Lazaro Vega

As someone on the periphery of Chicago, and Detroit, out here in Michigan, and about the same age as the guys you're talking about, maybe I can lend a perspective to your question, Jim, but certainly not a musicianly answer. There came a time where the notion of 'the tradition' changed. And I remember it well, the day it dawned on me that something wasn't the same any more. I was working at WKAR radio in East Lansing as a board operator (student job) around 1980, and Ken Beechler, the head honcho for cultural programming at the Wharton Center, and long before that the primary, go-to cultural programmer of performing arts at MSU, who knew I loved jazz, took a long pull on his cigarette, looked me in the eye and said, "So you support the "tradition" of jazz." The way he said it, obviously after having gotten wind of something in the air, was not what Arthur Blythe, or Bluiett, or the World Saxophone Quartet, or Muhal, or the Art Ensemble meant when they said the same thing. There was the 'spirit' of tradition, sanctified in recordings, and then there was this new thing, as it turns out, the codification of tradition for polemic reasons. I don't think the Chicago guys bought that. Von's example of the tradition was one incorporating Bird, Ammons AND Sun Ra, so it was mutable, not in the fickle sense, but just that is wasn't over yet. And the Chicagoans were living the echoes of their own revolutions in jazz, the 1920's and the 1960's, with the great consolidations of the swing era were a central part of the city. To say noting of the blues. So in a sense the mathematical implications of Trane's music were heard and felt in Chicago, it's just that they resulted in Anthony Braxton. Bebop was more of a New York based "movement," while Chicago wasn't as likely to get bogged down in harmonic labyrinths that bop eventually led to (which "caused" the whole hard bop reaction, etc.). Maybe it's the same with 'Trane: there are so many implications to 'Trane's ENTIRE output, why get stuck in a perpetual search for the tonic? It's almost as if the New York guys you're talking about are like the West Coast guys of the 1950's: that bop was something to revere and tinker with. I'm typing this was an 8 week old that's going to explode into crying any moment, and a two and a half year old that has me up from the computer 50 times in the last sentence. gotta go.

Didn't Iyer play on Roscoe Mitchell's Note Factory recording on PI?

Larry -- I hear what you're saying, and that sort of leaping from harmonic center to harmonic center by over-blowing a "harmonic" on the saxophone gets old when there's no melodic substance to the over all arc of the solo. If this were a "sound" environment, maybe that effect would be different, but as it is within specific parameters of rhythm and time, within song form structure, this sort of playing doesn't relate to the overall design of some of the music. I would add Malaby's playing with Mark Helias' Open Loose, with Malaby, Helias, and Tom Rainey, seems to find the shifting structures -- when the horn goes out, the form of the ensemble reacts and everyone has a say, still, and the horn isn't free to run down it's own sound hole -- more suitable to meaningful communication. (Clause me). Have you heard any of that band?

"Rats skratching in the walls. There's Rats scratching in the WALLS!"

That composition "Full Deck" for Jack Montrose is killin'. Who says the post-Ayler continuum doesn't swing?

For what it is worth, Rollins had one of those levitating the bandstand moments during the Chicago Jazz Festival I think it was in the late 1980's or early 1990's when Marvin Smitty Smith was the drummer in his quintet: the audience turned into a writhing sea of screams as he hung his toes over the edge of the stage and let blow with ecstacy and intellectual abandon. It was one of the most exciting musical events I've ever heard. Standing next to Dan Morganstern in the Press section of festival, and he just looked out at what was happening and said, This is one of those nights. Larry, where you there? John Litweiler? I think Chuck was there. He came back a year or two later, but without the drummer: he had a hand percussionist, and it never got off the ground. Had moments of wonder, but that earlier one: trance-end-dant.

I've often wondered if Lincoln Center would ever consider a concert of Muhal Richard Abrams’ music, which spans the width and breadth of the jazz tradition in, at times, a professorial manner. It seems some of Abrams’ music is academic enough to get through the' cat can't play his horn' critics that have been around as long as Albert Ayler. Moreover it would be musically worthwhile to have some of these proficient young players exposed to some of Abrams' rehearsal methods, approach to ensemble interplay and 'improvisational compositions,' for lack of a better term.

Have fun with Ken: he is a road warrior!

Following concerts in Bloomington (11-5-03) and Chicago (11-06, at 3030 Club) pianist/composer Stephen Rush from the University of Michigan, with bassist Tim Flood of Ann Arbor, drummer Aaron Siegel and trombonist Jacob Garchik both from New York, played a special one hour radio program at the Sherman VanSolkema Recital Hall, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, that will air next Friday night at 10 p.m. on Jazz From Blue Lake. Transcription of the interview portions to follow, eventually, but let's just say this was an exploration of the post bop continuum beginning with Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman but equally influenced by Morton Feldman or late Beethoven. Highly recommended for the unobstructed flow of composition and improvisation. Performing 11-8, this Saturday, at Kerrytown Concert House, Ann Arbor, 8 p.m. See www.kerrytown.com . B)

1953

A beautifully packaged 4 cd set recently came out on Saga records, too, which includes music from 1934-43 if memory serves. Not complete, and not enough of the Django and the Americans sessions, but interesting. His "St. Louis Blues" is astonishing.

