Lazaro Vega

Imagine The Sound was, also, a close look at Taylor's playing. Bloody piano. Seen Taylor twice that I remember. The first time in New York. My wife had heard The Blue Man Group was a "must see" so we agreed that if we went to that, then I got a "pick," and it just so happened they were on the same night. The Blue Man group wasn't all that, but it was entertaining. Taylor was on a double bill with Phillip Glass. The Glass show emptied out and we were right on time. That performance, solo, was transforming. Hearing him live, doing his poetry and dance, and then the very, as Litweiler has said, elemental aspect of his music. Elemental in terms of Creation Myths and juxtaposition of geological forces with those of water, pressure and heat, air and fire. When he did play blocked chords the effect was like a tremendous machine: the piano sounded 10 yards long. In other words Taylor had me trippin'. The second time was at Orchestra Hall in Chicago. That was supposed to be a trio performance but Taylor's sidemen were stuck somewhere (I think it was late January or February). Hearing him solo in such a grand concert space was perfect. The way he constructed the music from his scores was fascinating, as were the slow sections, which were long and developed at that concert. Reading Balliett's assesment and he comes back to the "otherness" of Cecil Taylor's music in terms of musical revolution, that he was part of it but didn't attract followers. Today, that arguement is harder to see with so many pianists dipping into aspects of Taylor's vocabulary (Marilyn Crispell and Craig Taborn come to mind as players well versed in the world of Cecil Taylor) and Taylor's collaborations such as the recent recording with the Italian Instabile Orchestra.

I've been looking around and can't find this for internet viewing? Is there a link you could put up? FWIW major chunks of our five hour radio program was dedicated to Cecil's music last night, with the written insights from Balliett and Bill Shoemaker (?).

Where did you get all that unissued material?

This is the playlist for this week’s Vinyl Side of Midnight, which can be heard on 89.7fm WLNZ in the Greater Lansing area, or you can tune in internationally on the web on www.wlnz.org - hosted by Mike Stratton, Sunday nights, 9- midnight, Eastern Standard Time. Feel free to forward this to friends. Contact Mike Stratton at dreamtrane@sbcglobal.net For more information, visit www.mikestratton.com 1/22/06 Wynton Marsalis & Rodney Whitaker This week I had the pleasure to interview Rodney Whitaker and Wynton Marsalis together (Wynton was on the phone and Rodney was in the studio). This week I’ll play the interview and music by both artists, in a number of formats. Wynton Marsalis has had a celebrated career, from being a side man with Art Blakey through a storied set of albums as band leader of Quartet, Quintet, Septet and Orchestra. He’s won Grammies and a Pulitzer and broke ground by rekindling the fire of straight ahead mainstream jazz. Rodney Whitaker is one of the world’s finest bass players. He’s recorded with Roy Hargrove, Terrence Blanchard, Wynton, and numerous other fine musicians. He’s currently the head of MSU’s Jazz Program and plays with the band, The Professors of Jazz. The Lincoln Center Orchestra will be playing this coming Wednesday at the MSU Auditorium. Get your tickets through the Wharton Center Box Office, or check out some free tickets I’ll be giving away on the show Sunday.

Came in today. Will try and play some of it tonight on Jazz From Blue Lake.....

Hey man, played that "Blue Lou" from the Arno with Orgo radioissimo broadcast and that swings hard. We'll be featuring Andrew Hill tonight, same bat time, same bat channel.

Thelonious Monk recordings are highlighted tonight as Jazz From Blue Lake presents the premier pianist, composer and bandleader from the 1940's. Web streaming live from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. est. www.bluelake.org At midnight, "Out on Blue Lake,"featuring the New York Contemporary 5, Don Cherry with Ed Blackwell, Ornette Coleman's quartet with Geri Allen, maybe some Lester Bowie doing St. Louis Blues (Chicago Style) who knows, we'll see. (edit to add we'll feature Amiri Baraka with Malachi Thompson's Freebop Band recorded by Blue Lake in Grand Rapids, including Baraka poems set to music by Monk, Ellington).

Was this ever on CD?

