Lazaro Vega

Gibbs was a guest at Blue Lake a few years ago: he was the guest artist with the Blue Lake Monster and it was a good concert: "Opus One," "What's New" and one of those Lionel Hampton-like two finger piano sprees on "Flyin' Home." The night before the concert he came by the radio station and went on the air from 10 p.m. to about 11:30 or so, just playing records and talking about his book (which was just coming out). After he left I went kinda nuts and played all this Terry Gibbs music, all this Woody Herman sideman stuff, just riffed around the theme of Terry Gibbs, played music by his son, that great band Terry had with Buddy DeFranco, the quintet things with Benny Goodman, some of his earliest music as a leader on Prestige. His solo on "Early Autumn" is still one of his greatest recorded efforts. At the concert the next night he said to the crowd he was a bit tired because he stayed up listening the radio in his hotel room until 3 a.m. He turned to the wings and said, "Everytime I'm falling asleep, Lazaro would play something I hadn't heard in years. He kept playing me, so who can sleep?" Then he fluffed it off saying something about his body clock being on West Coast time. Best review of a radio program one could hope to hear.

I met Mercer Ellington at his home in Denmark in 1985. While having drinks and talking "Things Ain't What They Used to Be" came up. Mercer said, "I wrote it in twenty minutes." His wife then poked her head around the kitchen door and yelled, "He was drunk!" Mercer explained that "Pop" called him very early in the morning, knowing Mercer had been out all night, and said we have an early recording session and need some new music. That is the legend of Ellington's method of discplining the troops, anyway, give them extra work... so I bought it. Great story. Years later David Berger told me that "Things Ain't What They Used To Be" was actually a Johnny Hodges tune that he lost in a poker game to Mercer.

Wow. Just happened to be featuring Dexter Gordon tonight on Jazz From Blue Lake and took up Chuck's advice by cueing a smoking "Sonny Moon for Two" from an old Black Lion LP. God love Kenny Drew. I thought Dexter got his behind-the-beat phrasing from Lester Young, and who was hipper than Pres? Not Dexter, but he gave it a go; he and Jug. Heard news that Dex's 1987 Chicago Jazz Festival appearance with Bobby Hutcherson was available on some bit torrent web stream here about a week ago. Sorry, no details. I remember driving by the Petrillo Music Shell stage that night while hearing WBEZ's broadcast of the performance on the car stereo and seeing Dexter riling the out of their minds crowd. Nessa was in there. Had to split and drive to Detroit to get sleep the next day then get up and help anchor the national broadcast of the Detroit Montreux Jazz Festival (the first and only time for such an honor). Here he was larger than life a year after appearing in "Round Midnight" and you can't imagine the adulation from Chicago. Dexter's solo with Eckstine on "Lonesome Lover Blues" and the way he blends in and riffs with Sonny Stitt, Budd Johnson, Gene Ammons and Leo Parker under the trombone solo, well...no one swings like that anymore. The development of that solo's riff as "Long Tall Dexter" (with Bud Powell's solo extending the idea to a point where all the pearls are about to drop from the string), is great stuff: it swings like mad. Dexter's extended "Cherokee" solo from that live 1947 Central Avenue marathon with Wardell -- he surpassed that at times in the 60's at Monmartre, but there's something about him looping the "High Society" quote in 1947 before punching a riff down the scale, then picking up a variation on "High Society" that's new and surprising. There are "Dexterisms" but those are not limitations in his music, no more than they were in Pres's or Tricky Sam Nanton's, for that matter. There are many examples of bebop coming out of Pres (Four Brothers), but where did they get the idea for that? The way Gordon "boots" the low notes during his solo on Herbie's "Watermelon Man" shows that Pres influence hung on for a long time. Catch a ride with Pres. Can only imagine that Dexter, like Young, was into Sinatra. Dex's "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry" is melodically sophisticated against Sinatra's purely phrased version, I mean, my God, what an imagination. The extended version of "Guess I'll..." from the Dexter in Radio Land series on Steeplechase is a knockout, too. Same basic arrangement but even more development. There's no denying the 50's were not his decade (from wence to Dooto) though the Bethlehem quartet recording (Daddy Plays the Horn) and his appearance on Stan Levey's Bethlehem date are memorable. The Detroit bassist Jaribu Shahid just about wanted to kill me when he read a review I wrote in the Grand Rapids Press praising the Dexter Keystone Recordings that were issued in the 80's on Blue Note. And this was years after the review. Waiting at dinner with the Roscoe Mitchell band when Jaribu, out of the blue, said anyone who thought those Keystone Corner recordings were good didn't know Dexter's true music, that it wasn't the Dexter he knew. He couldn't imagine anyone hearing that as wonderful. My eyes about popped out because who in Detroit would ever see a copy of the Grand Rapids Press? In Gordon's prime, though, he breaks up the phrases as much emotionally as he does musically...I mean Dexter's an entertainer, too, coming out of Louis Armstrong and Hampton's bands -- you can hear that in his solos. When Dexter cuts up it just makes me feel like he's thinking about BUSINESS as much as when his improvising makes clear his playful nature. The ups and downs of the man's life and music lived on the world stage equaled his humanity. What more is there to hear?

http://ellingtonweb.ca/

Man, who are those vocalists? What great variety. Miss that in the world of jazz these days. Nowadays it seems a club is one thing or another but not everything (or maybe that's the audience).

http://www.planetcanadice.com/Skits/KJOffer.mp3

Kinda suprised the Heliocentric Worlds Vol. 3 isn't listed in the "New Releases" catagory as it is popping up on "best of" lists for 2005.

