Lazaro Vega

Recently spoke by phone with Ben Ratliff about this book and will undertake to transcribe the interview here. (After working hard on a recorded phone interview with Muhal Richard Abrams for radio broadcast only: a two hour program running Sunday, October 13th from 8 to 10 p.m.). I did challenge him on the assertion that it was Lester Young who started the "cult of the solo" with mention of Louis Armstrong. Also on the phrase from the Intro that asserts there wasn't much form in jazz after late Coltrane. He admitted, after I mentioned it, that Roscoe Mitchell's music, for instance, was full of form. Muhal and Braxton were two others I brought up to counter the idea. The idea that on-going evolutionary change is jazz is a “hippy myth” is something I disagreed with on the grounds of the pioneering New Orleans jazz musicians and how they put in the music a tendency to want to push against the given – I mean, from blue notes to the invention of the drum set to the outright creation of the music in general. Johnny Dodds didn’t roll hippy. The idealization of the Classic Quartet leads Ratliff to assert that Eric Dolphy's presence in the Vanguard sessions and the European tours somehow takes the band's focus away, that there's a diminution of band's sound because of Dolphy's different approach. He stood by that in the interview. Miles Mode, Spiritual, India…these pieces are more for Dolphy, imho. Given the second half of the book's purpose, to show Trane's on-going influence and try to explain it, it was a surprise to learn he hadn't heard the Electric Ascension record by OrkestRova, one of the most "updated" versions of Coltrane's later sound that we're likely to hear for some time, Ratliff’s reference to Iggy Pop notwithstanding. .

