Mark Stryker

Leaving aside Evans, whose work I really don't know well enough to evaluate, I agree with the general thrust of this.

Joe Wilder was class of 2008. If I had a vote the first two musicians I would add would be Billy Hart and Marcus Belgrave (advocacy) -- their musicianship, spirit and marriage of craft, creativity, tradition and openness embodies so much of what I value in jazz. Neither are "stars," but the world is infinitely a better, hipper place with them in it.

Interesting class announced today: Anthony Braxton, Richard Davis, Keith Jarrett, Jamey Aebersold (advocacy)

It's excellent. I wrote this capsule review earlier this year: Robert Hurst, "Bob: A Palindrome" (Bebob): Recorded in 2001 when the Detroit-bred bassist was living in Los Angeles, "Bob: A Palindrome" is exceptional. Hurst, who now lives in metro Detroit and teaches at the University of Michigan, assembled a starry cast -- Branford Marsalis, Bennie Maupin, Marcus Belgrave, Robert Glasper, Jeff Watts, Adam Rudolph -- for a program of his own meaty compositions. This is the most rewarding kind of post-bop: melodic and structurally intriguing material, personalized improvisations and an aesthetic both rooted and exploratory. The 21-minute "Middle Passage Suite" offers a cathartic journey into black history, and everyone is firing on all cylinders, including Belgrave, the Detroit trumpet hero and Hurst's mentor.

All of these are tied closely to autobiography and Detroit: "Yusef Lateef's Detroit" (whole album) Gerald Cleaver's Uncle June, "Be It As I See It." Gerald Wilson's "Detroit Suite."

Hope they played this. Wow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKjua-rVKy8

Joe Wilder was on the scene by 1941 (Les Hite) and 1942 (Lionel Hampton). What I don't know is if he's still making gigs, but it would not surprise me since he was impeccably trained, studying at the Manhattan School with the elder Joe Alessi (Ralph and Joe's grandfather, not their father who was also a New York trumpet guru. Very confusing family. Donald Byrd studied with the same senior Alessi by the way.) Anyway, I talked to Wilder recently when trying to nail down an obscure point about Thad Jones' instruments. Wilder sounded great on the phone.

Website of Umbria Jazz Festival says Mark Soskin, Bob Cranshaw and Herlin Riley. http://www.umbriajazz.com/artisti/sonny-rollins-000 Never a big Soskin fan, but Riley in that context could be quite interesting -- I've heard him sound very creative with Ahmad Jamal. Regardess of who's in the band, a quartet means Sonny will necessarily have to take more of the spotlight for longer periods, a challenge since as he's aged he's relied on others to spell him much more than in the past. Glad to see no percussion. Less clutter is good. Piano more likely to lay out more than guitar, leaving more trio playing.

This showed up out of the blue today at the office. Looks valuable. Based on many hours of post-1972 interviews. Straight oral history with supplemental interviews rather than synthesized. Coda: Book fell open to a photo of Mingus, Sonny Rollins (in tux) and Sue Mingus among the swells at Norman Mailer's 50th birthday party in 1973. http://www.amazon.com/Mingus-Speaks-John-F-Goodman/dp/0520275233/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367953014&sr=8-1&keywords=mingus+speaks

Heard her a few times and thought she sounded significantly below average on tenor but much better on clarinet. It still wasn't to my taste but there was a more individual sound, conception and higher craft level there. She also sounded better in context of her own group/material than in more straight ahead jam session-like contexts, but again even her best was not particularly interesting to me. Having said that, however, she did have a way of connecting (musically and personality) with an audience that reminded me a little of certain other sometimes idiosyncratic or high-energy musicians that people respond to like Michel Camilo, Regina Carter, Paquito D'Rivera and others. Coda 1: I thought the Times' story here was pretty awful in its almost complete lack of context of who and what has happened with the clarinet in the last 40 years. Not that a profile needs to slip into an egghead treatise, but one or two solid paragraphs placed higher in the story that swept through John Carter, Eddie Daniels, Buddy DeFranco, etc. (Byron and Peplowski were at least name checked but barely) and mentioned the instrument's role viz avant-garde would have helped dampen the sense that she's a one-person show rescuing the instrument from oblivion. Would have been possible to do this in a few sentences.... Coda 2: As far as fresh take on the old without the hats and nostalgia, I'll take these guys from Campaign in '75. Chicagoan Ron Dewar is the clarinetist.

