Lazaro Vega

http://www.slate.com/id/2139316/

I had a long e-mail exchange with an anonymous radio insider in Chicago last summer, one "Daddy-o Dailey," who first wrote to tell me I'm pathetic for doing the Dog and Pony show publicizing Jazz From Blue Lake on the web. And to question my knocking the programming on WBEZ as too mainstreamed and dislocalized for Chicago's jazz scene ( I said some things over at Chi-Improv). This person, obviously a radio professional, talked about WBEZ's listenership being tremendous following their switch from "the old WBEZ" of Neil Tesser days to the more recent progamming model, and mentioned to do that, bring up their general listenership, was the only way to keep the less expensive over night network news from the BBC, or other programs, at bay. Looks like they lost the battle. The NPR news model is incredibly popular. There's no denying that. Morning Edition and All Things Considered are the most listened to drive time programs on radio right now. Arbitron. In a sense this is the finale of what was once a great jazz station, when they used to program jazz in the day. When they lost that jazz was never going to recover. You cut the legs out from under the program (the day population) and then complain that the program can't run. As much as I may have disagreed with some of the choices they made in their music progamming I would never have wished jazz to go away. Was just hoping they'd get broader in the historical and stylistic reach they covered. Back in the 80's it was fun to hear the new Concords or Milestones or Steeplechases or Delmarks on the radio as you drove in for the Chicago Jazz Festival. WBEZ's national broadcasts of the Chicago Jazz Festival were some of their greatest accomplishments.

I'm pickin' up good vibrations...this has been great...but I can't believe I've spent HALF my life on the air at Blue Lake..... No, let's all celebrate Duke's birthday for two days at the end of the month!