Great thread, though the idea that his hard bop era is divorced from his post 1965 era is heel digging. Check out Porter's book on Trane for specific examples of how "The Night Has A Thousand Eyes" recording relates to some of the late material (I believe the example he uses is "Venus" though I'm not able to open the book right now). The gestures may be more general, even vague, but are rooted in his artistic development, his whole development.

Trane made the list with Monk as a new release. The Half Note is a helluva record, but it isn't new. Just picked it up. There's also Omar Sosa's "Mullatos;" The Ken Walker Sextet disc; Grachan Moncur's Octet Cd; the great Drew Gress recording "7 Black Butterflies;" George Russell's "80th Birthday Concert;" Charles Lloyd's "Jumping the Creek." Put Lorraine on there as a nod to trad jazz and to have one vocal record (the other "canidate" would be Fred Hersch's "Leaves of Grass" with Kurt Elling singing Walt Whitman). Feather's is a swinging big band oriented CD of mostly Ellington music with her lyrics. That was in there for Mr. and Mrs. America. So, who else is going to chime in with their top ten?

p.s. a broader overview of the year in jazz, including some Grammy nominations and Organissimo with Arno Marsh playing "Blue Lou" live on Blue Lake last July, may be heard New Year's Eve morning from 7 to 10 a.m. est over Blue Lake Public Radio, www.bluelake.org

Top 10 Jazz 2005 Blue Lake Public Radio Lazaro Vega, Jazz Director Dizzy Gillespie – Charlie Parker: Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945; Uptown. Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane: At Carnegie Hall; Blue Note. Sonny Rollins: Without A Song, The 9/11 Concert; Concord. Roscoe Mitchell Quintet: Turn; Rogueart. Rova, Orkestrova: Electric Ascension; Atavistic. Wayne Shorter: Beyond the Sound Barrier; Verve. Maria Schneider: Concert in the Garden, ArtistShare. Billy Bang: Vietnam: Reflections; Justin Time. Organissimo: This is the Place; Big O. Lorraine Feather: Dooji Wooji; Sanctuary.

