Mark Stryker

Yeah, I remember that studio was pretty close to my apartment. I could use the foot suggestions. But what's the food situation at the festival? Any decent vendors? It's hard to tear myself away from the music for a sit-down restaurant. In Chicago at least the early curfew allows for late dinners out. Best option at the festival itself is various soul food -- BBQ ribs, chicken, etc. But otherwise, standard outdoor festival fare. Green vegatables are very scares. Everything fried ... Slightly elevated options from one place, booth run by Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe (related to the restaurant/jazz club in Grosse Pointe Farms and owned by Gretchen Valade, the festival's chief philanthropist and owner of Mack Ave. Records). But lines are often ridiculous.

Everything in Astoria looks like a jewel. It's like an art gallery for pastries. (For foodies coming to town, as we get closer, I can recommend stuff on foot or by car ride.)

If you're going to do that, don't forget your passport! I don't think this is a good choice. The delays coming through the tunnel from Windsor to Detroit are unpredictable. While it can be as easy as 10 minutes, there are often backups that can last 30 minutes or far longer on weekends. My colleagues report a number of recent horror stories, including being stuck inside the tunnel forever, which is quite unpleasant. Three other hotel choices that are walking distance close. The classiest choice is Book Cadillac (Weston), which includes the best restaurants, among them the fantastic Michael Symon's Roast. http://www.bookcadillacwestin.com/ DoubleTree (Hilton) http://doubletree3.hilton.com/en/hotels/michigan/doubletree-suites-by-hilton-hotel-detroit-downtown-fort-shelby-DTTLFDT/index.html The absolute closet hotels, which abut the festival site are the Renaissance Center Marriot: http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/dtwdt-detroit-marriott-at-the-renaissance-center/ as well as the Courtyard Marriott across the street http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/dtwdc-courtyard-detroit-downtown/

http://www.freep.com/article/20120416/ENT04/120416076/Full-list-artists-announced-Detroit-Jazz-Festival http://www.freep.com/article/20120418/ENT04/120418061/Jazz-Festival-might-move-all-riverfront-event Pete: Thanks for digging up those links. Unfortunately, the link to the first story that broke the news of the line-up had expired. I've copied the story below, because it gives some interesting context and details about the Shorter tribute and more. Sonny Rollins, Pat Metheny, Wynton Marsalis to play at Detroit Jazz Festival BYLINE: By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press SECTION: ENTERTAINMENT NEWS LENGTH: 910 words DETROIT _ Anyone concerned that a recent leadership change at the top of the Detroit Jazz Festival might mean a lowering of artistic ambitions or an increase in commercial crossover styles can breathe a sigh of relief. The 2012 lineup assembled by new artistic director Chris Collins reaffirms the festival's core commitment to the jazz tradition and opens a window on the personal vision that Collins, the first professional jazz musician to lead the Detroit festival, brings to the job. The lineup reveals a generous helping of no-nonsense veteran jazz stars, such as the 81-year-old tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, neither of whom have played the festival since 1987, and guitarist Pat Metheny, who will make his festival debut. A diversity of styles is on display, including left-of-center musicians such as trumpeter Dave Douglas, saxophonist Ellery Eskelin and drummer Gerald Cleaver. And there are promising streaks of curatorial flair, including a multifaceted tribute to the influential saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter. "I want to enhance the core of the festival as a mainstream festival," said Collins, 47, a tenor saxophonist and clarinetist and director of jazz studies at Wayne State University. "But mainstream jazz is a big term, and I don't mean to imply that it's simply late '50s or '60s post-bop. It includes artists who come from the jazz tradition but have gone in all sorts of different directions with different influences. But they've fallen from the jazz tree, rather than a blues band with a little jazz thrown in or an African band with some jazz improvisation." Entering its 33rd year, the Detroit Jazz Festival on Labor Day weekend is the largest free-of-charge jazz festival in North America. The festival spreads from Hart Plaza to Campus Martius and Cadillac Square in downtown Detroit. This year's dates are Aug. 31-Sept. 3. Late last year Collins replaced Terri Pontremoli, the highly respected director of the festival for the previous five years. Her contract was not renewed after tensions developed with leaders of the nonprofit foundation that sponsors and operates the festival: chair and major benefactor Gretchen Valade and president Tom Robinson. Pontremoli is credited with elevating the festival to a new artistic peak, introducing an artist-in-residence and thematic programming and deepening community connections. The resident artist component remains: Trumpeter Terence Blanchard, whose residency was already in the works when Collins took over, will lead his own band and act as musical director of a tribute to Art Blakey. But Collins has excised an overarching theme in favor of what he calls subthemes and mini-residencies. The most ambitious is the tribute to the 78-year-old Shorter. The festival is commissioning arrangers, from national figures to local musicians, to recast for big band Shorter's landmark compositions. They'll be performed by a Detroit festival orchestra with guest soloists such as saxophonists Steve Wilson and Donny McCaslin. A multimedia presentation will honor Shorter before his pace-setting quartet performs. "When Wayne comes on it will be a finale of all of this stuff we've done to celebrate him in all facets," Collins says. "He's incredibly important, and we want to show the impact he's had." Here are more programming details. Additional national artists will be formally announced April 17, and regional and local acts will be announced in early summer. Marsalis will front a quintet. Metheny will lead a quartet featuring saxophonist Chris Potter. Pianist Chick Corea and vibraphonist Gary Burton will be joined by the Harlem String Quartet. Douglas will co-lead a quintet with saxophonist Joe Lovano with Lawrence Fields, James Genus and Joey Barron. Detroit's historic role as a jazz mecca is to be honored through homecomings for trombonist Curtis Fuller, saxophonists Kenny Garrett, Charles McPherson and Rick Margitza; multi-reedman Charlie Gabriel, and drummer Gerald Cleaver. Fuller will appear with the Blakey tribute that also includes Bill Pierce, Geoff Keezer, Peter Washington and Lewis Nash. McPherson is to co-lead a quintet with trumpeter Tom Harrell. Garrett will lead his quartet. Margitza will appear with his hometown mentor, George Benson. Cleaver will front his band Uncle June. Gabriel will appear with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band of New Orleans in two sets, including one under a Delta-to-Detroit tent with guests Christian Scott, Donald Harrison and James Andrews. An organ trio theme will offer three takes on the genre, from Ellery Eskelin's post-free group to the post-bop of Larry Goldings/Peter Bernstein/Bill Stewart and the grits 'n' gravy of the Godfathers of the Groove with Rueben Wilson, Bernard Purdie and others. A festival big band, choir and vocal soloists will revive the Duke Ellington Sacred Music concert with conductor David Berger that was performed at Orchestra Hall in February.

