Lazaro Vega

Chuck is on vacation this week, but mentioned he might try to get into Chicago this Friday especially to see Roscoe at Hot House.

Up for tonight.

Posted at the Jazz Fest web site August 27, 2006 Jazz Fest starts in just four days with a ticketed performance at Symphony Center. But if you just can't wait (or don't want to pay for a seat), you can get a taste of what's to come at 5 p.m. on Thursday with a free discussion and performance at the Chicago Cultural Center's Preston Bradley Hall. Larry Kart, former Chicago Tribune jazz critic and author of Jazz In Search Of Itself, will join this year’s Chicago Jazz Festival Artist-in-Residence Lee Konitz in a discussion of Konitz’s long and fabled career. Konitz will follow the discussion with a rare solo saxophone performance. Born in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood in 1927, Konitz has performed with an almost endless list of jazz greats, including Stan Kenton, Lennie Tristano, Warne Marsh, and Miles Davis. He is famous for his fearless improvisatory attitude and individual style of playing the alto saxophone. Konitz will also appear at the Chicago Jazz Festival on Saturday afternoon (Jazz on Jackson stage) leading a group of Workshop musicians, and on Sunday evening (Petrillo Bandshell) fronting his New Nonet.

The AARAWAK PRODUCTION COMPANY AND the VELVET LOUNGE PRESENT Douglas R. Ewart and Inventions "Sounds of Hope, Sounds of Progress" Dee Alexander, Vocals and Percussion Mwata Bowden, Reeds and Percussion Edward Wilkerson, Jr., Reeds and Percussion LaRoy Wallace McMillan, Reeds and Percussion Dushun Mosley, Drums Lester Lashley, Bass and Percussion Douglas R. Ewart, Winds, Percussion and Voice and Special Guests 9:00 P.M. Friday 1st September 2006 Admission $15.00 At Velvet Lounge 67 East 22nd St. (Cermak) Chicago IL 60616 312-791-9050

Nice read, great breadth. Maupin's work with the Go:Organic Orchestra a few years ago alerted me to his contemporary activity.

See, this whole equation between celebrity and artistic value....celebrity is a fickle, unfair bitch, while artistic value establishes timeless standards....Well, they're building McDonald's all over the world, so those sandwiches must be good for you....Yes, it's the People Magazine era, but don't ask people in the arts to just throw up the arms and give in to that shit. If "playing the game is so noble" then why doesn't Wynton understand that is exactly what the fusion era jazz musicians were doing? You want to play for huge crowds, get on a Fillmore extravaganza. That's where the money was and musicians went for it. Same game, different era. That said, it was astounding to see the crowds he drew for his sextet in Europe featured in clips on his web site. Looked like a European football match replete with banners.

If this is posted elsewhere I'll hit the delete. Venerable Jazz Showcase losing its lease, founder says Howard Reich August 28 2006 The Jazz Showcase -- Chicago's most celebrated and long-running jazz club--is losing its lease, Showcase founder Joe Segal said Sunday night. The club, which for a decade has featured some of the world's biggest jazz stars in tony quarters at 59 W. Grand Ave., must leave by Jan. 1, Segal said. "We don't know where we're going or what's going to happen yet," said Segal, who has been presenting jazz in Chicago at various locations since 1947. "I'm pretty tired of moving," added Segal, 80. Segal was not certain what would happen to the room after he moves. His landlord could not be reached for comment late Sunday. Before arriving in March 1996 at the current location, the Jazz Showcase had flourished for 14 years in the Blackstone Hotel, at 636 S. Michigan. The impresario lost that room when new owners took over the building. The Jazz Showcase, believed to be the country's second-oldest continuously running jazz club after the Village Vanguard in New York, in earlier incarnations presented touring artists on North Rush Street, North Lincoln Avenue, in the Loop and on the South Side. Virtually everyone significant in jazz has played for Segal during the past 59 years, from bebop icon Charlie Parker to contemporary masters such as Roy Hargrove. In recent years, Segal's son Wayne has been a major player in running the Grand Avenue location and in programming Joe's Bebop Cafe and Jazz Emporium, an affiliated room on Navy Pier. Where will the Jazz Showcase resurface? "I'm not sure yet," Segal said. "We've heard that the South Loop is hot."