http://www.holtzbrinckpublishers.com/acade...BookKey=1408980 Low Down, A. J. Albany's artfully composed and critically acclaimed memoir of life with her father, the great jazz pianist Joe Albany, is the story of one girl's gritty and unsentimental education in and around Los Angeles. Joe played with the likes of Charles Mingus, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker, but between gigs he slipped into drug-induced obscurity. It was during these times that his daughter knew him best. After her mother disappeared, six-year-old A. J. (or Amy Jo) and her charming yet deeply troubled father set up house in a seamy Hollywood hotel. While Joe finished a wee-hours set in some red-boothed dive, Amy would often be nearby, fast asleep on a patron's fur coat and clutching, perhaps, a 78 of Louis Armstrong's "Sugar Blues"—or, later, a photograph of the man himself, which was inscribed, "To little Amy Jo, always in love with you—Pops." Wise beyond her years and hip to the unpredictable ways of "Old Lady Life" at all too early an age, Albany here guides readers through the dope and deviance—as well as the jazz and genius—that characterized the Hollywood underground of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Low Down is a raw, gripping, and surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a young girl trying to survive amid outcasts, misfits, artists, and other troubled souls. Quotes "Albany recreates a landscape of her childhood where misery is a faraway sound floating above a voice speaking in tones of affection, terror, rage, love, and, most of all, a hipster's defiance."—Greil Marcus "In this beautiful memoir of jazz and junk, loyalty and abandonment, A. J. Albany [writes] with such straight-up charm and unsentimental lucidity that she makes her harrowing childhood seem as romantic and thrilling as she remembers it."—Francine Prose "On one hand, [this books offers] an authentic trip through Hollywood's lower depths. On the other, it examines the conflict between the need for drugs and the neediness of children. In presenting her father's generosity as well as his failings, A. J. Albany uses language that is both astringent and compassionate."—Carolyn See, The Los Angeles Times "The daughter of famed jazz pianist Joe Albany recounts a childhood marked by music, drugs, and thwarted potential in this impressive debut. Albany's hipster pedigree is impeccable: her mother was fresh off an affair with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg ('I gather Mom was Ginsberg's last heterosexual liaison') when she married musician Joe Albany, a troubled heroin addict credited as one of the inventors of bebop. Amy Jo was born early in the doomed marriage; by the time she was five, her mother had disappeared and the preschooler was living with her father in the St. Francis, a colorful flophouse in Hollywood ('like Eloise without the frills'). Young A. J. Albany became a fixture in the L.A. jazz scene, accompanying her father to the smoky bars and clubs where he performed. In addition to jazz legends such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, Albany's girlhood was populated with a nearly unbelievable cast of one-eyed junkies, dwarfs, and the inevitable hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold; each of these down-and-out figures is a nuanced character rather than a cliché. Thanks to her judicious use of humor, the book is truly affecting rather than maudlin, even in its most dn0 tragic moments. Albany employs an episodic structure that allows her the freedom to record events and memories in a way that seems true to her fragmented, tumultuous childhood. Though slim, Albany's well-wrought memoir contains emotional and lyrical volumes."—Publishers Weekly "The daughter of jazz pianist Joe Albany, a key figure in the birth of bebop, exposes the seamy world of Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s while spinning a pathetic tale of growing up as the child of addicted parents. When A. J. is five her mother deserts, and father and daughter take up residence in the St. Francis Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. In poignant staccato chapters, the author evokes vivid portraits of her fellow residents, a 'vast assortment of misfits' including a baby-sitter 'who did a lot of mescaline,' a cook-companion who was a transvestite and an addict himself, and her friend LaPrez, son of a 'strung-out hooker' who disappears after his mother overdoses. Joe's friendships with Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, and Sinatra are all part of the mix, but so is Dalton, the porno moviemaker who introduces A. J. to speed. A. J. is seduced by an uncle at 12, attempts suicide at 14, and eventually gives up trying to save her father, who dies alone in 1988 . . . The author has perceptively written what she knows."—Booklist "The daughter of respected jazz pianist Joe Albany debuts with a memoir of her young world, bracketed by a father's addiction and a mother's abandonment. The unnerving text primarily chronicles the nine years following 1962, when heroin-addicted Joe and his equally drug-dependent third wife had a baby girl and named her Amy Jo, after two of Little Women's heroines. Filtered through a child's eyes, the author's memories of those years in southern California include not just the dangerous shards to be expected, but also fragments of happiness and expectancy set against a backdrop of alternating neglect and loyalty. Albany's mother, who left when she was five, is almost always loaded on Dilaudid. Her father, on the other hand, in his loving, feckless way, made her the center of his unstable universe; he hugged her, brought her to work, and protected her fiercely . . . when he wasn't in rehab or jail. 'Trying to look out for yourself at all of six years old can be a brain-twisting experience,' writes Albany, and 'joy [is] strictly a luxury item.' Still, she unsentimentally captures the offbeat, fleeting pleasures: getting the television out of hock, taking trips to the Italian market with Dad, or catching a nap behind the bar at one of his late-night gigs. Circumstances guaranteed that Amy Jo would meet plenty of unsavory characters (the lecher who wanted her to check out his magic gizmo, the uncle who introduced her to incest), but also that she could lose herself in the music that surrounded her. Her prose resembles the shimmering complexity of bop, with its feeling of tight yet improvisational dartings through memory. From the slag heap of the junkie lifestyle, she manages to spin literary gold. [This book is] a vibrant testimony to survival founded on the author's childhood philosophy: 'Find love in some form, even when it appear to be absent.'"—Kirkus Reviews Author Biography A. J. Albany grew up in Hollywood. She now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

Jorrit Dijkstra Flatlands Collective Tour ­ www.jorritdijkstra.com Jorrit Dijkstra - alto sax, lyricon - http://www.jorritdijkstra.com/ James Falzone - clarinet Jeb Bishop - trombone Fred Lonberg-Holm - cello Jason Roebke - bass Tim Mulvenna - drums 12/7: Chicago, IL - Hothouse, http://www.hothouse.net/ 12/8: Bloomington IN - Bear's Place, http://www.bearsplacebar.com/index.php 12/9: Ann Arbor, MI - Kerry Town Concert House, http://kerrytownconcerthouse.com/ 12/10: Grand Rapids, MI - Urban Institute for the Contemporary Arts, http://www.uica.org/music.html 12/11: Kalamazoo, MI ­ Krafbrau, http://www.kraftbraubrewery.com/ >

Without being facitious, maybe Sonny Rollins could speak to Mr. Rivers. Such a strong philosophical guide he, more than anyone, might offer Rivers a suitable shoulder now.... This came across the Jazz Programmer's List: My presenting organization hosted Sam's Trio last May in Tucson and I had a chance to satisfy my curiosity about a matter that had long interested me. I asked Sam if he had retained the publishing rights to his most famous (and frequently recorded composition) "Beatrice." He told me "that's my retirement." What better tribute to a wonderful woman and partner in life. Steve Hahn, KUAZ-FM