http://houstonist.com/2007/10/03/interview_pete_1.php October 3, 2007 Interview: Pete Gershon, editor, Signal to Noise Signal to Noise is a globally distributed quarterly magazine focusing on improvisational and experimental music. You'd be hard pressed to find a larger, more eclectic mix of album reviews and artist spotlights in any other publication. It's celebrating its 10th birthday this year. Editor Pete Gershon now calls Houston home and sat down with us to talk about his magazine and his favorite topic – music. How did Signal to Noise begin? Ten years ago, I was living in Burlington, Vermont, doing some freelance music writing for a couple of regional weekly arts rags. Luckily, the editors gave me a lot of leeway and let me write about whatever I wanted to, but I wanted to take things a step further. At that point, I was sensing that there was a continuum of improvisation which ranged from jam bands like Phish and the Grateful Dead, to modern jazz acts like Charlie Hunter, Medeski, Martin & Wood, and then all the other stuff coming out of downtown New York’s Knitting Factory scene, like John Zorn, the Lounge Lizards, that kind of thing. None of the other music mags were really focusing on the connections between these types of music. Signal to Noise has evolved a lot in ten years, and now it’s more accurate to say that we’re covering the confluence of avant-garde jazz, electro-acoustic improvisation, and left-field modern rock. A lot of the music we feature really transcends whatever genre labels you might want to apply to it. Why did you move from Burlington to Houston? I got married. I’m originally from upstate New York and went to Hampshire College, a liberal arts college in Western Massachusetts that focused more on evaluations than grades. I met my wife, who is a Houston native, when we were going to school there. We rekindled our relationship around the turn of the century, and I have been living in Houston off and on since 2001. I moved down here permanently in 2005 after we had our first baby, so we could be close to her career and family. How did the name Signal to Noise come about? The magazine was originally called Soundboard, but I had to change the name after about a year because of a conflict with another publication in another part of the country. It was hard to find a new name hat everyone liked, but eventually a friend suggested I call it Signal to Noise, which seemed to resonate with what we were doing. We’ve operated under that name since 1998. Why a print magazine in the age of the Internet? I firmly believe there are a lot of people who spend their day in front of a computer at work, and when they get home, they'll want to kick off their shoes, sprawl on the couch, and actually enjoy the tactile experience of turning some pages. I guess it's the same way some of us will always dig shopping for CDs in a brick and mortar store and putting records on the turntable as opposed to downloading MP3s. I love the Web, but it seems like something is always lost in the digital transaction. Who are some local artists/musicians that you find inspiring? Houston has always been home to great blues and jazz music. Artists like Kenny Dorham and Arnett Cobb come to mind, but of course it goes back even further than that. The tradition extends from artists like Pauline Oliveros, Mayo Thompson and the Red Krayola, the 13th Floor Elevators, to Charalambides, outsider singer-multi-instrumentalist-enigma Jandek, DJ Screw, Linus Pauling Quartet and Rusted Shut. Devendra Banhart, he of the unfortunately-named “freak-folk” movement, is going to be on the cover of our next issue, and he was born right here in Houston. But I should stress that I’m still new in town, and I’ve got a lot to learn about the local scene, past and present. I’ve just barely scratched the surface, and now that I have kids, it’s tough to get out at night and check it all out. Are there enough outlets for experimental music? Well, there are some. KPFT and especially Rice University’s KTRU play artists that you will rarely hear anywhere else. I especially like Dave Dove’s show on KTRU. Dave also heads up Nameless Sound, a non-profit organization that teaches kids, for free, to express themselves through musical improvisation. What he and the members of his Youth Ensemble do is absolutely amazing. The clubs seem to do a really good job of bringing interesting music through town, and the proximity to Austin is also helpful in this regard. Tell me about the writers. They’re spread all throughout the U.S. – many of them in New York, Chicago, the west coast – even in Europe; in fact, I’m met very few of them face to face. They range from some of the most accomplished veteran writers in the field to talented upstarts that have never had their work published before. I really don’t go searching for writers; most of them contact me, because they love the magazine and they love the music. How do you differentiate yourself from other music magazines? We are probably the only magazine in the US that offers this particular mix of musical styles. The music we are dealing with is so on the fringe that I don’t think anyone else is crazy enough to want to cover it. For years, it was kind of a money pit, but we’re finally gaining some traction. I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s a pretty non-commercial venue, and consequently people can really trust our writers’ opinions about the music they’re writing about. Will there ever be a Signal to Noise festival? Funny that you mention that. We’ve had some preliminary discussions about a Signal to Noise showcase at SXSW next March. It’s all still in the works, though, but the idea is to host a night of Houston-based talent. We used to hold concerts at our office up in Burlington. It was a dusty old warehouse, and musicians would play for tips, but for a lot of them it was a fun stop-over between Boston and Montreal. I don’t know if we ever drew more than 30 people, but some of these concerts wound up being issued on CD. If you could be a Houston landmark, what would it be? I would say the River Oaks Theater, except that I wouldn’t want to be bulldozed by a heartless realty company. So instead I’ll be content to be the Cy Twombly Gallery at the Menil Collection. You can find Signal to Noise at most local music retail stores.