Werf, you're fundraising!!! Chuck, thanks. Done.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- April 4, 2006 TV Review | 'Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis' 'Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis' Lets Musicians Do the Talking By BEN RATLIFF The publicity for "Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis," a new 13-part series of half-hour shows on public television, boasts that it is the first regular network jazz series of its kind in more than 40 years. That means a perform-a-song and talk-to-the-host kind of show, as opposed to a Ken Burns-like exposition of history. It refers specifically to "Jazz Scene, U.S.A.," a program produced by Steve Allen and broadcast in 1962. "Legends of Jazz" could have learned from the visual effectiveness of that show, or from good recent examples of studio-filmed jazz like the film "Calle 54." Instead, it wastes a great opportunity with a rictus grin: it is cheerily glib, aggressively middle-of-the-road, deferential toward the past yet purposefully vague enough to be nearly ahistorical, as if this were a quality to be desired. The host is the pianist Ramsey Lewis, and the format remains the same in each episode: each guest plays a song, the guests play together, and then Mr. Lewis joins them on a version of the show's theme. Whatever spontaneity may have been in the filmed conversations has been largely excised: the interviews are twitchy with edits. His questions, along the lines of "What made you want to pick up the trumpet?," are doggedly polite, basic and weirdly resistant to subtlety and insight. The guitar episode features Jim Hall with Pat Metheny, and it's probably the series at its best. The idea, generally, is to pair an older master with a younger figure. (Mr. Hall is 75, Mr. Metheny 51.) The mild-looking Mr. Hall is brave enough to utter actual thoughts: first he claims to harbor no nostalgia for the past, then he casually mentions that Ben Webster taught him how to breathe through the guitar like a saxophonist. And bang! comes the edit. (Jazz is so cerebral, you know. It scares people.) But both musicians' performances are worth watching. There's a sense of digging in, and Mr. Metheny brings his regular trio, with the bassist Christian McBride and the drummer Antonio Sanchez. "The Golden Horns," the trumpet episode that opens the series, represents the show at its worst. The lineage here is Clark Terry, Roy Hargrove and Chris Botti. Clark Terry is one of the best improvising musicians alive; he comes from the generation that grew up in big bands, and he possesses all the secrets about sound and tone and rhythm in jazz, not to mention balancing art and commerce. Mr. Hargrove came along almost 50 years later, in the early 1990's, dealing with post-bop and funk and Cuban music; he has a commitment to maintaining working bands and encouraging younger players. On the other hand, Mr. Botti, a former sideman for Paul Simon and Sting and a trumpet player of middling talent, has been successfully marketed as a romantic player of standards. This show has no business insinuating that a line of artistic accomplishment connects these three players. Yet without context, you very well might believe that it does: Mr. Botti's performance of "My Funny Valentine" is markedly better filmed than the others, with a darker set and blue lighting from the bottom up. Mr. Lewis is better when dealing with practiced pluralists: the it's-all-good wing of jazz musicians, like Mr. Botti, the singer Jane Monheit and the keyboardist George Duke. Accordingly, smooth jazz — here it's called "contemporary jazz" — gets an episode of its own. If "Legends of Jazz" were a series about the reality of the jazz business, or about the range of things perceived and marketed as jazz, this would seem like a good idea. But this is apparently a show about the greatest living jazz musicians. The series was produced by WTTW in Chicago and LRSmedia, a company including Mr. Lewis and Larry Rosen, who used to run the profitable pop-jazz label GRP Records. After GRP, for a few years in the mid-90's, Mr. Rosen ran a multimedia company called N2K. Nearly every time there's a questionable inclusion on the show, it's a former GRP or N2K artist: Mr. Botti, David Sanborn, Lee Ritenour, Ms. Monheit, Marcus Miller, Al Jarreau. But parsing the show's conversations and second-guessing its list of performers may be the wrong approach. It does put a decent number of excellent musicians on national television. (Others include Eddie Palmieri, Dave Brubeck, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Benny Golson, Chris Potter and Marcus Strickland.) Still, that isn't enough. The ultimate test of jazz on television is whether the music comes across in a hostile medium — how well it suggests the excitement of performance. What made "Jazz Scene U.S.A." so powerful definitely was not the musicians' short interactions with the host, Oscar Brown Jr. It was the direction and the lighting. You saw amazing camera angles, sustained long enough to allow concentration: a view from under Jimmy Smith's forearm, or from the polish on a snare drum, or an aerial shot showing a pianist's chord voicings. The cameramen got you inside the music and rendered the musicians' faces sympathetic and fascinating. Here, the camerawork involves constant, thoughtless slow swirls around the musicians, a lot of dull full-figure head-on shots from 10 feet away, and ugly baths of mixed, colored lights. The walls of the set bring to mind a hotel lobby, busy with wood and textile patterns. The graphics — in an Art Deco typeface that suggests something like the Cotton Club in the 1920's — are corny and badly handled. In all its mainstreaming and common-denominator sense, the show seems to want to deny that jazz is something people care deeply about. But jazz is deep. It is about sound and resonance and great passion. There is a reason people become nearly religious about it. You'd hardly know from watching this. Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis PBS, beginning this month; check local listings Larry Rosen and Ramsey Lewis, creators and executive producers; Nicolette Ferri, producer; produced by LRSmedia and WTTW. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Thanks for all the well wishes, and the link to the babes. Hey, what's up with that? Werf, are you buyin'? You all are welcome to join Blue Lake tonight (log on before 10 p.m. to avoid the "block") for the music of Duke Jordan. I'll never forget the Saturday morning in 1983 when I was on the radio playing Air after having played some Leo Smith when this head appears in the glass cutout of the studio door, and this young girl is looking through the glass wall from the next door studio. I'm like, huh? "Hello, I'm Chuck Nessa, and this is my daughter Carla." It was just so strange that the Steeplechase rep. from Chicago, who had one of the hippest independant labels ever, was standing in our building in the Manistee National Forest.... Actually one of the first things Nessa hipped me to, before we both moved to Whitehall, was the Buck Clayton All Stars with Jimmy Rushing on Steeplechase. In 1979 I had no idea who Dickie Wells was. I still have that double album promo copy he sent when I was doing student radio at Michigan State. And you're right Nessa, I'll be 46 on April 30th so that was exactly half my age ago. Holy shit!