UPCOMING MUSIC CONCERTS FLATLANDS COLLECTIVE with special guests WINDY & CARL Performing Saturday, December 10 8 PM The Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts 41 Sheldon Blvd. Grand Rapids, MI www.uica.org Flatlands Collective: Jorrit Dijkstra’s Flatlands Collective is a new project that brings some of Chicago’s hottest improvisers together with a remarkable alto saxophonist and composer from the lively Dutch improvisation scene. Dijkstra, Jeb Bishop and Kent Kessler had a successful musical encounter in Chicago’s Candlestick Maker in 2003, and found a common ground in a more international way of improvising, blending American and European improvisation traditions. Dijkstra met James Falzone in an ensemble he was coaching at the New England Conservatory in 1998, dedicated to the music of Dutch musical thinkers Misha Mengelberg and Guus Janssen. After projects in Paris, Vancouver, Edinburgh and Boston, the Chicago Collective is another example of Dijkstra’s interest in uniting musicians from different cities in the world, sharing similar improvisation ideas. Dijkstra says: ”I believe that the landscape in which you grow up has an effect on how your music sounds. This is what’s so interesting about jazz: musicians in New York, Barcelona, Moscow, Shanghai or Addis Abeba play this music, but there is always a distinctive local interpretation.” And he adds: “The first thing I noticed in Chicago is how flat it is. Whether this has an effect on the local musicians just as it had on me coming from the Netherlands, I’m researching with this project.” Jorrit Dijkstra writes most of the music, focusing on contrapuntal melodies, layered rhythms in multiple tempos and light electronic modifications. Plus of course lots of space for improvisation, sometimes in the form of little musical games or sets of cues. The Flatland Collective toured the Midwest in May 2004 and plans to do a second tour in the fall of 2005.

Man, there's no way I'd miss a Freddie Redd club hit right now. He hasn't toured to Chicago or Detroit in how many years? You guys are missing out on one of the great composer/pianists, and at 77 it's hard to say how many more of those club dates he'll have. AND, of course, the club needs to see people in the door. Don't let the tiny things in life keep you away from such an authentic jazz musician. And thanks for the note about his activity. Does he have an agent, or does he tour at all anymore (other than festivals)?

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/obitua...0,5545366.story

December 3, Saturday, 5:30 pm reception and dinner, 8:30 pm. concert. Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) 40th anniversary gala, "A Ruby Celebration: 40 Years of Great Black Music." Master pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, founding member and first president of AACM, along with Downbeat-named Rising Star, flutist Nichole Mitchell. Whole event $150, Concert only $25 gen, $10 students. 312 922-1900 or 313 649-9624 or tix.com. At IIT's Hermann Hall, 3241 S. Federal St., Chicago.

"She and He Is Who Fenn Love" and "Allotropes, Elements Different Forms Or Same" are two previously unrecorded Coleman numbers. Kuhn claims there are over 150 Ornette Coleman pieces now. The Cd is on ACT www.actmusic.com And www.joachimkuehn.com

THE NEW YORK TIMES -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- November 22, 2005 Jazz Review | Roswell Rudd A Little Nostalgia and a Lot of Unruly Trombone By NATE CHINEN The big, braying sound of Roswell Rudd's trombone has been a prominent feature of jazz's avant-garde landscape for more than 40 years. It still has a way of turning up in strange places: Mr. Rudd's latest album, "Blue Mongol" (Sunnyside), puts him in touch with Buryat throat singers from Mongolia. On Sunday afternoon at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, he went for something more familiar - although, in a way, almost as uncommon. For a celebration of his 70th birthday, he reunited with Eli's Chosen Six, the Dixieland band from his student days at Yale. A boisterous bunch of white revivalists, Eli's Chosen Six had its hot minute in the mid-1950's, when "college jazz" suggested a catchphrase rather than a curriculum. With the help of the producer and Yale alumnus George Avakian, the band recorded an album for Columbia Records in 1955, and it appeared a few years later in the film "Jazz on a Summer's Day." (Mr. Rudd missed the shoot, which would have involved zipping around Newport, R.I., in a convertible jalopy.) In the years since, the group has performed sporadically - and almost always without Mr. Rudd, by far the most prominent musician to have emerged from its ranks. The reunion, and the occasion, put Mr. Rudd in a nostalgic frame of mind. He spent much of his two hours of stage time in free-associative reminiscence, praising his bandmates and working toward an oral history of the group. This included tributes to founding members who could not be there, like the accomplished bassist Buell Neidlinger, whose successor, Bob Morgan, acquitted himself with a Fender electric. Reaching back at one point to his childhood in Connecticut, Mr. Rudd invoked the memory of his father, an amateur drummer. "By the time I was 8 years old, Duke Ellington and Spike Jones were my main guys," he said. "Music was like a big cartoon." The same could almost be said of Eli's Chosen Six. The cornetist Lee Lorenz and clarinetist Leroy Sam Parkins joined Mr. Rudd in scrappy frontline counterpoint - a hallmark of both Dixieland and the 1960's avant-garde. One of the liveliest pieces, "Sheik of Araby," opened with Mr. Rudd's plunger-muted blare over the thumping toms of the drummer, Steve Little. Another tune, "Tishomingo Blues," elicited rambunctious and well-rounded improvisations from all the horns, plus a few keyboard choruses by Dick Voigt. Buoyancy and brightness were common undercurrents, bubbling to the surface during the better solo choruses, like most by the cool-headed Mr. Lorenz and nearly all by the extroverted Mr. Rudd. Of course, Mr. Rudd was the star. Filling the function of a tailgate trombonist, he leaned on what he has memorably termed his "mammalian vocabulary" - a trove of anthropomorphic smears, wobbles, buzzes and slurs - but never loosened his grip on harmony or rhythm. He was as galvanizing a presence as ever; at his best, he made the music sound as if it were still being discovered.