http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/014_03/859

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...ft=1&f=1021

September 23, 2007 Op-Ed Contributor The Day Louis Armstrong Made Noise By DAVID MARGOLICK FIFTY years ago this week, all eyes were on Little Rock, Ark., where nine black students were trying, for the first time, to desegregate a major Southern high school. With fewer than 150 blacks, the town of Grand Forks, N.D., hardly figured to be a key front in that battle — until, that is, Larry Lubenow talked to Louis Armstrong. On the night of Sept. 17, 1957, two weeks after the Little Rock Nine were first barred from Central High School, the jazz trumpeter happened to be on tour with his All Stars band in Grand Forks. Larry Lubenow, meanwhile, was a 21-year-old journalism student and jazz fan at the University of North Dakota, moonlighting for $1.75 an hour at The Grand Forks Herald. Shortly before Mr. Armstrong’s concert, Mr. Lubenow’s editor sent him to the Dakota Hotel, where Mr. Armstrong was staying, to see if he could land an interview. Perhaps sensing trouble — Mr. Lubenow was, he now says, a “rabble-rouser and liberal” — his boss laid out the ground rules: “No politics,” he ordered. That hardly seemed necessary, for Mr. Armstrong rarely ventured into such things anyway. “I don’t get involved in politics,” he once said. “I just blow my horn.” But Mr. Lubenow was thinking about other things, race relations among them. The bell captain, with whom he was friendly, had told him that Mr. Armstrong was quietly making history in Grand Forks, as he had done innumerable times and ways before, by becoming the first black man ever to stay at what was then the best hotel in town. Mr. Lubenow knew, too, that Grand Forks had its own link to Little Rock: it was the hometown of Judge Ronald Davies, who’d just ordered that the desegregation plan in Little Rock proceed after Gov. Orval Faubus of Arkansas and a band of local segregationists tried to block it. As Mr. Armstrong prepared to play that night — oddly enough, at Grand Forks’s own Central High School — members of the Arkansas National Guard ringed the school in Little Rock, ordered to keep the black students out. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s meeting with Governor Faubus three days earlier in Newport, R.I., had ended inconclusively. Central High School was open, but the black children stayed home. Mr. Lubenow was first told he couldn’t talk to Mr. Armstrong until after the concert. That wouldn’t do. With the connivance of the bell captain, he snuck into Mr. Armstrong’s suite with a room service lobster dinner. And Mr. Armstrong, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, agreed to talk. Mr. Lubenow stuck initially to his editor’s script, asking Mr. Armstrong to name his favorite musician. (Bing Crosby, it turned out.) But soon he brought up Little Rock, and he could not believe what he heard. “It’s getting almost so bad a colored man hasn’t got any country,” a furious Mr. Armstrong told him. President Eisenhower, he charged, was “two faced,” and had “no guts.” For Governor Faubus, he used a double-barreled hyphenated expletive, utterly unfit for print. The two settled on something safer: “uneducated plow boy.” The euphemism, Mr. Lubenow says, was far more his than Mr. Armstrong’s. Mr. Armstrong bitterly recounted some of his experiences touring in the Jim Crow South. He then sang the opening bar of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” inserting obscenities into the lyrics and prompting Velma Middleton, the vocalist who toured with Mr. Armstrong and who had joined them in the room, to hush him up. Mr. Armstrong had been contemplating a good-will tour to the Soviet Union for the State Department. “They ain’t so cold but what we couldn’t bruise them with happy music,” he had said. Now, though, he confessed to having second thoughts. “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell,” he said, offering further choice words about the secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. “The people over there ask me what’s wrong with my country. What am I supposed to say?” Mr. Lubenow, who came from a small North Dakota farming community, was shocked by what he heard, but he also knew he had a story; he skipped the concert and went back to the paper to write it up. It was too late to get it in his own paper; nor would the Associated Press editor in Minneapolis, dubious that Mr. Armstrong could have said such things, put it on the national wire, at least until Mr. Lubenow could prove he hadn’t made it all up. So the next morning Mr. Lubenow returned to the Dakota Hotel and, as Mr. Armstrong shaved, had the Herald photographer take their picture together. Then Mr. Lubenow showed Mr. Armstrong what he’d written. “Don’t take nothing out of that story,” Mr. Armstrong declared. “That’s just what I said, and still say.” He then wrote “solid” on the bottom of the yellow copy paper, and signed his name. The article ran all over the country. Douglas Edwards and John Cameron Swayze broadcast it on the evening news. The Russians, an anonymous government spokesman warned, would relish everything Mr. Armstrong had said. A radio station in Hattiesburg, Miss., threw out all of Mr. Armstrong’s records. Sammy Davis Jr. criticized Mr. Armstrong for not speaking out earlier. But Jackie Robinson, Sugar Ray Robinson, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt and Marian Anderson quickly backed him up. Mostly, there was surprise, especially among blacks. Secretary Dulles might just as well have stood up at the United Nations and led a chorus of the Russian national anthem, declared Jet magazine, which once called Mr. Armstrong an “Uncle Tom.” Mr. Armstrong had long tried to convince people throughout the world that “the Negro’s lot in America is a happy one,” it observed, but in one bold stroke he’d pulled nearly 15 million American blacks to his bosom. Any white confused by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s polite talk need only listen to Mr. Armstrong, The Amsterdam News declared. Mr. Armstrong’s words had the “explosive effect of an H-bomb,” said The Chicago Defender. “He may not have been grammatical, but he was eloquent.” His road manager quickly put out that Mr. Armstrong had been tricked, and regretted his statements, but Mr. Armstrong would have none of that. “I said what somebody should have said a long time ago,” he said the following day in Montevideo, Minn., where he gave his next concert. He closed that show with “The Star-Spangled Banner” — this time, minus the obscenities. Mr. Armstrong was to pay a price for his outspokenness. There were calls for boycotts of his concerts. The Ford Motor Company threatened to pull out of a Bing Crosby special on which Mr. Armstrong was to appear. Van Cliburn’s manager refused to let him perform a duet with Mr. Armstrong on Steve Allen’s talk show. But it didn’t really matter. On Sept. 24, President Eisenhower sent 1,200 paratroopers from the 101st Airborne into Little Rock, and the next day soldiers escorted the nine students into Central High School. Mr. Armstrong exulted. “If you decide to walk into the schools with the little colored kids, take me along, Daddy,” he wired the president. “God bless you.” As for Mr. Lubenow, who now works in public relations in Cedar Park, Tex., he got $3.50 for writing the story and, perhaps, for changing history. But his editor was miffed — he’d gotten into politics, after all. Within a week, he left the paper. David Margolick, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of “Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling and a World on the Brink.’’