Maybe you can contact him and ask. See: http://www.wguc.org/wvxu/jazz.asp or http://www.wguc.org/contact/

Thanks for the suggestions. AHHHH! The "Black Brown and Beautiful" we have at work is not the Flying Dutchman lp, but this one: http://tinyurl.com/awapu

Had a chance to listen to Oliver Nelson's son speak at an IAJE convention in Chicago. Nice radio program here, good script, especially; and lately Nina Simone is under my skin. That "Sunday in Savannah" is one reason why. Other pieces we might work in tonight on Jazz From Blue Lake, to carry on the thread, would be something from Blakey's "Freedom Rider." And then three pieces which feature King's own voice with jazz accompaniment: Max Roach "It's Time" from Chatahoochi Red; Leo Smith's "Nuru Light: The Prince of Peace (for Martin Luther King)" on from Spirits of our Ancestors (Nessa); and John Hollenbeck "The Drum Major Instinct" from one of his self produced recordings. Of course we'll cop some of your ideas from this program. Don't have that Mary Lou Williams piece, though.

Yeah, baby.

p.s. There's a new program called "Media Guide" which can monitor a radio station's tower with software that recognizes music programmed into it. There are agencies hired by record companies to send out music to radio stations and now, with this new software, they can tell if it gets played from our tower and if it doesn't they call me up and threaten to not send anymore music or otherwise accuse me of not holding up my end of the "bargain." In any case, tonight's playlist continued with Anthony Brown's Orchestra, Tang; Omar Sosa, Nuevo Manto; Either Orchestra live in Addis, Muziqawi Silt; Diz's U.N. Orchetra, Kush; the Nia Quintet, Bellamy's Dance... Frequently modulated, your host, V

montg If you turned on Blue Lake once, heard Feather, and turned it off I'd understand. But if you've come to know our evening programming I would hope you stick around for the switch up. With 5 hours a night we're not exactly cramped for time, and various strains from the world of jazz flow freely. Unpredictablity sometimes happens. And if an idea comes to mind, or, Little Jazz. Yes, Roy Eldridge was here. Last night at 1:30 a.m. we got into Roy and stayed with him mostly as a sideman and mostly alongside Chu Berry or Coleman Hawkins, Teddy Wilson (with and without Billie), Krupa, Artie Shaw, FLETCHER HENDERSON, until 3 a.m. Everything that went on before 1:30 since 11:30 was newer, including an hour of "avant-garde" music, Out On Blue Lake, from midnight, including the recent release by The Respect Sextet, their version of Fred Anderson's composition, "3 on 2." Radio stations play new records because they are sent to them, and the radio is also, for good or bad, supposed to convey a sense of the time we live in according to the marketplace. And with the same kind of humor Braxton used in Downbeat when he said something to the effect of, I want to be around for Sinatra's senile stage, I want to be able to play Paul Anka's Verve recording and have "True" stuck in my head the next day while I'm pushing the lawn mower. It's like the aftertaste of a dinner mint, or the sticky residue of cotton candy. It's nothing. It was fun while it lasted, or not, but that's what last summer sounded like to many people (regardless of Blue Lake). To have to discuss ephemera like that, though, is like trying to recreate the reasons you used last year's tinsel. It's Pop. And it's popped. Why try and put air back in it? Which is why I'm officially taking Feather OFF my top ten list! If you heard Krall and switched us off you'd miss an hour such as this last one featuring Dizzy: Duke and Diz, U.M.M.G.; Diz with Machito's Orchestra conducted by Chico O'Farrill, Three Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods; Randy Weston with Diz, African Sunrise; The Seattle Repertory Jazz Ochestra, In the Beginning God, from a new CD of Ellington's Sacred Concert. Commercial intruders beware: Redemtion is nigh! At heart Blue Lake's jazz programming recognizes our non-commercial soul, but flirting with commercial music is just that -- the wind around the hem of a girl's skirt.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainmen...ent_music-photo JAZZ REVIEW Barber's sneak preview radically provocative By Howard Reich Tribune arts critic January 9, 2006 In an era when most female jazz vocalists still are cooing love songs drenched in nostalgia, a few are searching for something fresh to say. None may be probing more deeply into the meaning of life and humanity than Chicago singer-pianist Patricia Barber, who over the weekend offered a preview of an artistically ambitious, potentially revelatory song cycle. Playing before a standing-room-only crowd at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Barber on Saturday evening performed excerpts of her forthcoming "Mythologies," an extended work that has been three years in the making. Inspired by Ovid's "Metamorphoses" -- the same text that Chicago director Mary Zimmerman famously adapted for Lookingglass Theatre in 1998 -- Barber's suite similarly seeks to express ancient truths in contemporary idioms. But Barber's task may be more challenging than Zimmerman's, for a jazz composer does not have the benefit of working with actors and costumes, dialogue and scenic design. Instead, the musician who chooses to address the texts of a venerable Roman poet has at her disposal only melody and harmony, rhythm and rhyme. Barber has hit on an ingenious strategy, crafting a single song about each of 11 mythological characters who inhabit Ovid's "Metamorphoses." By creating musical vignettes that evoke the spirit of Orpheus and Narcissus, Oedipus and Persephone, Barber brilliantly has found the means to re-imagine a piece of literature for a jazz context. Better still, she radically changes the musical setting for each of her songs. Thus she sketches one character simply by singing alone at the piano, another by collaborating with a splendid chamber choir and yet another by bringing on a trio of young hip-hop singers. The expressive range of this music proves thrilling, even though all of it clearly derives from a single sensibility: the spare, sometimes austere jazz idiom that long has been Barber's forte. If listeners did not know that Barber's opus had been inspired by Ovid's work, they nonetheless could savor these excerpts for their skill in merging melodic elegance and literary wit. These songs, in other words, stand on their own as immensely attractive jazz pieces, apart from their source material. Listen to the sleek lyric phrases and quasi-rock backbeat of "The Moon," the clever pop hooks and wicked social commentary of "Hunger," the sumptuous choral voicings and rapturous poetic imagery of "The Hours," and it's clear that a first-rate songwriter is at work. The excerpts of "Mythologies" that Barber performed at the MCA, in a concert organized by the indispensable Chicago arts group Contempo, included several vividly effective performances. Among them, this listener will not soon forget the hip-hop artists of the Chicago Children's Choir firing off Barber's text, while the members of Choral Thunder cried out, "Who'll save us now? Who'll save us now?" Though a final appraisal of Barber's "Mythologies" will have to wait until a complete performance (the work will be released on Blue Note Records in August), this preview foreshadowed what could be one of the major jazz events of the year. ---------- hreich@tribune.com Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