And: http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/music/...ts/02940583.htm

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/music/...ts/05063481.asp

If there was a recording of Monk at age 16 playing "'Round Midnight" one could say it was as significant as the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet with Charlie Parker at Town Hall discovery. Without question the Bird and Diz IS the record of the year. And the Monk Quartet with Trane at Carnegie Hall is a close second. What a great year (for Beethoven, too).

Lester Bowie played several concerts and made one un-issued recording in the late 1990’s with Kahil El’Zabar’s Ritual Trio plus poetess Ntozake Shange. The evening of grooves, improvisation and poetry came to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in September 1998 and played the Urban Institute For Contemporary Arts. 200 attended. The artists drew upwards of 500 in Chicago and Philadelphia said El’Zabar. Prior to the concert in phone calls setting up the interview reprinted below, Bowie mentioned his family’s situation, the empty nest, and that he’d recently purchased acreage in Maryland to build a home and studio on, but with only one bedroom. I was like, with so much land, why not build a house with several bedrooms? “Because if I do then all my grand kids are going to want to stay there,” he said with a burst of laughter. At intermission of the Grand Rapids concert a listener mentioned that Bowie seemed to be using more circular breathing than usual. “In this music you use everything,” he said. Prior to this concert with percussionist Kahil El'Zabar, saxophonist/pianist Ari Brown, bassist Malachi Favors and poetess Ntozake Shange Bowie spoke from his home in Brooklyn with Blue Lake Public Radio's Lazaro Vega. September 11, 1998 Lazaro Vega: First, how many different bands are you currently involved with either as a leader or as a sideman? Lester Bowie: I'm only involved really right now with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Brass Fantasy. I do special projects such as the one we're doing with Ntozake. I'm working, also right now, with the Diane McIntyre dance ensemble. We're working on a dance project. But mostly it's just the Art Ensemble and Brass Fantasy now. That keeps me busy full time, sure does. Vega: I know for a while you had the New York Organ Ensemble and were pretty involved in The Leaders. Bowie: Yeah, right. Well it got to be too much. What happened, all the groups started getting popular and it got to be too much work to handle. Vega: So you've cut back to maintain your focus. How do you feel about the Art Ensemble being voted the Acoustic Jazz Group of the Year in the Downbeat Critics Poll? Bowie: It was a surprise. We were kind of surprised that it happened. Other than that, I think we must have won that before, probably twenty years ago or so. But it's always nice to win anything, I guess. But I mean it doesn't really mean anything special. It's almost like a meaningless award. Jazz groups have to make a living any way. You know when I was younger I used to look at Downbeat Magazine and I figured anybody in Downbeat must be making a living. But as I got more into it, I learned that wasn't always necessarily the case, especially in our case. Vega: Something along those lines that's kind of interesting: Now, today, when John Coltrane's records come out on Impulse! no matter if it's "A Love Supreme," or "Ballads" or the record with Johnny Hartman, or "Ascension," they sell 20,000 units. Bowie: A lot of jazz is like that; it sells over a period of time. They always say that jazz doesn't sell, but it's a lie, because it does sell, and it sells consistently year in and year out. For example, what you mentioned, the 'Trane records will continue to sell more and more as time goes by. So, they do sell quite a bit of records. What happens is these records are taken from the artist. I hope 'Trane's estate is getting the money. Because I know a lot of artists they re-issue and re-issue and the artist receives nothing. Vega: Especially over in Europe when the copyright laws run out sooner than they do in America. Since we've touched on it, how important is recording to you, and do you feel you should be on a major label such as Verve or Bluenote? Bowie: No, actually, we have a release coming out on Atlantic Records, the Art Ensemble has one (Coming Home Jamaica) and also the Brass Fantasy has one (The Odyssey of Funk and Popular Music). Vega: It's been a long time since you were on a major American label. Bowie: Yeah, right, but that doesn't really mean anything, either. You would think that anyone on a major label would be doing something, but when you speak of major label that means something to maybe a big pop star that might be getting some sort of benefit from the major. But we still don't get anything. Most of these labels they'll promote you for about a month, and then they'll just put it in the bin. And they keep selling it. They know that they can sell these copies 10 years from now, or 20 years. So there's no really big push to expand the audience. What I've been trying to do for years is to get the music played on a station other than jazz stations, you know, to expand the audience. Especially the work I've done with Brass Fantasy. We've done things by other sorts of artists. For instance, on this latest record we did Marilyn Manson, and we also did Puccini, we did Pavarotti's "Nessun Dorma”. I would like to hear the music played on the stations that play that sort of music. You know what I mean? If we play a Whitney Houston song I'd like to hear it on the same station that plays that sort of stuff. But the jazz thinking is such that (laughs), it is so limited that being with a major is even more