Helias is recovered from a recent tussel with prostate cancer. "An episode in your life," the doctor told him. He could certainly use your support.

September 20, 2007 Music Review | Sonny Rollins A Reunion of Giants, 50 Years On By FRED KAPLAN Sonny Rollins’s concert at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday night was billed as the 50th anniversary of his first performance there. More significant, it was the first time since 1958 — nearly a 50th anniversary — that he’s played with Roy Haynes. The greatest living tenor saxophone player, teamed again with arguably the greatest living drummer — now that’s historic. The concert’s first half, when the two were joined by the young bassist Christian McBride, lived up to the fanfare, in unexpected ways. The high points of Mr. Rollins’s concerts are usually the extended solos: sinuous improvisations, going on for dozens of choruses, no two alike, in which he explores every chord, theme or counterpoint a song seems to offer, then taps some uncharted crevice and digs or soars on to blow more. This set wasn’t like that. Perhaps because he was playing with peers (a rarity in recent decades), he held back, simmered where he usually boiled, and played as one of three equals. The unlikely highlight was “Some Enchanted Evening,” which Mr. Rollins opened by reciting the melody with his lush and husky tone, while Mr. Haynes flapped brushes in triple time, and Mr. McBride plucked whole notes that anchored the chords without confining his band mates. When they got to the part where most musicians take solos, Mr. Rollins instead tossed out a fragment of the melody, then Mr. Haynes filled in the rest, and on the interplay went, bar after bar, the two sometimes overlapping, sometimes not. It felt like an ambling, elegant conversation between old friends, which in fact it was. It set off a goose-bump sensation, a shared intimacy one rarely encounters in a jazz concert. And the full house gave it the night’s lustiest applause. For the set’s closer, “Mack the Knife,” Mr. Rollins drew on a gruffer tone, full of fleet triplets and arpeggios, but Mr. McBride took the star turn with a solo that possessed a horn’s articulate fluency and a master’s insouciant assurance, despite the age gap that might have marked him as an apprentice. (He’s 35, while Mr. Rollins is 77 and Mr. Haynes is — unbelievably — 82.) After intermission Mr. Rollins brought out his regular sextet, which includes electric guitar, electric bass, trombone, drums and congas (but, alas, no Mr. Haynes or Mr. McBride). This is a band whose function is to support the leader, and it performs that task adequately. But Carnegie Hall’s acoustics, often troublesome with amplified music, muddied the works, and Mr. Rollins’s notes were often buried in the mix. The engineers turned up the volume when Clifton Anderson’s trombone started out too low, but didn’t extend the courtesy to the headliner. Mr. Rollins never broke through the stratosphere. Still, he played with customary verve, especially during the two calypsos, when he strutted to the front of the stage, thrusting his horn to the rhythm while ripping through the scales, finally uncorking a stream of thunderous low notes like a foghorn guiding the way. He does this at the end of nearly all his concerts, and it never fails to delight. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/arts/mus....html?ref=music