Wasn't that cool? Man, how could Fats not know he made some of the most beautiful sounds in jazz? His sounds and the balance in his improvisations. Classic. What's up with the Chinatown soundtrack. Must be out of print. Brownie, thanks. 46, Bix, on April 30th. Rounding the corner towards 50 gives me pause.....

Oska T An Oscar For Treadwell Jumpin' with Symphony Sid Line for Lyons Avila and Tequila .... A local bassist named Dave Spring wrote and recorded a tune called "One for Lazaro." While m.c.ing a concert the band sprang it and that was a great personal moment. Good tune, too. ---- Treadwell was one of the greats. Listening to voices of his generation one could learn so much not only about the music but about how to connect with an audience and do well by the art form.

Always loved Rasey's playing on the sound track to "Chinatown." http://csis.pace.edu/~varden/navarro/UanRaseyInterview.html

I see Ghost has put this up over in Jazz in Print, too.

Thanks a lot.

(Steve Schwartz quote from JPL) "Very sad news for the jazz radio community. Oscar had recently, August 2005, gone back on the air at WVXU in Cincinnati. All of his programs are archived on the website below. So long, Oska T." Radio Personality, Jazz Historian Oscar Treadwell Dead At 79 I regret to announce that my uncle, Arthur K. Pedersen, A.K.A. OSCAR TREADWELL, passed away today, April 1, 2006. He fell ill on Thursday, and was hospitalized until he passed today. His four children were by his side. According to his wishes, his remains will be donated to scientific study. I am unaware of any planned memorial services at this time. Paul Evans Pedersen, Jr. Hammonton, NJ COOKBEAUX@aol.com Visit website: http://www.oscartreadwell.com/

In addition to listing live jazz in West Michigan, this month's Jazz Datebook also includes special program listings, such as our April 16th broadcast of Fred Hersch's solo concert recorded in Grand Rapids last month and a link to part of the live studio broadcast by bassist Matt Brewer (Greg Osby Trio). http://www.bluelake.org/datebook.html

Yes Chuck, it's time to start and time to stop. Wish I had that one. Only on Japanese?

Ditto "Shades of Red" and "Let Freedom Ring," as well as "Demon's Dance" and "Old and New Gospel," plus the Birdology Tribute to Charlie Parker with J Mac, Johnny Griffin and Cecil Payne on saxophones, Duke Jordan, piano, Roy Haynes, drums, amongst others. And "Donna" with Miles Davis on Blue Note.

