Lazaro Vega

Picked mine up from The Bookman in Grand Haven today, but this will have to wait until I get through the Fats Navarro biography, which is going well.

Hi folks, Any help on jazz tunes using the changes or variations on the changes to "Exactly Like You" which spring to mind? Thanks, Lazaro

Just wondering as we had that "backronym" show up on our web stream log of listeners.

There's a Lionel Hampton recording I have at work on Audio Fidelity with Donald Byrd featured on a roaring version of "Air Mail Special" that sounded good to my ears. LV

In preparing to rebroadcast Blue Lake's 2007 interview with Muhal Richard Abrams tonight this came up: http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/musi...-jazz04.article South Side legend Muhal Richard Abrams returns for Chicago Jazz Festival September 4, 2009 BY JOHN LITWEILER He was a widely admired, veteran bop pianist when the new free-jazz ideas of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and others led him to explore the new music in the early 1960s. He formed a daring group called the Experimental Band, in which a generation of young, brilliant, free-jazz musicians from the South Side grew their wings.

Anyone heard of the suffix .arpa before?

"Imagine the Sound" ? Very informative article/interview. The take on Conquistador is interesting. Played it on the radio Friday night, or With (Exit), not the title track, as well as one of the pieces from Dixon's appearance on record with the Exploding Star Orchestra in response to this, and telling listeners of the article's publication. Have to catch up some of the other more recent recording mentioned in the interview.

Nice job last night, guys -- the organ riffs that build and build in "Groovadelphia" sounded good bouncing off the Gerry Ford Museum. Too bad the crowd was so dead. Les and the kids and I were clapping and wooping way in back, on top of the hill. Hope there was more love coming your way from up close. Is that the biggest crowd you've played for? LV

Mr. Jones is feature tonight on Jazz From Blue Lake after 10 p.m. edt, www.bluelake.org/radio Including quotes from Mark Stryker's review of the piece written by John Clayton for the Jones Brothers. Will start off with Sonny, as his birthday was Monday.

Jazz fest closes with Clayton’s nod to jazz heroes of Detroit / By MARK STRYKER FREE PRESS MUSIC CRITIC/ The Detroit International Jazz Festival has not previously been in the business of commissioning composers to create new works, but it invested heavily in the idea this year in honor of its 30th anniversary. Read more: http://freep.com/article/99999999/ENT04/90...e=2009_JAZZFEST

