Kron

 On “I Want One,” she coos “When I go to
bed at night I think about you/We haven’t
met yet, but we’re long past due.” The sultry,
easy-swingin’ blues ballad is guaranteed
to raise the pulse rate of males at her
club dates. For “Can You Dance?” a jaunty,
up-tempo groover propelled by Clipper
Anderson’s supple double-bass lines, Jones
joyfully sings about a new joint downtown
where she can feel “the rhythm of the bass
walking up my spine.” On another of her
nine originals — delivered in a rhythmical-
ly trippy style thanks to guitarist Michael
Powers — Jones sums up how she deals
with a romance gone bad, singing “I’ll be OK
in a shot of tequila or two.”
A lady of many talents, Jones skillfully
arranged five of the set’s tracks, including
an invigorating read of the difficult “Take
Five.” Pianist Bill Anschell, a particu-
larly resourceful accompanist and crafty
soloist, drummer Mark Ivester and bassist
Anderson are a perfect fit for the singer’s
11-track coming-out party. Jones and her
combo emerge as worthy flag-bearers for
the Seattle area’s burgeoning jazz scene.
The singer’s keen sense of phrasing
makes her extremely persuasive. Like a
veteran horn soloist, she slides effort-
lessly from one octave to the next, always
landing on the right, pitch-perfect note.
A sly use of vibrato and reluctance to
oversell the lyrics all add up to a vocal
style that, while occasionally emotion-
ally taut, is generally relaxed, flirtatious
and easy to love. — Mark Holston
Andy Bey
The World According to Andy Bey
(HighNote)
Veteran vocalist Andy Bey is at his most
affecting when
he’s alone at the
piano. And that’s the
setting for The World
According to Andy
Bey, his first record-
ing in six years. The
singer, who turns 74
in October, is at the height of his interpre-
tive powers. His vibrato-laden baritone
is playful and seductive one moment,
the quintessence of loneliness the next.
Traversing octaves as easily as a cat climbs
drapes, he leaps from smoky bottom tones
to a feathery, shiver-inducing falsetto when
inclination and emotion dictate.
Bey’s approach to ballads is a genre unto
itself. He’s predictably sublime on glacial
reads of “It Never Entered My Mind,” “But
Not for Me” (complete with intro verse)
and “Love is Here to Stay.” Once again, Bey
proves his own best accompanist, utilizing
spare, conversational chords behind his
vocals to comment on what he’s just sung.
While his technique is not designed to
dazzle, what he plays is just right. Through
the decades, he’s honed a style that’s as
natural as walking and talking.
The multifaceted Bey also boasts a
natural affinity for the blues. He revisits the
Harlem house-party milieu on a nearly giddy
romp through the Fats Waller/Andy Razaf
thumper “The Joint is Jumpin’.” And, having
worked with the likes of Max Roach and
Horace Silver, Bey’s jazz roots run deep. He
displays deft scat chops with his “Dedicated
to Miles,” a wordless salute to the trum-
peter’s playing on Charlie Parker’s “Cheryl.”
Original tunes such as the dark-hued
“The Demons Are After You” and “There’s
So Many Ways to Approach the Blues” are
infused with drama, as Bey wraps percus-
sive vamps and spiky chords around his
vocals, while respectively offering observa-
tions about temptation and the music of his
heart and heritage. On the latter, he opines
that today’s blues are “often watered down
so much, it’s hard to recognize it.” No such
problem here. — Bob Weinberg
Gustavo Cortiñas
Snapshots
(Ta’ Babuino)
On his self-released debut as a bandleader,
Mexican native and
drummer Gustavo
Cortiñas deftly
assembles a smorgas-
bord of the moods and
nuances that make up
the human experi-
ence. Each of the nine
compositions melodically and harmonically
expresses specific moments in Cortiñas’ life —
from the death of his father on the plaintive
“La Balada del León” to parting ways with his
significant other on “When I Leave You.” The
result is an idiosyncratic album that intrinsi-
cally fuses the personal to the universal.
Most listeners will empathize with this
introspective music, as showcased by the in-
terplay of his pluralistic ensemble. Cortiñas
is joined by kindred spirits in tenor saxo-
phonists Victor Goines and Roy McGrath;
trumpeter Justin Copeland; guitarist Michael
Allemana and upright-bassist Kitt Lyles.
Their simpatico contributions create a rich
and cohesive listening experience, in which