A new concert series of jazz and improvised music is now taking place on Monday evenings at Silvie's, a music venue at 1902 W. Irving Park in Chicago. The series is called Eight Million Heroes, and features both Chicago-based musicians and musicians from out of town. Music starts at 9:30 PM, there are generally two sets, and the cover charge is $5.00 (unless otherwise noted). Some evenings also feature a DJ spinning records before, between, and after the sets. The series is jointly curated by Chicago musicians Nate McBride (bass), Jason Stein (bass clarinet), and Jeb Bishop (trombone), with assistance from Michael Zerang (percussion). Information about concerts in the series can be found online at eightmillionheroes.blogspot.com Upcoming concerts currently booked include: January 16, 2006: Guillermo Gregorio Ensemble January 23: David Boykin Ensemble January 30: Herculaneum and QMRplus February 6: teizaiha (Josh Abrams/Tim Daisy/Nori Tanaka) and Go! (from North Carolina) February 13: Fred Lonberg-Holm/Paul Giallorenzo/Mike Reed Trio February 20: Nate McBride/Jason Stein/Jeb Bishop/Michael Zerang February 27: Jeb Bishop with Jeff Albert (trombonist from New Orleans) March 6: Shannon Morrow Project March 13: Nate McBride/Jason Stein/Jeb Bishop/Michael Zerang March 20: James Falzone Project March 27: Ways and Means Trio We hope to see you there.

John L, gotta line on that boot?

Sorry Christiern, didn't see it.

If you are in NY for IAJE and are loolking for something to do on Friday morning, January 13th I will be doing a one-on-one panel with jazz advocate Dan Morgenstern. It takes place at 10am in the New York East Room, 3rd floor, Sheraton Hotel I've solisited lots of interesting questions from jazz people around the world.I'd welcome yours too. Bring it with you and we'll see you there. Steve Schwartz WGBH, 89.7FM, Boston www.wgbh.org/jazz