I n t e r p r e t a t i o n s the concert series featuring leading figures in contemporary music and multi-media arts celebrates its 21st Season! ***** 3 WORLD PREMIERES CONCERTO FOR PERCUSSION (for Adam Rudolph) with the S.E.M Chamber Orchestra conducted by Peter Kotik composed by YUSEF LATEEF - 2009 A SYLLOGISM for BARITONE and PIANO (commissioned and performed by Tom Buckner) composed by YUSEF LATEEF - 2009 NIGHTSKY (commissioned and performed by Tom Buckner) voice and percussion duet with Adam Rudolph composed by ADAM RUDOLPH - 2009 Plus a special poetry reading with music by YUSEF LATEEF ☉ September 17, 2009 @ Roulette Thursday, September 17 at 8pm Roulette: 20 Greene Street (between Canal and Grand) General admission: $15 ($10 students, seniors, Harvestworks & DTW members; free for Roulette and Location One members) For reservations, call 212-219-8242. For more information on the Interpretations series, call 212-627-0990 or visit: www.interpretations.info www.roulette.org YUSEF LATEEF: http://www.yuseflateef.com/ Yusef Lateef is a Grammy Award-winning composer, performer, recording artist, author, visual artist, educator and philosopher who has been a major force on the international musical scene for more than six decades. In recognition of his many contributions to the world of music, he has been named an American Jazz Master for the year 2010 by the National Endowment for the Arts. Still very much active as a touring and recording artist, Yusef Lateef at 88 years of age (89 in October of ‘09), is universally acknowledged as one of the great living masters and innovators in the African American tradition of “Autophysiopsychic Music” — that which comes from one’s spiritual, physical and emotional self. As a virtuoso on a broad spectrum of reed instruments -- tenor saxophone, flute, oboe, bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, argol, sarewa, and taiwan koto — Yusef Lateef has introduced delightful new sounds and blends of tone colors to audiences all over the world, and he has incorporated the sounds of many countries into his own music. As a result, he is considered a pioneer in what is known today as “world music.” As a composer, Yusef Lateef has compiled a catalogue of works not only for the quartets and quintets he has led, but for symphony and chamber orchestras, stage bands, small ensembles, vocalists, choruses and solo pianists. His extended works have been performed by the WDR (Cologne), NDR (Hamburg), Atlanta, Augusta and Detroit Symphony Orchestras, the Symphony of the New World, Eternal Wind, the GO Organic Orchestra, and the New Century Players from California Insitute of the Arts. In 1987 he won a Grammy Award for his recording of “Yusef Lateef’s Little Symphony,” on which he performed all the parts. His latest extended works include a woodwind quintet, his Symphony No.2, and a concerto for piano and orchestra. As an educator, Yusef has devoted much of his life to exploring the methodology of autophysiopsychic music in various cultures and passing what he has learned on to new generations of students. He is an emeritus Five Colleges professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA, from which he was awarded a Ph.D. in Education in 1975. His doctoral dissertation was entitled “An Overview of Western and Islamic Education.” In 2007 he was named University of Massachusetts’ “Artist of the Year.” As an author, Yusef Lateef has published two novellas, “A Night in the Garden of Love” and “Another Avenue;” two collections of short stories, “Spheres” and “Rain Shapes;” and his autobiography, “The Gentle Giant,” written in collaboration with Herb Boyd. In recent years he has also exhibited his paintings at various art galleries. Yusef A. Lateef was born William Emanuel Huddleston on October 9, 1920 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and moved with his family to Detroit in 1925. In Detroit’s fertile musical environment, Yusef soon established long-standing friendships with such masters of American music as Milt Jackson, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Paul Chambers, Donald Byrd, the Jones brothers (Hank, Thad and Elvin), Curtis Fuller, Kenny Burrell, Lucky Thompson and Matthew Rucker. He was already proficient on tenor saxophone while in high school, and at the age of 18 began touring professionally with swing bands led by Hartley Toots, Hot Lips Page, Roy Eldridge, Herbie Fields and eventually Lucky Millender. In 1949 he was invited to join the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra. In 1950 he returned to Detroit, where he began to study composition and flute at Wayne State University, receiving his early training in flute from Larry Teal. He also converted to Islam in the Ahmadiyya movement and took the name Yusef Lateef. From 1955–1959 he led a quintet including Curtis Fuller, Hugh Lawson, Louis Hayes and Ernie Farrell. In 1958 he began studying oboe with Ronald Odemark of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Returning to New York in 1960, Yusef undertook further studies in flute with Harold Jones and John Wummer at the Manhattan School of Music, from which he received his Bachelor’s Degree in Music in 1969 and his Master’s Degree in Music Education in 1970. Later, as a member of the school’s theory department in 1971, he taught courses in autophysiopsychic music. From 1972–1976, he was an associate professor of music at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Yusef first began recording under his own name in 1956 for Savoy Records, and has since made more than 100 recordings as a leader for the Savoy, Prestige, Contemporary, Impulse, Atlantic and YAL labels. His early recordings of such songs as “Love Theme from Spartacus” and “Morning” continue to receive extensive airplay even today. He also toured and recorded with the ensembles of Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Babatunde Olatunji in the 1960s. As an instrumentalist with his own ensemble, Yusef Lateef has performed extensively in concert halls and at colleges and music festivals throughout the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Russia, Japan and Africa, often conducting master classes and symposia in conjunction with his performances. Dating from the release of the double CD “Influence” with the Belmondo Brothers in 2005, his engagements at international music festivals have increased significantly. Over the years his touring ensembles have included such master musicians as Barry Harris, Kenny Barron, Hugh Lawson, Albert Heath, Roy Brooks, Ernie Farrell, Cecil McBee, Bob Cunningham, Adam Rudolph, Charles Moore, Ralph Jones