each voice adds greater depth and texture.
Be it on the spirited, brass-fueled
excursion undertaken in “Chimeras” or
on existential, sometimes minimalist
pieces such as “Skepticism,” the music never
takes a back seat to a single player in the
spotlight. Deceptively understated yet vital
touches embellish “Hanaki,” a whimsical
ode to the bandleader’s godson. This mid-
tempo, finger-snapping tune displays the
stylistic sophistication in Cortiñas’ arrange-
ments. It also sets the stage for a propulsive,
rollicking drum solo that segues into “Wish
I Could be There Now,” a tightly wound
track wrought with tension and impotence
at the senseless death of a dear friend’s
father. Although the drummer still regrets
that moment in time, he chooses to relive
it through a visceral exploration of sorrow
and what it means to be far from loved ones
during a time of loss.
Cortiñas closes the album with a second,
more dramatic take on “When I Leave You.”
Feelings may be subjective and individu-
alistic, he seems to say, but like perception,
they are everything. — Lissette Corsa
The following reviews originally
appeared in the July and August
2013 online editions of JAZZIZ
magazine at www.jazziz.com.
Jaimeo Brown
Transcendence
(Motéma Music)
Knowing that at least some of the roots an-
choring Transcendence
can be traced back
to research done by
drummer Brown
while assembling
his master’s thesis at
Rutgers may spark
trepidation in many
listeners. After all, projects that start in aca-
jazziz fall 2013 125
demia can tend toward the pedantic. They can
seem stiff, overly formal, all head and no heart
— let alone parts located lower. But Brown’s
debut on the Motéma imprint is exciting and
vital, an organic amalgam of American music
whose intelligence is foregrounded by musical
adventurism.
The project’s eclecticism is undeni-
able. There’s jazz, as represented by tenor
saxophonist JD Allen, whose brash delivery
is bracing in an age of studio perfectionism;
echoes of blues and rock from guitarist
Chris Sholar; Indian influences via singer
Falu; and the deep gospel of the Gee’s Bend
Quilters, an astonishing Alabama group
whose recordings (some from as far back as
the 1940s) are sampled to thrilling effect.
And as if that’s not enough, there are
also contributions from Brown’s parents,
bassist Dartanyan Brown and pianist/flut-
ist Marcia Miget, plus his daughter Selah
Brown, who puts her stamp on the beguil-
ing “I Said” despite being only 2 years old.
That may sound like too many elements
for an album to contain, but this bursting-
at-the-seams quality turns out to be an
asset, not a deficit. “Mean World” finds com-
mon ground between spiritual lamentation
and vintage skronk; “Somebody’s Knocking”
layers Eastern vocalizing over a cymbal-
splashed soundscape; “Power of God” gains
strength from the subtle interpretations of
pianist Geri Allen; and “This World Ain’t
My Home” is sonic voodoo capable of both
chilling blood and causing it to race.
Somehow Brown manages to keep all
these plates spinning while demonstrat-
ing his virtuosity as a player who knows
when to offer support and when to bring
the thunder. His studies have clearly paid
off. —Michael Roberts
Gerald Clayton
Life Forum
(Concord Jazz)
Pianist Gerald Clayton favors a more col-
laborative dynamic
over displays of
individual virtuos-
ity. On his excellent
new record, that
means establishing
a template based
on the interplay
between instruments and voice.
126 fall 2013 jazziz
The blueprint is established on the
opening track, “A Life Forum,” with vocalists
Gretchen Parlato and Sachal Vasandani echo-
ing the horn section, adding rich textures
on top of poet Carl Hancock Rux’s recitation
of a text in his rich baritone. It’s a technique
the vocalists frequently employ to great
effect elsewhere (“Future Reflection,” “Some
Always”). Parlato, who has earned well-
deserved raves for her wordless vocalizations
on her own records and other musicians’
projects, adds both a sweetness and a subtle
percussive quality to “Deep Dry Ocean,” on
which she mirrors Clayton’s melodic line
with her ethereal soprano.
Equally compelling are Clayton’s cascad-
ing harmonies and lush horn melodies. When
Clayton does solo, he’s focused and concise,
delivering impressionistic statements that
emphasize melodic contours. That’s most
evident on the piano-bass duo of “Mao Nas
Massa,” which features Clayton trading