Nice "Lady Bird."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...&sn=001&sc=1000 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PHIL ELWOOD: 1926-2006 Beloved Bay Area jazz and blues critic - Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic Wednesday, January 11, 2006 Phil Elwood, one of the best friends jazz and blues ever had, died Tuesday of heart failure, only four weeks after the death of his beloved wife, Audrey. He was 79. As a critic for half a century, Elwood pursued a lifelong love affair with the music that began in the living room of the Berkeley home of Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange, when he first heard a record by Louis Armstrong as a high school student. "I wish I could go back and stand in that living room again," he said two years ago. "I'd remember exactly how it felt." Elwood covered jazz, rock, blues and comedy, the entire panorama of nightlife, for the San Francisco Examiner beginning in 1965. He continued his career at The Chronicle after the two papers merged in 2000 and retired in 2002. He was an endless fount of jazz lore, an unflagging enthusiast of the music and a world-class raconteur blessed with an extraordinary memory. He was also one of the first people to broadcast jazz on the FM dial. His weekly radio program, "Jazz Archive," began in 1952, when very few people even owned FM radios. His show continued on Berkeley's KPFA until 1996. "Talk about old school," said rock musician Huey Lewis, "he was a music lover. Imagine that. He actually loved the music. They don't make 'em like that anymore." "Phil was the quintessential jazz critic,'' said jazz great Jon Hendricks, who lived in the Bay Area for many years and rubbed shoulders with Elwood at clubs and festivals around the country and the world. "Most jazz critics love the music, but Phil knew the music as well as loved it. He and Ralph Gleason hung in the clubs, hung with the cats. They were part of the scene just like the musicians. Phil loved it all, from Bunk Johnson to Louis to Bird, up through Coltrane and into the avant-garde. He was the complete critic.'' George Shearing, the great jazz pianist who knew Elwood for half a century, said: "We lost a very capable and musically savvy writer in Phil Elwood. He knew his craft and he knew his music. But beyond that, he was my friend, whose wit, loyalty and kindness knew no bounds.'' "Phil was an awfully good man," said rock musician Boz Scaggs. "It was always nice running into him at shows, mostly jazz and blues for us. I could always count on him for the historical perspective and some funny stories." Elwood was born March 19, 1926, and raised in Berkeley, where his father was an agriculture professor at the University of California. He first saw Count Basie in 1939 from the balcony of Sweet's Ballroom in Oakland while he was still attending Berkeley High School. He used to ride his bicycle around to Oakland thrift stores and spend his paper route money buying old jazz 78s by King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton and others. Those discs were the beginnings of a legendary jazz record collection, which he stored in a serpentine basement in his North Berkeley home. He also had an entirely separate career teaching American history to high school and college students throughout the East Bay, rising early to go to class after meeting post-midnight Examiner deadlines covering some nightclub show or rock concert. He also taught a famous history of jazz class at Laney College in Oakland that, over the years, was attended by many aspiring musicians and critics. "I remember him coming into his Monday night jazz history class at Laney College in the mid-'70s," said Chronicle jazz writer Jesse Hamlin, "with a funky old record player and a old briefcase stuffed with scratchy albums, most without their jackets. He'd just start riffing and reminiscing and playing records, never referring to notes, for 90 minutes at a stretch. That music was in his veins." "Phil was always there," said jazz vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, "He was the person on the scene. He didn't call somebody to ask what happened; he was right there to watch and hear for himself. Everything he wrote was his own personal experience. Even if he didn't write about it, he'd be there. He liked a lot of different musicians, and he was very proud to be part of the music world and proud of the people around him, and he made you feel proud to be part of it. It didn't matter whether he gave you a good review or a bad review, what mattered was Phil was there." Over the course of his distinguished career, Elwood covered anything that moved on stage. In his 2002 farewell column for The Chronicle, he noted the breadth of acts he covered in just his first weeks on the job. "I reviewed Stan Kenton one night and Lena Horne the next," Elwood wrote. "I heard Charlie Byrd at El Matador, and Tom Lehrer at the hungry i; also Art Blakey, Chico Hamilton, Denny Zeitlin. Kay Starr, the Mills Brothers, Cannonball Adderley, Joe Bushkin and bassist Vernon Alley, and Duke Ellington at Basin Street West. My first seven weeks (21 reviews or features in print) ended Aug. 31 with a Beatles show at the Cow Palace that afternoon and Judy Garland at the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos that night." One of his most famous reviews came when he caught an unknown opening act at a long defunct San Francisco nightclub called the Matrix and gave the young Bruce Springsteen -- appearing with his rock group Steel Mill -- his first major review. After his retirement from The Chronicle, Elwood continued to write a column for the Web site Jazz West. In 2002, he received the Beacon Award from the San Francisco Jazz Festival and was the subject of a tribute concert, underwritten by See's Candies. He is survived by his sons, Peter and Josh, both of Berkeley, and Benjamin of St. Paul, Minn.; his daughter Lis of Sierra City; and six grandchildren. No services are planned. Chronicle staff writer Jesse Hamlin contributed to this report. Page A - 2 URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file...MNG5LGLEN01.DTL -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