Listening to "Shades of Redd" on the radio now. A listener sent in this article: JACKIE McLEAN: Sugar Free Saxophone by Mike Zwerin 24 September 1998 PARIS - Jackie McLean was looking for the common tone, to be able to move between all 12 tonal centers with total freedom and under complete control. The listener should know nothing about this. In order for this to work, the force must be emotional not technical. One night, during his two weeks at the Magnetic Terrace here in Paris, he felt he got pretty close to something he's been searching for for a long time. But those breakthroughs come and go and maybe don't really come at all and after a few days had passed he was no longer so sure. Anyway he's still playing and trying. McLean is among the few remaining evergreens with enough will and force to motivate themselves night after night despite age, a demanding métier, prejudice, tangents and contrary trends. His alto-saxophone style combines the solid texture of Sonny Rollins's tenor and the fluidity of Bud Powell's piano - shorthand, but true enough as far as it goes. His angular-phrased tough, seductive, sound is as unmistakably recognizable as anybody active today. He calls it "sugar free." Which may or may not have Freudian implications because he grew up on Sugar Hill, once a noble corner in Harlem which then soured into drugs and shoot-outs. "The streets were clean when I was a kid there," he said, at once proud and sour about it. "Duke Ellington, Nat Cole and Don Redman lived in the neighborhood. People cared about our neighborhood." McLean, who was born in 1932, heard Charlie Parker at the age of 14 and "the first time that name came out of my mouth I knew at that moment I was going to be a musician." Five years later, he joined Miles Davis. Looking back, he wondered: "How did I do it that fast?" He was fast and furious in his early 20s. "When I was strung out on dope my horn was in the pawn shop most of the time and I was a most confused and troublesome young man. I was constantly on the street, in jail, or in a hospital kicking a habit. "The New York police had snatched my cabaret card and I couldn't work the clubs any more except with [Charles] Mingus who used to hire me under an assumed name. [He can be heard already moving between tonal centers on Mingus's record 'Pithecanthropus Erectus' in the '50s.] The thing that saved my life was a Jackie McLean Fan Club started in 1958 by a guy named Jim Harrison. I didn't have a big name or anything but he collected dues and he'd rent a hall once a month and present me in concert." McLean played the saxophonist - four years at $95 a week - in the first Living Theater production of the "The Connection," an off-Broadway milestone which cast a new perspective on the nature of make-believe. The junkie hustling the audience in the lobby turned out to be an actor, the hostile woman in the mezzanine was part of the cast. Some of the actors were addicts, but you weren't sure who. Actors playing characters on stage never looked the same again. "I fell in love with theater then and there," McLean said. "Even my saxophone playing became a lot more theatrical after that." Remebering how lean and mean he looked in those days, like an early James Dean, and seeing him turn 60 with a girth approaching the late Sydney Greenstreet, it was astonishing how the lust to take risks can be, if anything, greater 35 years later. There has never been and there certainly was not now anything approaching fat or phlegmatic about this man's head. The following is a story about the old days told without punctuation during a run to a pharmacy to buy a cornucopia of homeopathic medicines (similar runs were once made for cough syrup or a lot worse): "Sonny Rollins and me were sitting in this club and suddenly the door opened and it's Sonny Stitt and he said 'okay I've been waiting for this,' and he had an alto under one arm and a tenor under another and it was like 'High Noon' or something and he said 'you're both hot stuff from New York and you both think you can play well I'll take on both of you up on the killing stand come on get up there on the killing post both of you.'" Those were tough and competitive times and survival was day-to-day. Stitt did not survive, while McLean and Rollins were still picking up steam, combining honed intelligence with renewed energy at an age when most men are well into retirement. It may or may not be coincidence, but both had strong wives who managed their careers. McLean said his wife Dolly "stood up when other women would have crumpled, or killed me. For years, she was the one who worked day jobs to keep us and our three kids together. I really owe her." Both McLean and Rollins also paced themselves by retiring from full-time playing for years during their middle age. Rollins periodically left for such places as India, upstate New York and the Brooklyn Bridge to meditate. McLean joined the faculty of the highly rated Hartt School of Music of the University of Hartford in Connecticut in 1970, and he became chairman of its African-American music department. The department was established, he had a National Endowment for the Arts grant for his chair and he could afford to bring in guest lecturers when he was away. So he "came back on the scene for real. My original mission is still the same. I intend to try and continue to be significant on the instrument. Not just 'Jackie McLean, oh I remember him.' But to be at the forefront of the horn. I'm ready to kick the doors down." Photo: Jackie McLean. Credit: Christian Rose <· · · · · · [ E-MAIL TO MIKE ZWERIN ] [ BACK TO JAZZNET ] · · · · · · · · · ·> If you value this page, please tell a friend or join our mailing list. Copyright © 1996 -1999 Culturekiosque Publications Ltd All Rights Reserved http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/aloci...ugeraintrovert/

I was late to the party on Jackie Mac, but once there thanks to Nessa, had the good fortune to see him a number of times, including in close quarters in 1992 on jazz cruise dedicated to Dizzy when J allowed me to interview him. Was at his birthday celebration at the Iridium a couple of years ago and saw him amid his family as well as knocking another band into shape on stage. Man, I thought he'd go on forever. He was so much more powerful than Grachan Moncur at their Chicago Jazz Festival Reunion in the (was it 1990's, that long ago?) His music will go on forever. Rest in peace music messenger.