(Blurb) A n g e l i c A F o n d a z i o n e T e a t r o C o m u n a l e d i B o l o g n a F o n d a z i o n e T e a t r o C o m u n a l e d i M o d e n a F o n d a z i o n e I T e a t r i d i R e g g i o E m i l i a - R E C F e s t i v a l d ' A u t u n n o R e g i o n e E m i l i a R o m a g n a - A s s e s s o r a t o a l l a C u l t u r a c o n i l p a t r o c i n i o d i C o m u n e d i B o l o g n a - B o l o g n a C i t t à d e l l a M u s i c a U N E S C O c o n i l s o s t e g n o d i F o n d a z i o n e C a s s a d i R i s p a r m i o i n B o l o g n a a t c - T r a s p o r t i P u b b l i c i B o l o g n a c o n l a p a r t e c i p a z i o n e d i C i n e t e c a d i B o l o g n a R a i R a d i o 3 p r e s e n t a n o C o n c e r t i C o n t e m p o r a n e i q u a r t o a n n o : C e c i l T a y l o r m o v i m e n t o c o s t r u z i o n e c o n C e c i l T a y l o r A n t h o n y B r a x t o n W i l l i a m P a r k e r T o n y O x l e y B o l o g n a , M o d e n a , R e g g i o E m i l i a 10> 13 o t t o b r e 2 0 0 7 I accept the responsibility of having made them (choices). I'm talking about the small part I'm playing in the evolution of music, the gift that has been given to me, to have seen spiritualized the mysteries of the music at an early age. This made my actions predestined. One has to become aware of the force, both realistic and spiritual. It's about hard work, which is about living to the full extent of one's capabilities. Cecil Taylor @ B o l o g n a mercoledì 10 ottobre - ore 17 - Foyer Rossini del Teatro Comunale di Bologna > Incontro con Cecil Taylor partecipano Franco Fayenz, Marcello Lorrai, Francesco Martinelli, Franco Minganti, Giorgio Rimondi presiede e presenta Giordano Montecchi mercoledì 10 ottobre - ore 22.30 - Cinema Lumière > Imagine the Sound (Stati Uniti 1981; estratto) di Ron Mann > "Les grandes répétitions": Cecil Taylor a Paris (Francia 1966; 44’) > PRIMA ITALIANA di Luc Ferrari e Gérard Patris con Cecil Taylor, Jimmy Lyons, Alan Silva, Andrew Cyrille, Luc Ferrari, ... @ M o d e n a giovedì 11 ottobre - ore 21 - Teatro Comunale di Modena > Cecil Taylor + Tony Oxley (Stati Uniti, Inghilterra) Cecil Taylor pianoforte Tony Oxley batteria, percussioni @ B o l o g n a venerdì 12 ottobre - ore 21 - Teatro Comunale di Bologna > Cecil Taylor + Anthony Braxton (Stati Uniti) PRIMA ASSOLUTA Cecil Taylor pianoforte Anthony Braxton sax alto, soprano, sopranino, clarinetto contrabbasso @ R e g g i o E m i l i a sabato 13 ottobre - ore 21 - Teatro Valli > Cecil Taylor Historical Quartet (Stati Uniti, Inghilterra) PRIMA > ITALIANA Cecil Taylor pianoforte Anthony Braxton sax contralto, soprano, sopranino, clarinetto contrabbasso William Parker contrabbasso Tony Oxley batteria, percussioni Luoghi: Teatro Comunale di Bologna Largo Respighi 1, Bologna Cinema Lumière Via Azzo Gardino 65, Bologna Teatro Comunale di Modena Corso Canalgrande 85, Modena Teatro Valli Piazza Martiri del 7 luglio 7, Reggio Emilia Informazioni: A n g e l i c a t 051.240310 info@aaa-angelica.com www.aaa-angelica.com Teatro Comunale di Bologna t 199.107070 boxoffice@comunalebologna.it www.comunalebologna.it Teatro Comunale di Modena t 059.2033010 2032993 info@teatrocomunalemodena.it www.teatrocomunalemodena.it R E C Festival d'Autunno Reggio Emilia t 0522.458811 458854 info@recfestival.it www.recfestival.it ______________________________________________