The Billy Bang Quintet with Frank Lowe appeared in Grand Rapids in April and we had the performance recorded for broadcast on Blue Lake Public Radio. In the process of getting that issued commercially.

I'm thinking it's Paula Cole on the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Soundtrack that folks have it confused with, or Diana did the arranging for that. Dont' know...Thanks.

I know there are MP3 versions, but don't know personnnel, when it was recorded, where available...Lil' Help, please.

Anyone know where Diana Krall's version of "Autumn Leaves" might be found?

There's actually a bit of Vic Dickenson in his sound.

I formerly used "Soul Stirrin" for the theme to my radio program, but now have a version of Green's "hit" record "Blow Your Horn" to open the show. Love this guy. Have his Chess Record with Sonny Stitt, and a few sides with Earl Hines, too. He's also on an early 50's Miles Davis Prestige session, or Davis was on Green's.

The version of Rhapsody In Blue on the first disc of this recording, where Duke gives Harry Carney on bari the opening part usually played by clarinet, has my radio listeners going ape: I've had more calls on that one tune in the last week since I bought this set than I have on anything else on the air.

For what it's worth regarding Ken Burns Jazz, when the Roscoe Mitchell Quintet with Fred Anderson came to Grand Rapids about a year and a half ago, there was a nice looking middle aged couple sitting near the front. At intermission the woman spoke to me, said her husband dragged her to this concert, gave her permission to leave at half time should the music drive her away. And she's wide eyed explaining how she's never heard/seen anything like it, but managed to deal with the music by remembeing Gary Giddins description of John Coltrane's playing in the Ken Burns series. She went with that and made it into Roscoe, which was a break through as far as I'm concerned. It's interesting that a non-jazz loving woman with open ears realized Roscoe was an extension of Coltrane without having to be told. I mean, she got it. 2.5 million people saw Burns, and a majority of them didn't know the stories of jazz before seeing the documentary, but found an emotional reaction to what they were being exposed to. We can complain about how wrong the ending was (I thought Wynton did a much better job with that period in his NPR program with Berger many years ago, but the last 50 years were still bunched into one episode, it's just they covered more in the episode). But rather than disqualify their experience, maybe give them, 'Well, that's a great start, and there's much more to learn,' one of the things they didn't talk about that's really cool/important/unlike anything else in music is....I know how it went down with many, many musicians...all I'm saying is, give the public a little more credit: they took what they wanted and are, hopefully, using it.

Keep right on playing....

Bleckmann/Monder. This Saturday at The Urban Institute For Contemporary Arts, 41 Sheldon Blvd., Grand Rapids. Tickets at the door. Guitar/voice duet, as heard on their recent Songlines release. (616) 454 - 7000, or see www.UICA.org Also, Devil's Night at the Kraftbraw Brewery in Kalamazoo, the Ab Baars Trio. And in Grand Haven, Michigan, Thursday, October 30, Beat inspired poetry celebrating the blues by Detroit activist John Sinclair rants to the guitar of Jeff (?) Grand at The Dee-Lite Bar and Grill, on Washington Avenue. Showtime 8 p.m. or so.

McLean and Moncur played the Chicago Jazz Festival a few years ago and those chops problems were much in evidence which was too bad. There's also a recording Moncur issued on the Jazz Composers Orchestra Label that merits mention. Not up to the Blue Notes, but none the less the next chapter in his extended compositional development and writing for a broader range of instruments. "Echoes of Prayer," Grachan Moncur III, The Jazz Composer's Orchestra, presented at New York University's Leob Student Center, April 10, 1974, recorded Aprill 11, 1974. Including Pat Patrick, flutes; Perry Robinson, clarinet; Carlos Ward, alto sax, flute; Leroy Jenkins, violin; Ngoma, violin; Hannibal Marvin Peterson, Stafford Osborne, trumpets; Janice Robinson, trombone; Jack Jeffers, bass trombone; Mark Elf, guitar; Carla Bley, piano; Cecil McBee, Charlie Haden, basses; Beaver Harris, drums; plus the Tanawa Dance Ensemble; Jeanne Lee and Mervine Grady, voices....

This sounds like a love poem to Diana Krall...who knows...I've been playing "When Did I Stop Dreaming?" Always thought Elvis did a credible version of Mingus' tune "Weird Nightmare" on the Hal Wilner Mingus record. Fitz, couldn't find the other thread: could you point me in the right direction?

"Madness In Great Ones" from "Such Sweet Thunder" could only be the work of Duke, though.

"New" guy Gary Smulyan. Work horse. "New" guy Scott Robinson. Favorite, Serge. Love the Mosaic box, Woody's Four Brothers Band, the new Allen Eager/Serge Chaloff 11 minute "Fine and Dandy" with Buddy Rich on the Uptown "In the Land of Oo-bla-dee."