terse left- and right-hand figures on top of
drummer Justin Brown’s Brazilian-inspired
rhythms. The melody never follows a set pat-
tern, yet it doesn’t feel the least bit scattershot.
Along with his core trio members
— Brown and bassist Joe Sanders — sev-
eral tracks feature trumpeter Ambrose
Akinmusire and saxophonists Logan
Richardson and Dayna Stephens. It’s a testa-
ment to Clayton’s vision as a bandleader
that all of the components blend so seam-
lessly. When the horns, vocals and Clayton’s
crystalline piano solo intersect on the
cascading “Like Water,” the effect is simply
majestic. The same can be said for this
album as a whole. —John Frederick Moore
Nicole Mitchell’s Ice Crystal
Aquarius
(Delmark)
Flutist Nicole Mitchell moved to California a
couple of years ago,
but it’s clear that
Chicago — her home
base for more than
two decades — is
still imprinted on her
musical DNA. The
experimental spirit
of that city’s improvised music scene is
evident throughout this thoroughly creative
and highly enjoyable disc.
The central motif of Mitchell’s Ice Crystal
configuration is the shimmering ambience
created by the tonal precision of Mitchell’s
flute and the thick harmonies of Jason
Adasiewicz’s resonant vibraphones. It’s a
sound that indeed suggests cool, crystalline
textures. Though the opener “Aqua Blue”
will instantly bring to mind the combina-
tion of Eric Dolphy and Bobby Hutcherson,
the remaining nine tracks clearly put
Mitchell’s wide-ranging creativity on
display in a way that blurs the line between
composition and improvisation.
The arpeggios that dot “Above the Sky”
suggest contemporary classical music
even as the rhythm section occasionally
injects pockets of swing. The title track
begins as an ethereal chamber piece, with
Mitchell floating on top of Joshua Abrams’
bowed bass lines, then concludes with a
free improvisation. Drummer Frank Rosaly
rounds out the all-Chicago lineup, and he
and Abrams form one of the more flexible
and creative rhythm sections around. The
pair can lock into a groove as easily as they
can move freely around Mitchell’s swirling
lines, often on the same song, as on the
multi-layered “Yearning.”
Lest you think this is all abstraction,
there’s also the graceful post-bop swing of
“Adaptability” and the soulful groove of
“Sunday Afternoon.” But even in those famil-
iar contexts, Mitchell’s melodic contours and
shifting harmonic colors upend expectations
in the best way. —John Frederick Moore
Joshua Redman
Walking Shadows
(Nonesuch)
This set of ballads from saxophonist Joshua
Redman includes
originals, standards,
pop songs and even
a Bach composition.
Though this record
is most notable for
being Redman’s first
with strings, the 12
tracks feature a variety of configurations.
There’s no avoiding the influence of
Brad Mehldau, a longtime Redman collabo-
rator who takes on the dual role of pianist
and producer for this record. Redman ap-
peared on Mehldau’s brilliant 2010 release
Highway Rider, which took a more disso-
nant approach to orchestral arrangements.
The six pieces here that feature strings
are a mixed bag. Sometimes, as on Wayne
Shorter’s “Infant Eyes,” the strings are a bit
too sweet. But on “Lush Life” and Mehldau’s
brooding “Last Glimpse of Gotham,” the
strings provide a sense of tension and
foreboding that’s missing from, say, “The
Folks Who Live on the Hill.”
The best moments come when the
arrangements upend your expectations.
The main section of “Lush Life,” for example,
finds the rhythm section engaged in a
groove, anchored by Mehldau’s dark chords,
that bring an unexpected edge to a song
that typically takes a melancholy tone.
Beyond that, some of the more effective
statements are the simpler ones. Redman’s
original “Final Hour” is a brief, gorgeous
duet with Mehldau, while “Doll Is Mine”
— by indie rockers Blonde Redhead — gets
a surprisingly bluesy treatment from the
quartet, which also features bassist Larry
Grenadier and drummer Brian Blade.
Redman himself is in top form — his
sense of melody has always been impres-
sive, but his control of tone on both tenor
and soprano shows how much he has grown
as a musician. Although this will undoubt-
edly become known as Redman’s “jazz with
strings” album, it’s more accurate to say
that it’s a document of an exceptionally
talented musician growing more mature in
his approach. —John Frederick Moore Joshua Redman