Vinyl Side of Midnight 2007 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. For more information, visit www.mikestratton.com 9/16/07 Joe Zawinul Composer, band leader, keyboard player and a pioneer of ‘fusion’, Joe Zawinul was a major contributor to the landscape of jazz from the late 1960’s. He passed away this week. Zawinul wrote some popular jazz tunes, including “Birdland” for Weather Report and “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” for Cannonball Adderly. His participation in the bands of Adderly and Miles Davis boosted the popularity and significantly altered the sounds, adding Fender Rhodes piano and his own compositions. He made a string of ground breaking albums w/co-leader Wayne Shorter for the band Weather Report. After the band broke up in the mid 80s, Zawinul continued to tour and record with his band, Zawinul Syndicate. Weather Report’s second album, “I Sing The Body Electric”, was one of the first jazz records I bought. I was going on the recommendation of a Rolling Stone record review, and bringing it home and placing it on the turntable, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. “Unknown Soldier”, the first track, was actually frightening to me, and I wasn’t used to having that reaction to music. I grew to love the music of Weather Report, and followed the career and careers of the sidemen of Miles Davis as a way of discovering jazz. Think what you will of fusion music, it introduced a lot of rock fans to jazz. Tune in Sunday night and see what you think. Set List Birdland – Weather Report “Heavy Weather” Brownstreet – Zawinul & Big Band Mercy, Mercy, Mercy – Cannonball Adderly “Live At The Club” Boogie Woogie Waltz – Weather Report “Sweetnighter” A Remark You Made – Weather Report “Heavy Weather” Black Market – Weather Report Great Expectations – Miles Davis “Big Fun” Directions – Weather Report “Forecast: Tomorrow” Unknown Soldier – Weather Report “I Sing The Body Electric” Orange Lady – Weather Report “Weather Report” Gemini/Double Image – Miles Davis “Live/Evil” Dr. Honoris Causa – Cannonball Adderly “The Black Messiah” Cannonball – Weather Report “Black Market” Badia – Weather Report “Tale Spinnin’” Pharoah’s Dance – Miles Davis “Bitches Brew” In A Silent Way – Miles Davis Jungle Book – Weather Report “Mysterious Traveler”

The set list in Detroit went deep. "My Cherie Amour." About the only thing he didn't sing was "Uptight."

Very similiar set list to last night's concert. His voice is in great shape. Hearing him "at home" was incredible as family and friends showed up in droves to hear him.

Anyone get into the Chicago concert? Looking forward to hearing him tonight in Detroit. LV

Did anyone make this?

Stevie Wonder tonight in Detroit.