frustrating than anything else. Vega: So, one way or the other, recording it is sort of just another part of your promotional kit. Bowie: That's exactly what it is. Right now what we're pushing for, actually, is to develop a really visible Internet presence. Because I believe that the future of the music lies in the Internet. It can be sold on the Internet. These record companies are going to be going out of business pretty soon, because people are just going to be downloading what they want to hear. And there are a lot of people interested in creative music, there are more and more and more. That's really going to grow. I mean, like you say, the Coltrane albums really sell a lot. They release one and it's at 20,000, it will be at 50,000 next year. Because people really got tired, too, of the same old formatted sort of thing, and the same old formatted music. They were missing all the enthusiasm, the creativity; that whole excitement about the music was lost. A lot of people are really going back looking for that. A lot of people knew from the beginning, people that supported us from the beginning. But a lot of people are looking back and taking another look and finding that there was something there. Because they got so bored with what's going on. And we need something. This is a different age. People have computers, they're multi-cultural, and they have many interests. They're not just interested in one sort of music any more. These people are interested in a wide variety of music, and that's what we're into. Vega: I think it's going to take awhile for the corporations, all six of the major entertainment giants, to catch up to what the people want. Bowie: Exactly, but what's going to happen is people are going to catch up themselves, because, like I say, we're going to make everything that we can do available on the internet, and the internet is sort of an equalizer. You can establish a presence on the internet; you can have just as much of a presence as a major company or anyone else. We're developing a Web Store right now. We have a new book that's coming out, and all this is in the last proof read right now, and will go to the printer's next week. And the Web Store will be open by December the first. The address is aeco.com. That's going to be a whole store. We're starting out printing up this coffee table size book, a glossy, really nice book about the whole story of the Art Ensemble, photos, interviews, a lot of things, a lot of information. It's going to be the first of our book publications. Along with caps, T-shirts, and develop a fan club, the whole scene. We're going to do it over the Internet. This is the first that will be actually our own web site and store. That's going to be nice. We're going to release CD's we made years ago just for collectors, things that haven't been readily available. We're going to make all that stuff available. Vega: Can we talk about music as music? The Art Ensemble, to me the "ensemble" word is key there because its ensemble music at it's most fluid, and I was wondering if you could comment on the musical process of ensemble playing with that group? Bowie: Well the Art Ensemble is exactly what it says; we're the Art Ensemble. We're really trying to develop music that can help stimulate intellectual thought. We think the answer to the problems of society lie in being able to raise the intellectual level. So the music is intended to do that first of all. It's intended to sort of kick-start the creative process. The music we play is kind of hard to explain. It's music that we really feel. It's like we take all sorts of elements, all sort of different reference points, and we have the freedom to be able to reference anything at any time. And at the same time to be able to listen and to be able to instantly create a situation. Many times you never know what's going to happen. You'll play songs that you never thought you were going to play. You play ensemble things that you had no idea you were going to play two minutes before. It's just about really being sensitive, and trying to play a music that is about music. It's about emotion, it's about traveling through these different emotions, and it’s about showing the listener all these pictures. We expect the listener to have, like, a movie going on when they hear us. That's what it's all about for us. It's about being in tune with what music is -- without limitation of what is or what isn't, without necessarily regarding a certain rule. We have the freedom to either play a tempo or not to play a tempo; to play a note or not to play a note; or to play what some people would say is a sound. The way we look at it, everything is a sound. A chord is just the name of a sound. They say C is a pitch; it's the name of a sound. So is a cat's meow a sound, so is a motorcycle, so is anything. There are a lot of sounds. We try to incorporate any sounds into the music. Sounds of life. Sounds of everyday, and incorporate that as part of the music. It's just like an endless research into the music that the deeper you get into it, the deeper you get into it. And all of it you can't explain yourself, it's something you have to really do. Vega: That's why I like listening to you because it's what jazz is supposed to be, it's carefully considered listening, but at the same time spontaneous and freewheeling. Bowie: That's what I always thought it was supposed to be, like you say. These are the elements that really constitute the music. We have to understand that this is a very young music. We're just beginning to really develop this music. This is not a time to put in any narrow definitions or parameters on what this music is because we're only at the beginning of the possibilities of this music. We're just beginning to