Point of clarification: The George Benson performing is not the famous guitarist but a veteran Detroit saxophonist (in his 80s, a bebopper, day gig career as a mailman but always an important local player). I'm on a zillion deadlines so can't pull up my own stories about this year's Detroit line up but if I get a chance later, I'll post them.

Very well said! Mind if I tweet that? (with credit of course)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/sports/carroll-shelby-builder-of-cobra-sports-car-dies-at-89.html?hp A very interesting life and important figure in auto history. The jazz connection to Shelby, of course, is Herbie Hancock, who took his windfall from "Watermelon Man" -- a $3,000 royalty check that arrived in the spring of 1963 -- and bought the sixth Cobra sports car ever made (counting by serial number). He bought it right off the showroom floor and drove it pretty consistently until around 1990, when he put it in storage (and got a Ferrari for his daily drive.). With Shelby now gone, Herbie is the longest original owner of any Cobra. That car is easily worth a $1 million or more at auction. Here's a funny story I found in a Vanity Fair article from five or six years ago: "It was so fast it almost blew my head off," (Hancock) says. He remembers a night in New York when Miles Davis offered him a ride home from the Village Gate in his Maserati. Hancock told Davis he had his own car, the Cobra. "Miles said, 'It ain't a Maserati,'" Hancock says. "So we both got to a stoplight and when the light turned green we both hit it. I got to the next light, and I had time to light up a cigarette before Miles got there." Footnote: When I interviewed Hancock at his house in Los Angeles once, I asked to see the garage, hoping the Cobra was there. Alas, it was stored offsite but I did check out the Ferrari -- when you work for a Detroit newspaper, your radar always has to be tuned to any potential auto angle for any story ...

Let the record show that you meant to say 658. Oops. A clear typo! Thanks for noticing. I've corrected the original. Also in that game, he made a couple of basket catches out in center. The internet tells me he hit that HR off Ross Grimsley and it was in the top of the 7th.

The Say Hey Kid turns 81 today. One of my greatest childhood heroes, even though at 48 I'm still too young to remember him in his prime. I did see him hit his third to last home run, No. 658, in July 1973 when the Mets played the Reds at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Say Hey!