The Times obit has some fantastic details (scotch, cigarettes, etc.) Re: the Bob Knight reference. It was Knight's habit to often have successful people from all walks of life and from the university speak to his teams. I don't know how exactly he met Starker but he responded to the cellist's pursuit of excellence, discipline, reputation as tough teacher, etc. Steve Alford, the former all-American guard for Indiana (and now coach at UCLA) wrote about the time Starker came to talk to the team in a book about his experiences playing for Knight. I'm going from memory, but I recall Alford saying that one of the things Starker talked about was that if he knew he hadn't played his best at a performance, then he was never satisfied, even if he received a rapturous standing ovation. The lesson reinforced Knight's mantra about playing to one's potential regardless of what the scoreboard says at any particular moment. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/arts/music/janos-starker-master-cellist-dies-at-88.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

Whoa! major news -- some outstand records among the Muse Shaw dates, particularly "Little Red's Fantasy," which I wrote about once a while ago for Jazz Times http://woodyshaw.com/OLD%20SITE/littlered_review.htm and "Love Dance," which I have always loved too. Like Chuck, I'm hoping some serious magic happens sonically with this reissue, 'cause the originals pretty much sucked when it came to the recorded sound.

What is the source of this quote? I'm skeptical. It was from a Down Beast magazine interview. I don't know the date, but I gave up on them back in the 70s, so it might have been in the 70s. I heard they used to be a pretty good jazz magazine... Hmm. It's just not consistent with any language I've ever seen Stan use or consistent with the warm feelings he had always expressed for Chick. I did a quick search of the old interviews I remember in Down Beat with Stan -- Aug 76 and Jan 78 -- and nothing like that is in there. The character of the quote suggests it would had to come post-1980 or so when Stan ditched all the electronics. I couldn't put my hands on any Down Beat interview with him post-78 but there must be one -- I may not have the issue or maybe I missed in the quick sweep I did. Sorry to be distrustful, but it doesn't ring true. I got trained by Larry Gushee at the University of Illinois -- I want to see the document.

What is the source of this quote? I'm skeptical.

The entire subject matter though is just not covered in an American university history survey class covering many years of history, which is what the initial poster said he was going to be teaching. No one would expect it to be, or want it to be, in my experience. I agree with that. I think that in an American history class in an American university, if you used maybe a 10-15 seconds snippet of music up to three times in a semester, at the beginning of class sessions while everyone was taking their seats, as a seque into your first sentence of your lecture, that might work. More than three 15 second pieces of music during the entire semester would be too much though, I think. Even if you used a 10-15 second snippet of music three different times during the semester, you would become known as the weirdo professor, most likely. I was an American history major at the University of Illinois at Urbana in the early 80s and one of my main professors was Robert McColley, who specialty areas were the colonial and early national periods and the founding fathers. He taught the second half of the freshman American history survey that I took, picking up with reconstruction and continuing to the present. He was a serious classical music guy -- some of you may recognize his name from Fanfare, for whom he reviewed records for many years and was their resident Brucknerian. Anyway, he had music playing before every class as people were taking their seats, the pieces and composers always tied to the topic or time period at hand. I would have to go back to my notes from the class -- yes, I still have them; weep for me -- to see what all he played. But I know for a fact that the first time I ever heard Charles Ives was in his class. Made a big impact on me ...

Baker did study cello with Starker and wrote his early cello works for him, including the Sonata for Cello and Piano, which premiered at Carnegie around 74 and appeared on LP a couple of times, including in the multi-volume Black Composer Series on Columbia. There's also a chamber piece called "Singer of Songs/Weaver of Dreams" for cello and 17 percussion instruments that was recorded by Starker and percussionist George Gaber on "Starker Plays Baker" http://www.amazon.com/Starker-Plays-Baker-Singers-Weavers/dp/B000007QLG And there's a Baker Concerto for Cello and Chamber Orchestra from 1975 that Starker commissioned and that was also performed in NY. Haven't heard these in a long time but recall them all as good pieces in a flexible third stream idiom