Oliver Lake Big Band

Wheels
(Passin’ Thru)
Those familiar with the long career of
saxophonist and
composer Oliver
Lake won’t be
surprised that the
big-band sound
he showcases on
Wheels is auda-
ciously free-spirited.
Lake has dabbled in the large-ensemble
format since the late 1960s, and while he
cites Oliver Nelson and Duke Ellington as
his two most important influences, the
saxophonist’s deep involvement in the
avant-garde movement is the primary
reference that shapes his big-band vision.
Lake favors the kind of grit and unin-
hibited blowing that can often sound like
a freeway traffic pile-up in slow motion, as
it does on “Is It Real,” the second of Wheels’
eight tracks. This orchestrally elastic
piece follows a melody-neutral route that
features a dirge-paced tempo based on a
two-to-the-bar rhythmic structure. Lake
fashions wheezy horn-section background
fills to cushion the cacophonous merger
of his reedy upper-register attack. An
animated free-for-all ensues and most of
the unit’s brass and woodwinds pile on,
creating a dense thicket of wild notes and
wicked harmonies.
The leader’s sound on alto sax has been
described by some as “astringent,” and his
vast vocabulary of lower-register grunts
and groans and upper-register pops
and squeals give Lake’s alto work a true
multi-idiomatic quality. However, on the
session’s centerpiece, the 17-plus-minute
“Wheels Suite,” a different Lake emerges,
if only briefly. The saxophonist and his
rhythm section, led by pianist Yoichi
Uzeki, use a leisurely-paced interlude
to amplify the woodwind artist’s more
conventional persona via fluid articula-
tions and a fat, sweet tone.
Sometimes the leader’s writing is overt-
ly melodic in its orientation, as with “Philly
Blues.” An engaging tune with a walking
bass and “Killer Joe”-style groove, it’s easily
the set’s most conventional take. “Studder,”
the program’s second work in a suite form,
also features an intriguing arrangement.
A daring and wholly effective interplay of
swing and avant-garde elements makes
it a particularly attractive composition
and an effective way to summarize Lake‘s
accomplishments as both a player and an
arranger. —Mark Holston

Photo by Jay Blakesburg jazziz fall 2013 127

Travels
The Road to Montreal
Taking the long way to one of
the world’s great jazz festivals.
By David Pulizzi