Ornette Coleman - Rock The Clock (Fruit Tree 857) Scheduled for re-issue Jan 17 — Berlin radio broadcast from Nov. 5, 1971 — with Charlie Haden (bass), Dewey Redman (tenor), and Ed Blackwell (drums) Read in the Peter Niklas Wilson "Ornette Coleman, His Life and Music" book that previous issues were not the broadcast tape but an amature recording of the broadcast, though he does say it is an interesting document for including much material from the "Crisis"lp, the only known recording of "Who Do You Work For?" and a great version of Charlie Haden's "Song For Che." Haven't heard it. Comments, suggestions? Wish Ornette would bring out a disc of his current working band. The only other document of his double bass band was from way back, a live recording in Italy when the band had Charlie Haden and David Izenzon which, again according to Wilson and not my own listening, is not well balanced between the parts. The current version of the two bass band, which played a marvellous concert in Ann Arbor, was well balanced in that regard. Man is Ornette profound in that Dan Morganstern interview from 1965. "It has gotten so that in your relationships to every system that has some sort of power, you have to pay to become part of that power, just in order to do what you want to do," he continued. "This doesn't build a better world, but it does build more security for the power. Power makes purpose secondary..." He goes on to explain how he seeks to put the human being in the dominant role.

The last time bassist Todd Nicholson and drummer Tatsuya Nakatani played in West Michigan it was with the Billy Bang Quintet featuring Frank Lowe in April of 2003 at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids. That performance was recorded for broadcast on Blue Lake and will, hopefully, be issued on Justin Time records this year.

I think those were done in Denmark.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- January 9, 2006 Critics' Choice New CD's By THE NEW YORK TIMES John McNeil "East Coast Cool" (OmniTone) Some jazz groups can't escape their instrumentation. A quartet with piano, vibraphone, bass and drums must deal with the fact that it uses the same instruments as the Modern Jazz Quartet; it will have to define itself in relation to the band that got there first. The same goes for a band with trumpet, baritone saxophone, bass and drums: it has to orient itself either toward or away from Gerry Mulligan's original pianoless quartet, which he formed with Chet Baker in Los Angeles in 1952. The trumpeter John McNeil has kept a fairly low profile as a bandleader over the last 30 years, but recently he has been making a highly likable series of let's-try-anything records with OmniTone. He uses his new album to imagine a possibility: What if a band with the same instruments as the Mulligan-Baker group played themes with boiled down, contrapuntal lines, in honor of the ones Mulligan wrote, but engaged the bass and drums much more? (Mulligan's quartet records were beautiful but rhythmically dry.) To put it another way, what if that general sound, with the same blend of timbres and the same respect for concise melody, was generally brought up to date, made more flexible, with a more interactive group? What would it sound like? Any attempt to answer that depends on who the musicians are. Because the musicians with Mr. McNeil on "East Coast Cool" are Allan Chase on baritone saxophone, John Hebert on bass and Matt Wilson on drums, the music can remind you as much of Ornette Coleman's early-60's quartet - another important pianoless band - as Gerry Mulligan's early-50's one. Mr. McNeil wants to unlock the neat, airy, compressed feeling of the Mulligan quartet; he wants to open it up to modern possibilities. And he wants the music at least half planted on the ground. (A full-on free-jazz homage to Gerry Mulligan, who really liked his structure and swing, would make no sense.) So the pieces on the album, all originals but two - one of which is "Bernie's Tune," which the Mulligan band made famous - tend to have either a proscribed tonal center or a strong, swinging rhythm. Where there is actual free jazz, it's just an interlude, put in for variety: "Wanwood," a good, original ballad, has a few of these circumscribed sections. All the composing and arranging devices Mr. McNeil uses to discipline these pieces - the sudden dropping out of one or more musicians, the changes in rhythm, the use of a 12-tone row - give the music its character, but the wonder of the record is its breezy transparency. Mr. Wilson has a light, bouncing touch, which sounds like a result of a lot of listening to Billy Higgins; Mr. McNeil sprawls through long, Don Cherry-style improvisations - weaving in and out of tonal harmony - using a clear, dry, clarion upper register. And Mr. Chase, filling Mulligan's role, does the most to seal the record's connection to what inspired it: he plays with balance and authority, and keeps the temperature of his improvisations low. Mulligan fans shouldn't come to this wanting to hear what he would have done; it's a record that borrows its starting point, but comes to its own conclusions. BEN RATLIFF Copyright 2006The New York Times Company