The great cellist and teacher Janos Starker died this morning in Bloomington, Ind., at age 88. Not all things in all repertoire but an imposing musician who deserves his spot in the pantheon. Not long after I arrived in Detroit in 2005 I heard him play the following program with the Detroit Symphony -- Hindemith Concerto, Brahms Double Concerto, Beethoven Triple Concerto. All on the same concert (!) He was 71. It was superhuman. Everything was terrific, especially the Hindemith and Brahms. I grew up in Bloomington and Starker was the house cellist in town He had an ego. Funny story: A friend once stood behind him in a line at a bank. The teller asked him for ID. Indignant, Starker replied: "I'm the world's greatest cellist!" RIP http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/24173.html

Actually, no. She turns 57 in a few days and I'm 49 (50 in August). But as I've gotten older I've gotten "colder" in the sense of needing more heat in the house in the winter or spring. In the summer, I don't want it freezing but I need cool air circulating. Basically, I'm pretty high maintenance

I saw this item last week and was intrigued because it's always seemed to me that jazz musicians have overlooked the possibilities in Sondheim. It's true that much of the material is not in standard form and is through-composed in ways that make the songs less ideal for blowing vehicles in the way of older standards. The harmonies have similar challenges with their roots in Britten, Rachmaninoff, Ravel. Still, with all the searching in recent decades for "new standards" these would be untapped resources by players willing to create arrangements with multiple sections, vamps, pedal-points or structuring different grooves for different soloists. I asked Sondheim once why he thought his songs hadn't been explored by jazz musicians all that much and the way he put it was that they aren't easy to "open up" for improvisation unlike -- and this was the example he pulled out of the air, "How HIgh the Moon." He did say that he always liked the record "Color and Light," which was comprised of his tunes and he was especially complementary of Herbie Hancock -- he seemed to really appreciate the creativity and freedom. http://www.amazon.com/Color-Light-Jazz-Sketches-Sondheim/dp/B000002AUC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366986365&sr=8-1&keywords=sondheim+and+hancock+and+sony

In today's Wall Street Journal there's a piece about Sonny Rollins and his new home. He complains about the draftiness of his previous farmhouse and says in the new place he kept the heat at 80-82 degrees this winter. Maybe it's something about saxophone players. I always turning up the heat at home during the winter (only to have my wife turn it back down in another battle in a never-ending war ... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323809304578430733765013790.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet

"Rooms have sound—a note, if you will. My living room is an E, and to a lesser degree an A-flat. When I play an E in there, it resonates more than any other note—filling the space and lingering in the air. E is a good note, but I'm an ecumenical guy. I have nothing against any of the notes. Sometimes they have stuff against us players." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323809304578430733765013790.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet

Long interview with former Chicago trumpeter with many stories about Von Freeman, Lin Halliday, Red Rodney, Chris Potter, Eddie Harris, others. Also some video of Von with Jodie Christian, Rufus Reid, Jack DeJohnette. http://goteamband.com/blog/2012/11/16/brad-goode-interview

I spoke with Roscoe Mitchell today -- I was interviewing him for a piece I'm working on about Gerald Cleaver -- and he said something about himself that bears repeating: "I still consider myself a student." I've heard essentially the same thing from Barry Harris, Hank Jones, Sonny Rollins, James Moody, Elliott Carter, Yo-Yo Ma and Charlie Watts and surely others I'm forgetting. The idiom doesn't matter; the attitude does: How can I get better? What can I learn today to make me better tomorrow? An inspiring lesson.

This was new to me. Apology if it's been posted before -- and I know it's not an album but had to put it somewhere. Stan in 1968 with Stanley Cowell, Miroslav Vitous and Jack DeJohnette accompanying a, um, French fashion show and trying not to laugh. So great on a zillion levels. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntvZfg4M9Do&list=UUR8J-RPLmQMEAkT78v1ymBA

Happy birthday to Bunky Green, who turns 78 today. Came across this curio -- a Chicago TV news piece about the 6th World Saxophone Congress at Northwestern. There is brief footage of Bunky playing with Dexter Gordon's rhythm section of the time -- Kirk Lightsey, Rufus Reid, Eddie Gladden. (Also, some brief teaser footage of Dexter with the group.) Also an interview stuck in there with Fred Hemke, longtime classical saxophone guru at Northwestern. I wonder if a bootleg exists of Bunky's entire performance ...