I had a hard time getting to this year’s Montreal International at 7 p.m., at a theater barely more than a stone’s throw from our room
Jazz Festival. It was my own absent-minded fault. A friend in the Hyatt, but we didn’t arrive in town until well after Lloyd and
and I left our hometown in central Pennsylvania early on the his accomplices — pianist Jason Moran, drummer Eric Harland and
morning of June 28, the festival’s opening day, and
had driven 250 miles — to within about 60 miles of Zakir Hussain and Charles Lloyd
the Canadian border — when the thought just sort of
breezily occurred to me, as if it were entirely inconse-
quential: Hey, I forgot my passport.
I understood instantly, of course, that there’d
be no getting into Canada without it. Just to be
sure, I pulled off at a roadside rest stop and asked a
heavily tattooed young trucker if, to his knowledge,
there was any way I could cross the border without
a passport. Yes, he said, that was possible under
certain conditions. Unfortunately I met none of
those conditions and so, with a resigned shrug, my
roadside acquaintance informed me that I was, in a
word, screwed. Ten-four, good buddy.
After I indulged in a bit of healthy venting, my
friend and I began our journey back to Williamsport,
the town from which we had departed in such high
and adventurous spirits nearly four hours earlier. By
the time we parked for the last time that day, three floors below the bassist Reuben Rogers — began. (Incidentally, I highly recommend
Montreal Hyatt, where we’d be staying for the next four days, we had the Hyatt to anyone in need of accommodations at the festival. The
driven about 740 miles and had been on the road long enough for my rooms are nice enough, but more importantly you’re in the immediate
lower back to openly revolt against the idea of proceeding any further. vicinity of all the action and many of the performers hang out and
In retrospect, the whole forgotten-passport episode didn’t bother sometimes jam late-night in the ground-floor lounge.)
me much. But I was troubled by the fact that the many hours we spent On a brighter note, nearly 500 shows were in the offing during the
on the road that day had caused us to miss the Charles Lloyd Quartet’s festival’s 10-day duration, so it wasn’t as if my friend and I had missed
performance in Montreal that night. The band played as scheduled all the fun. Some 300 of those shows were presented free-of-charge by

128 fall 2013 jazziz Photos by Jean-François Leblanc, Frédérique Ménard-Aubin, and Diane Dulude (www.dianeduludephotography.com)
3,000 artists from 30 different countries on 10 stages in the heart of Quartier des Madeleine
Spectacles, which is also where many of the ticketed shows are held in indoor Peyroux
venues. As it happened, Charles Lloyd was the festival’s artist-in-residence this
year, which meant, among other things, that we’d have opportunities to see
him perform beyond opening night, though not with his quartet. We seized
one of those opportunities during the festival’s second evening, when Lloyd
performed in the handsome Théâtre Jean-Duceppe with his Sangam trio, which
includes Harland and the incomparable Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain.
Lloyd, primarily a tenor saxophonist and flutist, and Harland each took an
extended turn on a grand piano during a spiritually rich and deeply moving
performance, the conclusion of which, literally, left me in tears.
That concert lasted a little more than an hour. From there, my friend and
I walked a short distance to the Théâtre Maisonneuve, where a concert cel-
ebrating the 80th birthday of Wayne Shorter was about to commence with a
hotly anticipated performance by the ACS Trio (pianist Geri Allen, drummer
Terri Lyne Carrington and bassist Esperanza Spalding). That trio played well,
as did the Joe Lovano–Dave Douglas Sound Prints quintet that followed, but
neither of those two opening acts could match the high-wire artistry and
telepathic interplay of Shorter’s brilliant headlining quartet (with pianist
Danilo Perez, drummer Brian Blade and bassist John Patitucci). Wayne
Shorter, who wouldn’t actually turn 80 until two months later, on Shorter
August 25, picked his spots to blow. Invariably they were good spots, and
he illuminated them with powerful runs on his horn that flashed through
the darkened room like jagged bolts of lightning. Meanwhile, his three
younger bandmates tore up the stage with their exceptional playing and
dazzling interactions. To experience Shorter’s quartet at this point in its
development is to witness an alchemical relationship of a rare and high
order. For me, experiencing them less than 90 minutes after seeing and
hearing Charles Lloyd’s Sangam trio constituted a once-in-a-lifetime
episode of mind-blowing sensory overload.
In terms of the number of acts it stages, the Montreal International Jazz
Festival is the world’s largest jazz festival, and it’s widely considered to be
among the best. In defense of that position, it’s only fair and true to say that
the city itself — a multi-faceted, cosmopolitan jewel — is grand, the festival’s
venues are nicely varied and uniformly stellar, and its administrators most
assuredly do not skimp on booking top-shelf talent. It’s almost comical — and
somewhat wearying — to look back over the performance schedule and pon-
der the sheer magnitude of talent that played at this year’s festival. In addition
to those already named, the embarrassment of riches included Chucho Valdés,
Joshua Redman, John Abercrombie, David Murray with Macy Gray, George
Benson, Barry Harris, Trombone Shorty, Jacky Terrasson, Dr. John, Madeleine
Peyroux, Holly Cole, Bill Frisell, Vijay Iyer, Gregory Porter, Oliver Jones, Kurt
Rosenwinkel, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The Bad Plus, the Steve Kuhn Trio Lionel
and Tim Berne. And that’s not to mention the many relatively unknown acts Loueke
who played adventurous music of many varieties on the festival’s outdoor
stages and in nearby clubs.
It’s hard to know what to make of all this talent on-hand at a single
event. The Montreal festival has come a long way in its 34-year history. It
began small and obscure and has evolved into something very large and
reputable. I’m acquainted with several people who attend most every year,
and they all agree that the festival just gets better and better. As for me,
well, this year marked the third time I’ve attended, and even though I had
a wretched time getting into town, I was thrilled once again by all that
transpired once I arrived. s
Coda