and Frederico Ramos as well as the Lionel and Stéphane Belmondo. Dr. Lateef’s first major work for large orchestra was his Blues Suite, also known as “Suite 16,” premiered in 1969 by the Augusta, GA Symphony Orchestra, performed in 1970 with his hometown Detroit Symphony Orchestra at the Meadowbrook Music Festival, and recorded by the WDR Orchestra in Cologne. In 1974 the NDR Radio Orchestra of Hamburg commissioned him to compose and perform the tone poem “Lalit,” and he later premiered and recorded his Symphony No.1 (Tahira) with the same orchestra. From August 1981 until August 1985, Dr. Lateef was a senior research Fellow at the Center for Nigerian Cultural Studies at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, where he did research into the Fulani flute. Sarewa is the generic name for the Fulani flute. In 1992 Yusef Lateef formed his own label, YAL Records, to record and distribute his works and those of other artists including the Eternal Wind Quintet. One of his first recordings on the label, co-composed with percussionist Adam Rudolph, was “The World at Peace,” an extended suite requiring 12 musicians including Eternal Wind, which has received repeated performances throughout the United States. In 1993 the WDR Orchestra producer Ulrich Kurtz commissioned Yusef Lateef’s most ambitious work to date, The African American Epic Suite, a four-movement work for quintet and orchestra representing 400 years of slavery and disfranchisement of African Americans in America. David de Villiers conducted the premiere performance and recording with the WDR Orchestra. The suite has also been performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Yoel Levi as a centerpiece of the National Black Arts Festival in 1998 and by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Wilkins in 2001. Through his publishing company, Fana Music, Yusef Lateef has contributed extensively to the lexicon of performance and improvisational methodology with such works as “Yusef Lateef’s Flute Book of the Blues,” “A Repository of Melodic Scales and Patterns,” and “123 Duets for Treble Clef Instruments.” Fana has also published numerous works for chamber ensembles, stage bands, duos and wind ensemble or symphony orchestra. Adam Rudolph: http://www.metarecords.com/adam.html Composition and Percussion: handrumset (congas, djembe, tarija, zabumba), frame drums, thumb pianos, udu drum, gongs, mulitphonic singing, sintir, percussion Born in 1955, handrummer, percussionist, composer, multi instrumentalist and improviser ADAM RUDOLPH grew up in the Hyde Park area of the Southside of Chicago. From an early age he was exposed to the live music performances of the great blues and improvising artists who lived nearby. As a teenager, Rudolph started playing hand drums in local streets and parks and soon apprenticed with elders of African American improvised music. He performed regularly in Chicago with Fred Anderson and in Detroit with the Contemporary Jazz Quintet. In 1973 Rudolph played on his first record date with Maulawi Nururdin and with the CJQ at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz festival. In 1977 he lived and studied in Ghana, where he experienced trance ceremonies. In his travels throughout West Africa he saw how music can come from a cosmological grounding beyond music itself and can also be about something beyond music itself. In 1978 he lived in Don Cherry’s house in the Swedish countryside. Cherry inspired him to start composing and showed him about Ornette Coleman’s concept and the connection of music to nature. Rudolph is known as one the early innovators of what is now called “World Music”. In 1978 he and Gambian Kora player Jali Foday Musa Suso co-founded The Mandingo Griot Society, one of the first groups to combine African and American music. In 1988, he recorded the first fusion of American and Gnawa music with Sintir player and singer Hassan Hakmoun. Rudolph intensely studied North Indian Tabla for over 15 years with Pandit Taranath Rao. He learned hundreds of drum compositions and about how music is a form of Yoga – the unity of mind, body and spirit. In 1988 Rudolph began his association with Yusef Lateef, with whom he has recorded over 15 albums including several of their large ensemble collaborations. Lateef introduced Rudolph to the inspirational practice of Autophysiopsychic Music – “that which comes from one’s spiritual, physical and emotional self”. Rudolph still performs worldwide with Dr. Lateef. Their performances have ranged from their acclaimed duet concerts to appearances as guest soloists with the Koln, Atlanta and Detroit symphony orchestras. Over the past 25 years Rudolph has developed a unique syncretic approach to hand drumming and percussion in creative collaborations with outstanding artists of cross-cultural and improvised music, including Jon Hassel, L. Shankar, Joseph Bowie, and Wadada Leo Smith among others. He has released over a dozen recordings on his own Meta Records label documenting his compositions for various size ensembles as well as his collaborations with artists such as Sam Rivers, Omar Sosa, and Pharaoh Sanders. Currently Rudolph composes for his groups Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures quartet and octet, Hu: Vibrational percussion trio, and Go: Organic Orchestra, a 15 – 50 piece ensemble for which he has developed an original music notation and conducting system. He has taught and conducted hundreds of musicians in the Go: Organic Orchestra concept in both North America and Europe. Rudolph recently premiered his opera The Dreamer, based on the text of Friedreich Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy". He also performs as half of the Wildflowers Duo with Butoh dance innovator Oguri. In 2006, Rudolph’s rhythm repository and methodology book, Pure Rhythm was published by Advance Music, Germany. He has performed at festivals and concerts throughout North & South America, Europe, Africa, and Japan, appeared on numerous albums and released over twenty recordings as a leader. Rudolph continues to also create visual art and write; his essays have been published by Parabola Magazine and Morton Books. He has been on the faculty of Esalen Institute, California Institute of the Arts and the Danish Jazz Federation Summer Institute. Rudolph has received grants and compositional commissions from the Rockefeller Foundation, Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, Mary Flagler Cary Trust, the NEA, Arts International, Durfee Foundation and American Composers Forum. In July 2009 he received his second “New Works” grant from Chamber Music America.