learn the importance of music in our society. What we as musicians and artists have to offer to the intellectual development of the people that live here. Music is very important. It's important as a tool for learning, it can be a tool for healing, it can be no telling what, as long as we remain free to be able to create the music, to be able to experiment and to really research, and to really get time to develop the music. Vega: In terms of Kahil El’Zabar’s Rituals Trio, I think you were one of the original voices in the band, in 1985? Bowie: Yeah, I think so. Vega: So, in terms of that group, where do you feel it's going? Bowie: This is a whole different direction with the spoken word. We've been involved with a lot of different projects. I really wish sometimes that people in this country could really see some of the projects that we've been involved with: symphony orchestras, bands of African drummers, blues musicians. During the Olympics at Lillahammer, the 1994 Winter Olympics, the Brass Fantasy played with a Norwegian Brass group, part of my Organ Group and a 65 voice Norwegian choir. There are so many things that have been done that people aren't really familiar with. This voice thing is one of those sorts of projects. Like I told you before I get involved with special projects, and Ntozake has been involved with us for quite a few years, we did things twenty or thirty years ago on the West Coast, and up and down the East Coast seaboard. So we've had a long history of working together. She's of the spoken word of the same generation we're of (music). Vega: How does that pan out in concert? For instance, are you playing Kahil El'Zabar's music and then she's integrating with it? Bowie: We're doing some of Kahil's music, but we have some things that we do. We just finished a recording. We have some pieces that she had that we put the music to. It's really nice. Vega: With that element of spoken word, is that another element in ensemble music, or are you dealing more with regular song form and keys? Bowie: No, no,no,no,no -- this is right in the same bag. I would say you have the same basic idea in the music, this sort of creative development of the music, but adding the spoken word as another instrument, you know what I mean? It would be the same if it were a saxophone or trombone. Ntozake is another instrument. There are pieces of hers that we've set to music. It's really interesting. You have to hear it to understand it. There's really no way I could explain it except that you know my reputation, the people that are involved, and you know Ntozake’s reputation and quite a few people are familiar with her work. So we kind of pull with two different directions. We really have quite a mixed crowd. Vega: In your early training in the circus and in Jerry Butler's R&B bands, I was wondering how that upbringing impacts your music today? Bowie: Well, actually, my roots are that. I mean I'm just an advanced R&B cat as it is. That's all I am, basically, is like an advanced rhythm and blues cat. (Laughs). Vega: Real advanced! Bowie: (Still laughing) Yeah. But, I mean, my whole foundation was in that because I began playing professionally at a young age and did a lot of shows. It's really helped me in later years; it really helped my approach in terms of developing. That's one of the things I bring to the Art Ensemble, a lot of experience I had playing shows. So we were able to organize the music in a way that it could be acceptable as a show also. We had to work at it. We had to go into certain ways or methods of dealing with various types of audiences. Initially we began to do a lot of festivals. And festivals require really some planning For instance one of the records we made, "Baptism," was done right there in Michigan at the Ann Arbor Jazz Festival, that's on Atlantic Records and that's being re-released here soon, also. Any, anyway, that's what I mean about my showbiz-ness background. Vega: Do you see yourself as part of the St. Louis trumpet school with Shorty Baker, Clark Terry, and Miles Davis? Bowie: Yeah, well I guess I am. I'm from St. Louis... Vega: and you play the trumpet! Bowie...And I play trumpet. Those guys were inspirations to me and other guys that were not as well known. There was a guy named Bobby Dansy who was a friend of Miles who was one of the trumpet players around St. Louis who was very influential to me. But in St. Louis you come up, you know Clark Terry, you hear all his music, and you know all of Miles songs. You had to know all of Miles's tunes even to gig you know what I mean? I had to know all of his songs to even have a jazz gig. So I guess I'm part of that St. Louis tradition. Vega: During that time a jazz musician could put their children through college by playing their horn. There was work. There were the territory bands. Here in Grand Rapids we had a show drummer named Benny Carew who led a group that toured and at one time featured Hank Jones or Wardell Gray. People could work. And the rhythm and blues bands that you were in, it gave people an economic opportunity as well as a musical one, and that stuff is just gone now. Bowie: Yeah, that is really gone. Like you say, there was a time when you could work. I always tell my students when you're going to be a jazz musician the first thing you've got to do is be a professional musician, and that means you have to feed yourself with the instrument. That means you've got to work. But like you say the opportunities for work now are really diminished. When I came along everybody had a big band. B.B. King had a big band. He's got a stripped down band now, but I mean he had an actual big band -- three trumpets, a couple of trombones. Bobby Bland had a big band. Everybody had a big band. Vega: Albert King. Bowie: Albert King. Everybody had a band. All the traveling shows had big bands. When I did a lot of work with these traveling shows that were put together for the Temptations and Redd Fox and all these different various acts there was always a big band with that. There's no opportunity now for this to happen. Which is, I guess, a reason for the stagnation of the music, I don't know. Vega: Because of economics. Bowie: Well you know musicians have to make their own economics. I've got six kids. I've got one more to get through school. I've got one that's getting a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago right now. You have to work, and you have to make work if it's not available. And you have to travel. What musicians have to do now is be world travelers. Because there is work in Costa Rica, or Shanghai, all you have to do is get there and go out. There's no such thing as not having a band. As an American Jazz Band you can go anywhere in the world and get work. But what you have is most people are afraid to make that commitment now. Unless that commitment is made it's the only way you can develop and audience, it's the only way you can get work to keep a band working. You have to travel and you have to make your own work. Like you say, you don't have that opportunity, now. Vega: The chitlin circuit is gone; all those big bands are gone. Bowie: All the cats were in those bands, man. I played in a trumpet section with Kenny Dorham and Blue Mitchell. I mean all the bad cats were doing these shows. You know what I'm saying? We were doing the Apollo, and the Royal Theater, the Riviera in Detroit, the Regal. There was a whole scene happening. And not just those theaters but there were dances and concerts going on all over the country all the time. We were always working. Vega: That must have been a great time. Bowie: I'm glad I caught the tail end of that. It was really fortunate to get that. And now is a different thing, there are different rules. We just can't go and try to turn the clock back, that's not happening anymore. You've got to figure something else out. Vega: Yes: hustle to survive. Bowie: That's right. Vega: So are you headed out with the Art Ensemble next? Bowie: Actually, I'm on sort of semi-vacation right now because we've been touring since March. Vega: I understand you did the West Coast tour with just Roscoe, yourself and Don Moye. Vega: Right, because Malachi was sick. Vega: Malachi had his pace maker put in, right? Bowie: Right. He's doing O.K. now. He's doing great. Vega: will he make the gig in Grand Rapids? Bowie: Yes, that's going to be his first one, I believe. Then we start touring. After that we go from there to Europe, and a European tour. Vega: with Rituals? Bowie: No, no. Rituals goes and does a gig in Europe, but then that's it for Ritual. Then the Art Ensemble begins its tour. Vega: Louis Armstrong was a lead player, the trumpet in the New Orleans band was the lead instrument, and it played the melody. In the Art Ensemble do you see yourself in that role at all? Most of the roles in that group are different, you've redefined roles, but do you think the trumpet is a lead instrument in that group? Bowie: Oh yeah, the trumpet is a leading instrument in a lot of things. The trumpet is forceful. That's all I play is the trumpet whereas the rest of the guys are more multi-instrumentalists, playing all kinds of other stuff. You could say that, the trumpet is a lead instrument. In our situation it's not always that the trumpet is playing the lead at any particular time. We maybe playing something but the bass is actually lead and the trumpet and the saxophone are just comping. Or it could be a drum lead, or whatever. Vega: I did an hour long radio show on you the other night and featured the second side of your "One and Only" solo trumpet from the album "All the Magic." The first piece on the second side, "Down Home" is like a study in the low register of the trumpet, pedal tones. And I was absolutely amazed, because I've got a cornet and I mess around with it. I know a few things about playing a pedal tone where you drop the jaw, let the tongue settle down and blow a lot of air. But you were playing melodies in the pedals, and that just blew me away. To be able to get into that low thing usually the most I can do is make a blat. Or make a low note and it will have a ten second duration at the most. But to be able to move it in contour to a melody just blew me away man. Bowie: (Laughing). Like I said, pedals, they're notes, they're just other sounds. You have to learn how to use 'em. You have to just practice them; you have to practice them a lot. You can't wish you could do it and then do it. It's like you've got to practice them and get the breathing and get them to where you project and where you control it, control the pitch. It just takes work, that's all. Vega: Wow, it'd take a lot of work. Bowie: Yeah, a lot of work! A lot. Vega: The contemporary trumpet tradition to me is Don Cherry, you and Leo Smith. And Leo is really doing some wild things on the trumpet right now. Bowie: I haven't heard Leo for a while; I'll have to check him out. Leo's good. I remember when Leo first came to the A.A.C.M. Straight up from Mississippi, a little country boy and stuff (laughs). But I mean he really developed nicely. He's just got his thing happening, but it's been developing for a long time. Lazaro Vega is jazz director at Blue Lake Public Radio, www.bluelake.org. (End)

We'll be wishing Mr. Grimes a Happy Birthday tonight on Blue Lake Public Radio, with the web stream kicking back in at 11:30 p.m. est, and our special live broadcast with Mr. Grimes and Marshall Allen from earlier this year repeated tonight at midnight. www.bluelake.org (With regards to Night Lights).