One Man’s Sax By Brian Landrus

When I was 13, my parents could tell I had fallen deeply in love with music. In an effort to
focus my boundless curiosity, they decided I needed a high-level saxophone. We went to the
music store and I was able to choose my favorite saxophone from an assortment of new and
vintage horns. I didn’t know much, but I was drawn to an old Selmer Super Balanced Action alto
from 1950. It wasn’t as shiny as the others and smelled old,
but it just had a singing quality that made it an easy deci-
sion. I still have that saxophone and will never sell it.
From then on I tried hard to find other Selmer saxophones
from the same period, specifically the Super Balanced
Action, which is a rare line only made in Paris from 1948-53.
I found a tenor that belonged to Rico Mordenti, one of my
old teachers, that happened to be an SBA. I found an SBA
soprano in upstate New York after many years of search-
ing. Then finally I found an SBA baritone on Craigslist in
Sacramento, California. The only ones I’d seen before had
been very beaten up, but this one was mint.
I contacted the gentleman who owned it, and he explained
to me that his grandfather had played this saxophone with
Woody Herman and Tommy Dorsey. He was aware that the
instrument was worth more than the $5,000 he was asking
for it, but, at his grandfather’s request, he wanted it to go to
a serious player. His grandfather had bought it new in 1948 and played it through the early ’50s.
He then had health problems so it sat unplayed for nearly 50 years. When he passed, his grandson
Aaron took charge of finding a worthy player for the axe.
When I spoke to Aaron, he asked me to send him some of my music so that he could hear me play.
He said many dealers had contacted him, and that he would only sell it to a player. After listening
to the couple of CDs I sent, he called to tell me he loved them and that he’d decided to sell me the
saxophone. I was thrilled to acquire this instrument, which looked nearly new and was in 100 per
cent original condition. Strangely, Aaron requested that I sign a contract stating that I wouldn’t sell
the saxophone for at least five years. He also insisted that I send him pictures of me with the sax as
well as recordings I made with it. I asked how I should pay him and have the sax shipped. He said he’d
only take cash. Unfortunately I was going back on the road and couldn’t meet him.
Luckily, one of my best friends, Greg, lives near Donner Lake, California, about an hour from
Sacramento, where he agreed to meet Aaron and pay for the instrument with cash. When they
met inside the Bank of America branch, Aaron opened the case, and Greg said later that he
nearly screamed because the saxophone was so beautiful. Indeed, it has a dark honey-colored
lacquer finish and gorgeous engraving along the bell. Greg paid for the saxophone, and I followed
through with sending him pictures and recordings.
This saxophone is by far the best baritone I’ve ever played, and I’d never sell it. It’s been my
main instrument since I bought it, it’s on the cover of my new album, Mirage, and I’ve been very
fortunate to have played it all over the world. s

Brian Landrus lives in Brooklyn, New York. He’s a low woodwind specialist who The New York
Times has called “a baritone saxophonist of imposing authority.” He leads two ensembles and tours
internationally with Esperanza Spalding.

130 fall 2013 jazziz

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