OrgaNASTimo

This book moves between narrative and music examples -- long sections of musical transcriptions and accompanying text. Loren Schoenberg and Bob Belden are both much better at that sort of writing than what's found here, which is not to discount the information which comes of it. Just very glad I've learned to read music somewhat in the last year because it will be essential to getting the most out of this book. Very glad, too, the transcriptions are in trumpet key. The Birdland All Stars are listed as performing on June 30, 1950 with Miles and Fats; J.J. Johnson; Brew Moore; Tadd Dameron and Walter Bishop Jr.; Curly (Russell?); Art Blakey, Roy Haynes plus Chubby Newsome singing on two tunes. Fats is only on four tracks. Bishop and Haynes on Conception, Eronel and the last 52nd Street Theme only. The authors point to Navarro's lack of wind and how hard that makes it for him to construct solos of any continuity. They say, "Many have commented Navarro plays poorly here (on Conception), not knowing the changes, but there is not much musical evidence for this. What is really hampering him is his physical condition and the unusual construction of 14 bars and a pedal point, a structure which he does not seem familiar with. Davis makes it difficult for him, by extending his solo 4 bars into his opening chorus. Navarro does manage to catch up and ends the first chorus of his solo correctly. In the next chorus things get messed up again. There are approximately 35 bars in the first A part, but after some yelling and help from the pianist, he comes back on the track. The third chorus works out fine. Miles Davis enters again after the piano solo and in his last solo it is he who messed up the form, his chorus lasting 64 bars. In the coda there is a saxophone, which sounds remarkably like Charlie Parker joined by Navarro. This has made some commentators believer that Parker was present. We think that it is Brew Moore playing a Parker-like phrase in his high register."

Nice profile on Clayton. The Gwinell orchestra has a penchant towards the music of Thad Jones, though on "Brush Fire" he can tend toward the ECM sound (that piece featuring Carl CaFagna and Shannon Wade).

Past amber graves of Wayne....

Oh, man: "Spiralview"! Wish I could be there this year. Fred's 80th birthday. What a milestone. Will be in Traverse for a wedding (snore). Probably going out tonight to hear pianist John Proulx at his CD release party for "Baker's Dozen," a tribute to Chet Baker, and may drop in on Organissimo at Founder's afterwards.

Not bad for a "local" band! Great organ solo, Jim. Paul was delighted with his "new old trombone," a model J.J. Johnson played in the 1960's. That "mop-mop" figure is so old now -- cool how Randy finds something new to do with it in his solo. Great job, guys. Is this a remix sound-wise? We'll tell our listeners about this, maybe link it from our site, too. Lazaro

She did an incredible version of Bird's "Ah Leu Cha" in the spirit of Ornette Coleman during our "Live From Blue Lake" broadcast. Didn't mention the "Eyes in the Back of Your Head" pieces as they were improvisations and not, so much, interpretation of an Ornette composition. Allen talked about working in Ornette's quartet on the Sound Museum:Three Women/Hidden Man recordings; about approaching a pre-exisisting band concept and finding her way into it. A good example of it working was on a version of "Mob Job" from one of those records. I think it was the shorter version of the two....

http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=4636

He said Barry Gordy spent about a year just going to the jazz clubs in Detroit and one day asked them if they could show up at this studio at such and such a time. They were like, yeah, right. But they showed up at the studio: Hitsville USA. Lightsey eventually left because they were only paid for the take that was used -- not for rehearsals, not for any "tries" before arriving at a master take. Talked a lot about James Jamerson (?) as Gregg is a bassist and was driving the conversation, and because those early bass lines were so melodic and beautiful. One of the great things about those Chet Baker sessions on Prestige with Lightsey were the previously un-recorded Tadd Dameron tunes on them. Maybe only a couple, but good to have. Baker re-united with Lightsey later on Timeless records, singing and playing on a pair of numbers. The album's called "Everything Happens to Me."