Thanks for listening, too. Tonight, Happy Birthday Sonny Rollins! LV

September 6, 2007 Music Review Meeting of Jazz Minds Is a Four-Hand Conversation in Harmony By NATE CHINEN As an interaction between musicians, jazz is often characterized as a conversation. That analogy, however fanciful or imprecise, finds a clear illustration in duo-piano performance. Here the stage is set for an even exchange, and hopefully a discourse. What enlivens the situation most is a give and take between the two parties, along with any perceptible contrasts in temperament, aesthetic and technique. Fred Hersch qualifies as one of jazz’s most agile conversationalists, and this week he serves as a kind of pianistic Charlie Rose, performing at Jazz Standard with a sharp succession of guests. Last night’s invitee was Brad Mehldau; tonight it’s Kenny Barron. The series opened auspiciously, even exquisitely, with Ethan Iverson on Tuesday night. The pairing was rewarding for a few reasons, including an amiable divergence of style and the sheer quality of the musicianship. There was also the intrigue of a protégé facing his mentor: Mr. Iverson took a moment to credit Mr. Hersch as “the first teacher that taught me a lot.” (He had already acknowledged the presence in the audience of Sophia Rosoff, a renowned piano guru who has instructed them both.) What Mr. Hersch and Mr. Iverson have in common — besides an erudite grasp of postwar jazz piano traditions, which counts for a lot — is their willful sensitivity to touch and tone. This was most obvious throughout Mr. Hersch’s “Out Someplace,” an elegiac tone poem that elicited some carefully collaborative abstraction. But the same approach to articulation could be felt on the Sonny Rollins standard “Doxy,” slowed to a molasses-drip tempo, and on “The Cup Bearers,” a squirrelly tune by Tom McIntosh. Each pianist played one solo piece, making characteristic choices. Mr. Hersch steered “The Wind,” a ballad by Russ Freeman, toward rhapsody: in a flowing rubato, he drew out the ballad’s inherent sense of vulnerability. Later Mr. Iverson offered “Laura,” the theme from the Otto Preminger film, made famous in jazz circles by Charlie Parker. His reading was textbook noir, more Preminger than Parker: shadowy dissonance at both ends of the pianistic register, and a flinty melody emerging from the sober midrange. But even if Mr. Hersch and Mr. Iverson suggested two distinct modes of iteration — longhand versus linotype, perhaps — they managed to enact a genuine colloquy. During a volley of four-bar phrases on Thelonious Monk’s “Bemsha Swing,” they became wickedly inventive; each new phrase was an extension of the last, as well as a quick response. The truest test came when they improvised in tandem, stacking chords and phrases as if by secret design. It happened on “Doxy” and on Mr. Hersch’s halting “Janeology,” and finally on a fox trot version of the bebop standard “Star Eyes.” Somehow both musicians were speaking and hearing at once, without any trace of confusion. Through Sunday at Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan; (212) 576-2232, jazzstandard.net. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/arts/mus...amp;oref=slogin

From the introduction, "But what about that hippie myth in which jazz is 'tomorrow's music' forever and ever, the result of a radical process? The structural innovations of jazz really did slow down precipitously after Coltrane." I have issues with that.

Please join www.bluelake.org/radio.html tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern Time (9 p.m. in Chicago) for the music of Jimmy Giuffre (and possibly Anthony Braxton) as played by bassist James Ilgenfritz and Chicago bass clarinetist Jason Stein. For a complete tour schedule please see, www.jamesilgenfritz.com/home.html Lazaro Vega Blue Lake Public Radio 300 East Crystal Lake Road Twin Lake MI 49457 WBLV FM 90.3 / WBLU FM 88.9 www.bluelake.org

The segment published by Columbia University is on line: http://www.aacm-newyork.com/Text/ExperimentaL%20Music.pdf

These may have been referenced elsewhere around here. If not, highly informative. Thanks again to Max Roach for the inspiration to investigate more of Anthony Braxton's music. http://www.pointofdeparture.org/PoD13/PoD1...anProposal.html http://www.intaktrec.ch/interbraxton-a.htm https://securesite.chireader.com/cgi-bin/Ar...921023/BRAXTON1

Did you play a version of Stardust to end this program?