I don't know...in the spring of 2001 The Roscoe Mitchell Quintet with Fred Anderson came to Grand Rapids and drew 250 or more. The following month violinist Johnny Frigo came to the same venue, playing far tamer, tune oriented music, and drew the same size crowd (numbers-wise, that is, because they didn't look at all a like -- Frigo's people were much older, while Roscoe's crowd was completely mixed in age and race, the true jazz audience).

Larry, that is enlightening. The market has shrunk, not expanded, as a result of this activity, which is reflective of all of America. As George Lewis said, It's the Walmartization of jazz.

Not only that, you're assured an audience. Wynton will fill the hall. The arts in America is more about that today than any aesthetic consideration.

"People with money don't care about 'cutting edge' etc...they want safe stuff, whether it be music, dance etc...Just the way it is." That's not true, even in Grand Rapids, Michigan (www.uica.org or http://www.meijergardens.org/). In New York City? Wasn't always that way. Takes more work, but usually there's a package to be sold, and within that package are various levels of artistic presentation, not just a monolithic version of the arts. So the Art Institute of Chicago fundraises on the condition that they only exhibit landscapes and portraits? Come on. And what about the Guggenheim as just one example?

Titles have been hard to come by -- good thing there are a few mentioned in this review. Wrote Denardo a few times requesting the titles of the music played in Ann Arbor but to no avail. I bet the New York writer had access to O.C. and asked after the concert. I'm looking forward to the CD. With as much concertizing and touring this band has done the CD is a snapshot of something bigger. Can't imagine the sound with his two classic bassists. Do you hear the bass player's current "assignments" (mostly pizzicato for one, arco the other) as directly related to the earlier band?

The Respect Sextet presents powerful solo improvisations amid a unique blend of improvised and composed ensemble styles live on Blue Lake Public Radio this Wednesday, August 30th at 10 p.m. edt. The jazz performance streams live from www.bluelake.org and broadcasts regionally over WBLV FM 90.3 / WBLU FM 88.9, Grand Rapids. For information please write radio@bluelake.org. Exciting, one of a kind music and interviews on the electric medium it was meant for: radio. The Rochester based Respect Sextet’s trip to Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in the Manistee National Forest is to promote their public concert Saturday, September 2nd at Space vs. Time, 470 Market Ave SW (Between Wealthy and Godfrey) Grand Rapids at 8:30 p.m. $8. Contact Space vs Time by phone: 616-901-9717, or e-mail: yoroc111@aol.com. These Michigan performances are part of a larger tour, details of which are found at www.respectsextet.com. From their web site: Formed in 2001, the Respect Sextet is a powerhouse ensemble dedicated to performing a variety of improvisational musics, including free improvisations, original compositions, free jazz classics, Bulgarian tunes, text pieces, jazz standards, and game pieces. Seemingly disparate strands are held together by Respect's explosive energy, outstanding musicianship, and rare telepathy, honed by two years of weekly performances at a Rochester coffeehouse. The feeling that at any moment anything can happen and an overarching joie de vivre pervade Respect performances. The group comprises Josh Rutner (reeds, radio), Eli Asher (trumpet), James Hirschfeld (trombone), Malcolm Kirby (bass), Ted Poor (drums) and Red Wierenga (piano, accordion). After releasing two limited-edition (now-sold-out) CD-Rs, (respect.) and (respectacle.), and a mini-CD-R, (respookt.), Respect made its official studio debut with “The Full Respect,” released to rave reviews in August, 2003. Cadence Magazine called it "an impressive debut" and about it NewMusicBox.org said: Throwing this disc into your CD player feels like walking into a really great party, a room full of beautiful, laughing people. And like a good party, by the end of the record, you are left pleasantly dizzy and exhausted. The Full Respect was also named #3 Jazz CD of the Year by WGMC, and music from the CD was featured in the short film Who's Your Daddy?, an official selection at Sundance 2004. Coming on the heels of this success, in January, 2005, Respect released “Respect In You,” a free-wheeling live recording featuring guest bassist Matt Clohesy. Nate Dorward wrote in Cadence Magazine, “Respect In You is one of this year’s outstanding new discs, providing more food for thought and pure enjoyment than just about anything I’ve heard lately.” The Respect Sextet, through its eclecticism, its devotion to improvisation, its predilection towards swing, and its use of toys and "little instruments," has drawn comparisons both to New Dutch Swing and to the AACM. Indeed, many dialectics are at work (or play) in Respect's music, in which the serious, heady, and intellectual mingles with the light, comic, and absurd, where compositions alternate with improvisations, and where tight ensemble work coexists with loose, empathic interplay. Please join the Respect Sextet with host Lazaro Vega and engineer Steve Albert, Wednesday, August 30th at 10 p.m. edt over www.bluelake.org .