On This Whole “Death Of Jazz” Thing . . . . Everybody’s making a lot of noise about this whole death of jazz thing. How are we mourning something that’s been gone a long time ago and highly questionable if it ever really existed? The question to me is not if jazz is dead or will die, but rather, if it ever was alive. OK- let’s say jazz is alive. Then it has most certainly been on life support for quite sometime. Personally, I think somebody should to sneak in the room and euthanize it. Maybe if jazz dies, cats will start playing the blues again. You don’t have to play blues if you play jazz. Shyt, you don’t even have to swing. So I say, let it die. The Original Dixieland Jass Band made the first jazz record. Paul Whiteman was the King Of Jazz. Louis Armstrong played the blues. Miles Davis played the blues. If it was good enough for them, it’s good enough for me. You can play anything and call it jazz, but you can only do one thing when you’re playing the blues. You can get a jazz Master’s degree in countless schools across the globe. There’s only one way to master the blues. You can teach somebody how to play jazz. You can’t teach anybody how to play the blues; you can only give it to them. The premier jazz venue in the world rests on prime realty in Manhattan. I think it’s safe to say that jazz has officially crossed over. Ever notice that no one ever speaks of the blues dying. Why? As long as there’s life, there will be blues. - Nicholas Payton http://nicholaspayton.com/

A woman from the small town I live in is a former resident of Paris. Her brothers are both big jazz fans. While in Paris she came to be close friends with the Detroit-born jazz pianist Kirk Lightsey. He came to our area at the end of August with his family for a little r&r on Lake Michigan. There was a dinner party set up and then the hostess began flailing around trying to find a piano for Kirk to play on. I arranged for the 20 of us to go to my daughter's Montessori school where Kirk could sit at their 1917-era Steinway. Here's a link to photos and some video with sound of the concert set up by the woman who hosted him: http://web.me.com/kimcoston2/Site/Kirks_Concert.html At the dinner party we talked for a couple of hours. An enthusiastic jazz bassist from our area, Gregg Morrison, started Kirk talking about Motown: Lightsey was in the Motown house band for the first year of the label's life. He was also educated by one of Blue Lake's regular teachers for many years, Harry Begian, who ran the band programs at Cass Tech in Detriot. Lots of memories of how he got started prompted by my wife who's taking piano lessons. When he heard I'm studying trumpet we talked a lot about his music with Woody Shaw in the 1980's (playing 4ths to distinguish his sound from Freddie Hubbard's) , including their horrifying tour of India (if I ever write anything from this it will be called "Strange as a piano in India"). The man is a delight -- very happy, very on -- ready. He played for nearly an hour. It was August 21st, Wayne Shorter's 76th Birthday which means a lot given Kirk is one of Wayne's friends and a consumate interpreter of Shorter's compositions. The program was: "Goodbye Mr. Evans" (by Phil Woods) "In Your Own Sweet Way" with Benny Golson's "From Dream to Dream" interpolated in it. "Pee Wee" by Tony Williams in a medley with Lightsey's own "Heavan Dance" dedicated to his mother. Infant Eyes (Shorter). A highlight of the evening. Fee Fi Fo Fum (Shorter) with "Work Song" on the bridge. A Child is Born (Jones) played once "normal" and then once without a turnback giving it tremendous suspense, before interpolating "Brahms Lullabye" as a sign-off. http://web.me.com/kimcoston2/Site/Kirks_Concert.html __________________

I'm in Alyn Shipton's Jimmy McHugh bio right now. The Fats book, on first glance, appears comprehensive: many transcribed solos; discography and annotation out the door.

Picked up my copy yesterday.

Amen to that bro aloc. Saturday morning around 9 a.m. hour we're going to broadcast an Iverson inspired hour of variations on "Lady Be Good."