A crowning achievement King Oliver -- with Louis Armstrong -- made history with 1923 record August 26, 2007 BY JOHN LITWEILER The history of jazz changed forever 85 years ago. That's when Louis Armstrong, a few days after his 21st birthday, arrived in Chicago on an Illinois Central train from New Orleans to join King Oliver's renowned band. Did the addition of Armstrong make Oliver's the first great jazz band? It certainly was the first great jazz band to make a record. Even now it is one of the bare handful of great jazz ensembles, with a distinctive ensemble conception and all players at the height of their creative powers. In fact, four of them, all from New Orleans -- Oliver and his protege Armstrong, Johnny and Baby Dodds -- proved to be among the most original jazz artists ever. We know it was a great band because of their 37 sides from 1923. Those recordings were made in the era before electric recordings, often under terrible conditions. Down through the years, some of the power of the Creole Band survived on scratchy old 78 rpm discs that were the source of earlier reissues. We had to adjust our ways of hearing, our powers of concentration, to listen to those CDs and LPs. What we couldn't hear was just how brilliantly the band played. We can hear that brilliance now on a wonderful two-CD album "King Oliver Off The Record: The Complete 1923 Jazz Band Recordings," issued by the Off The Record label that reveals expressive qualities and many musical elements that were previously hidden. CHICAGO JAZZ FESTIVAL When: Aug. 30-Sept. 2 Where: Grant Park Hours: 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Tickets: Free Call: (312) 744-3315; www.chicagojazzfestival.us The time was during the midst of the great migration to Chicago, where thousands of African Americans from the South were moving each year, mostly to the narrow South Side Black Metropolis. Jazz, an invention of African Americans, was the era's new music -- more than a baby but probably only an adolescent by then. Nightly, crowds of up to 700 packed the Lincoln Gardens Cafe, 31st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, to enjoy King Oliver's band. Its style was a final refinement of the New Orleans idiom, which was surely the earliest kind of jazz. The two cornets played the melody, clarinet and trombone played countermelodies and the rhythm section (piano, banjo, drummer Baby Dodds) beat out a steady, four-beat foundation. Even though the primitive recording equipment wouldn't let them play very high or low notes, "King Oliver Off The Record" lets us hear much of their personal sounds: Oliver's cleverly muted lead, Armstrong's harmonies with a richer sound, Johnny Dodds' emotive clarinet, Honore Dutrey's smooth trombone. This is passionate music. Their fast pieces are not just stomps, they swing mightily -- and swing was brand-new in 1923 -- and their blues are not just slow jams. You can hear that passion from the very beginning of these two discs, "Just Gone," in the band's fiery attack and especially in the way Oliver and Armstrong lead them all in the triumphant middle strain. That passion is joyous in tracks such as "Froggie Moore," the Armstrong feature "Tears" and the two versions of Oliver's "Dippermouth Blues" feature. In the second version, especially, the band rocks and there is electricity in the choruses, led by Armstrong, that frame Oliver's famous choruses. There's passion in the terrific momentum of pieces like "Snake Rag" and "Chattanooga Stomp." The fire in those pieces results from not only the band's headlong drive, but also from the closely structured themes that Oliver composed. Among the 15 blues are two of the most beautiful ever performed. If the slower version of "Working Man Blues" expresses the depths of despair in its down-turning themes and Johnny Dodds' final countermelody, "Riverside Blues" leads to hope, even nobility, especially in Armstrong's climbing chorus at the end. And the first version of "Mabel's Dream," with three themes, an Oliver-Armstrong duet chorus and a poignant Johnny Dodds countermelody at the end, yields grandeur. These strong personalities shared an ensemble vision, each player contributed ideas and each piece is full of detail. Solo choruses break out of the ensemble in a few pieces, including two of Armstrong's first cornet solos. And Oliver and Armstrong were famed for their two-cornet breaks. It's exciting music, some of the hottest of hot jazz. The sounds of the horns in "King Oliver Off The Record" show us much of this music's depth of feeling. So the Creole Band's music is more than passionate: If any jazz is ever profound, it is theirs. Its life-enriching qualities are among the first evidence that jazz was more than just another kind of pop music. Inevitably, their closely shared vision dissipated and the band broke up in 1924. The Dodds brothers formed their own band, Armstrong left to play with big bands and Oliver formed his own big band. By then the original New Orleans jazz idiom was almost an anachronism. Yet the Creole band looked to the future in their swing; in their songs that became hits for Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and others; in the many trumpeters influenced by Oliver; in the gang of white Chicago musicians they inspired; and especially in Armstrong, who became the first great jazz soloist. And now, at last, we have "King Oliver Off The Record" to show us how it all began and just how wonderful his Creole Band was. "King Oliver Off The Record: The Complete 1923 Jazz Band Recordings" is sold by Archeophone.com. John Litweiler is a Chicago jazz critic and author.

This week Blue Lake Public Radio features the duo of Max Roach and Cecil Taylor during "Out On Blue Lake," as part of "Jazz From Blue Lake." The program begins at 10 p.m. Wednesday evening and continues to 3 a.m. Thursday morning. "Out" will be heard at midnight during that five hour block.

Scheduled for publication October of 2007 from the University of Chicago Press. Pi Records is promoting this book in their press sheet for the new Muhal Richard Abrams solo piano recording, his first since 1978, "Vision Towards Essence."

Who's edc?