Yes -- there's a boot of that band which I haven't heard. I'm very much looking forward to the new release. LOVED the band in Ann Arbor. It's enough to be a new Ornette album. That's all I need to hear.

"...this group sounds like no other on the music scene or in Ornette's career." Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre used this sax, two basses, drums format on record: "Humility In Light of Creator."

Hank Williams "Weary Blues" was the pick from "Careless Love," as well as her "Hesitation Blues" from Larry Golding's record on Palmetto. The similarity to Billie is creepy. When I listen to "Everybody's Talking" it leads to more postmodern cheese in a jazz sauce, Randy Johnston's version of The Carpenter's "Close To You" or that new Gilman Trio boogie and bop version of Stevie Wonder's "I Wish." What else? Patricia Barber's "Summer Samba." Shirley Horn's version of "The Look of Love" ends it, the final word on jazzmopolitan kitsch. Shirley delves deeper into the drama of that song by playing with the time...she says to the set, experiment over, drag this pop all the way back to jazz.

Ah, we have excerpts from "City of Glass" but not the whole enchilada. Will also spin a 1966 Maynard Ferguson and His Orchestra radio broadcast from the Blue Room of the Tropicana Hotel, Las Vegas, including "Take the A Train" and "Got the Spirit." "Live Jazz From Club 15," 1966 CBS Radio Series (disc includes The Stan Getz Quartet and The Gene Krupa Orchstra featuring Anita O'Day on Honeysuckle Rose amongst others, both 1966). 2006 Request Records.

When you see someone going out with their boots on, the way Maynard did, and the way Elvin Jones did, it's inspirational. Does anyone have a copy of Bob Graettinger's "A Trumpet" written for Maynard and recorded by Stan Kenton? That's alluded me. Blue Lake will honor Maynard tonight. We'll begin the program with "Frame for the Blues."

"Everybody's Talkin'". Was that sung by Glenn Campbell? Ghost, where is Louis Armstrong's version of that?

That's what Bags said.

Interesting points, Allen. Partch. As to the defensiveness of jazz to the classical establishment, there's an ingrained prejudice from the general classical audience against jazz, that classical music may be proven "scientifically" to be superior (starting with A 440) and that the classical composer's understanding of the emotions evoked by various harmonic tones shows a more purposeful intellectual control of the musical content than jazz. Something like that. I've heard people say such things before and it's more of an undercurrent. Gunther Schuller wrote "Early Jazz" to be read by those folks.

Yeah, I bit.

"Ellington ranked with George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and their contemporaries." He ranked above them as a composer. The "contemporaries" would be Copeland, Bernstein and Ives, perhaps, and there he's ranking with.

Ghost! glad you got the message. Skid! My man! Tim just called to say how much he enjoyed tonight. That was about as tight a Blue Lake group we've had all summer, and the hang at Kresge Lodge was mo'betta because of the adult musicians who were looking for something to do. Of course I'm working so didn't participate fully.....hahahaha. That was some good music, though. Thanks for listening guys.

Late notice, but this is a tight, swinging band playing some nice charts for sextet. About 60 people are cooling, waiting ror the band. Jeff Uban, trumpet Tyler Kuebler, tenor saxophone Matt Westgate, trombone Phillip Burkhead, piano Gordon Lewis, bass Tim Froncek, drums www.bluelake.org Hope you can join us. Live radio!