Henry Threadgill, X-75 Volume 1 on Arista/Novus (1979. Directed by Steve Backer; produced by Michael Cuscuna). 9 piece ensemble or less...

www.bluelake.org WBLV FM 90.3/WBLU FM 88.9 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. est Kalaparush (Born March 24, 1936 in Clarkville, AR.) is our featured artist. Each hour of the program will include some of his music, with a midnight special hour-long re-broadcast of Kalaparush and The Light live on Blue Lake Public Radio from March 3, 2005.

That's a good point. The daily me becomes the daily them. The band played in Ann Arbor tonight. I'm at work, playing Lennie Tristano's music among others, and await any word on the Kerrytown concert.

Did he say Large?

Allen, Yes, the Velvet Lounge is the former home of Jelly Roll Morton which is why they continue their avant garde music policy.

I tried using "Mr." in an article for the Grand Rapids Press and the editors asked me, "What? Is he DEAD?"

14 minute version of Coltrane's "Africa" on the new CD. I'm liking that Zenon tune "2and2." Played Nicholas Payton's trumpet solo on "When Will the Blues Leave" over and over from that first disc. Ornette's themes catch me -- people say the meeting between John Coltrane and Don Cherry and Ornette's rhythm section ("The Avant Garde," Atlantic) didn't work, but the world without their version of "The Blessing" would be less of a swinging place.

The touring Dutchmen touch down at the Kerrytown Concert House, Ann Arbor, on March 28th. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/arts/mus...i=5070&emc=eta1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- March 23, 2006 Jazz Review ICP Orchestra's Experimental Jazz Swings at Tonic By NATE CHINEN For the first 10 minutes of the ICP Orchestra's early set at Tonic on Tuesday night, the pianist Misha Mengelberg and the drummer Han Bennink indulged in an improvised duet, something they have been doing together for roughly 40 years. Their styles were complementary, if a bit bizarrely so. Mr. Mengelberg gave the impression of a man groping for the doorknob in a darkened room. Mr. Bennink occupied the same room, but with a different temperament, impatiently and heedlessly knocking things around. That somewhat comedic contrast has always characterized Mr. Mengelberg's rapport with Mr. Bennink; as an exploratory pair, they have as much in common with Laurel and Hardy as with Lewis and Clark. In 1967, they applied their collective energies to the formation of a Dutch avant-garde movement called the Instant Composers Pool, or ICP. (A third founding member, the multireedist Willem Breuker, left the organization within its first decade.) The ICP Orchestra, a flagship in a small fleet of like-minded projects, took shape in the early 1980's, with Mr. Mengelberg and Mr. Bennink at the helm. The 10-piece group still adheres to Mr. Mengelberg's mandate of "instant composition," a term that's best understood in opposition to the formless expanse of free jazz. At Tonic, most of the music was spontaneously conceived, and a good deal of it bore the hallmarks of free-form experimentalism: clarinet squeals, saxophone shrieks, twitchy arco bowing on viola, cello and double bass. But there were signposts embedded in the music. Coordinated ensemble figures cropped up unexpectedly, hinting at a secret discipline and a fondness for bygone jazz styles. Swing — the jump-band variety, not the polished orchestral fare — was a shadow presence throughout the evening. On one tune, horns and reeds attacked a scrap of melody with ramshackle exuberance, while Mr. Bennink's bass drum thumped four beats to the bar. Mr. Mengelberg, soloing with the rhythm section, reached for a modern sensibility; he sounded more than a little like the Duke Ellington of "Money Jungle," a 1962 outing with Charles Mingus on bass and Max Roach on drums. Every other member of the orchestra had at least one solo turn; a few, like the clarinetist Michael Moore, the cellist Tristan Honsinger and the trumpeter Thomas Heberer, made multiple contributions. The most engagingly emphatic was Tobias Delius, playing tenor saxophone on a set-closer; he began in the hard rhythmic style of Illinois Jacquet, and gradually pushed toward catharsis. Mr. Delius was essentially riding the wave of the ensemble's propulsion, which transported the song from crisp Ellingtonian swing (circa 1930's) into cacophonous group improvisation (late 60's). In that moment, and on an equally immersive rumba, ICP lived up to its name; not just the first two letters, but also P, for "pool." Copyright 2006The New York Times Company