"Timeliness" as a value in defining news ranks at the very top of the pyramid for the media, and obvious markers are those defined by the marketplace -- concerts, recordings, premieres, etc. To only use this criteria is a sign of laziness, of course, because you never want to become a total slave to the calendar or toady for the industry, but it is of course one of the ways the sausage gets made, especially in "selling" your ideas up the chain to your editors. For what it's worth, I can tell you one of the fundamentals of how I work is I keep a kind of a master calendar of all the events happening on my beat and I try to plan accordingly, often months in advance and outside the influence any publicist or pitch from industry sources. I look for important stories, people, music or other subjects I haven't written about recently or ever, reflections of trends that I see happening nationally, links that I can make between particular programs, composers, etc. so that I find a ways to use what is in some ways a "preview" story as a real springboard into a substantive piece about someone or something that illuminates the music for readers. Then there are other enterprise stories that exist outside the continuum, as it were, of the ongoing events calendar. (By the way, we sometimes joke that one example of something is a fluke, two examples is a coincidence but three examples is a trend.) Re: one footnote in the Cecil Taylor story. Ratliff paraphrases Cecil at one point as "talking with intense loyalty about a line of particularly New York-identified piano players: Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Mal Waldron, John Hicks." It's quite interesting to hear him linking himself in this way, especially with a player associated with elegance like Teddy Wilson and a mainstream post-bopper like John Hicks, who certainly was a power player. I've never seen Cecil play live, but one summer night in 1988 I visited New York and went to hear Tommy Flanagan (w/George Mraz and Kenny Washington) at Sweet Basil and Cecil was also there hanging out and enjoying the music. On the break I remember Tommy looking across the room at one point, spying Cecil and saying, "Hey, C.T.!" with a big grin. Later that same night I went to Bradley's, where Kirk Lightsey was leading a trio -- can't remember who the bass player was but pretty sure it was Eddie Gladden on drums -- and Cecil was there too, sitting at a ringside table with at least one other guy, drinking and boisterously encouraging the musicians and acknowledging certain things that happened in the music with a clap of the hands, a laugh or an aside to somebody at the table.

I thought the story was artfully done, giving an evocative feel for the kind of personality Taylor is, while also providing an insightful summary of his art for general readers. The piece wasn't meant to be a full profile of Taylor but a look at his music and legacy through the eyes of the pianists who are joining him in the upcoming celebration, while still allowing readers to get a first-hand sense of the man and musician at the center of the story. It's certainly possible that Ratliff went into the initial interview with a different idea about the kind of story he wanted to write and then was forced to call an audible based on what he was actually able to get out of Cecil. Or maybe not. I do know that writing meangingfully about Cecil for a general newspaper readership -- actually for any readership -- is one of the biggest challenges in writing about any musician in any idiom. Like Larry, I've also been in situations with interview subjects who can be frustratingly impenetrable -- sometimes willfully, but sometimes not. Wayne Shorter and Cornette Colemen come to mind as two guys that are as nice as can be but they just operate on another plane of language and metaphor -- like Cecil, they are Maharishi's of music. In the end, while it's mesmerizing and sometimes revelatory to be in their presence, it can be impossible to quote them directly and extensively in any meaningful way in the context of a newspaper story. They just refuse to speak in direct terms, especially when you try and get them to dig into the technical marrow of the music or untangle their creative process or tell stories about the old days. I spent nearly 5 hours with Ornette once for a profile and it was a serious challenge to find quotable passages, though I needed all of that time to try to get a sense of him and his personality. So much of what I saw, heard and felt shaped the content, structure and descriptions in the story in all kinds of subtle ways, even though he wasn't quoted much per se. I was also lucky in that at one point when I was trying to get a better handle on whatever the hell he really means by the term "harmolodics" he offered to give me a lesson on the stop and got out his alto and literally put it in my hands to play. (I had told him my background was as an alto player.) The point is, that episode gave me a narrative hook that turned into a nice part of the story, but there still wasn't much that was "quotable." I think Jim's use of the phrase "pimp the upcoming concert series" is unfair. Yes, the series is the news peg for the story -- the event or circumstance that makes a story about Cecil timely, the reason the story is relevant to readers right at this moment. But this story is certainly not defacto marketing copy designed to sell tickets, though, of course, it may have that effect. There is certainly a discussion to be had about how narrow definitions of timeliness have negative consequences when it comes to covering artistic enterprise and merit, and we can also have a discussion about the the symbiotic and/or parasitic relationship between the music press and the music business and the role the media plays, willingly or not, as the marketing arm of the industry. But of all the things this story about Cecil is or is not, I wouldn't call it an advertorial by any stretch.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/arts/music/don-was-tries-to-revive-blue-note-records.html Some interesting details here, including news that Wayne Shorter has signed with the label.

http://www.retronaut.co/2011/06/celebrities-and-their-vinyl/ Stumbled upon this today. Pretty cool, actually. Can make out some of the sides -- Joan Collins (Sinatra's Swing Easy), Patti Smith (A Love Supreme) and a few others.

"The Connection" and "Shades of Redd" have such an extraorindary sound about them. It's a unique, deliriously lyrical quality that comes from a combination of McLean's bittersweet tone and similar qualities in Redd's melodies and harmonies. The tunes are singable with lots of descending sequences mirrored in the harmonic patterns (lots of sequential half diminished 7/dominant 7 flat 9 progressions.) It comes out of Damerson and Bud in many ways. The only other records that sound like these to me are the Tina Brooks Blue Notes and some of the stuff on "A Fickle Sonance." At the risk of invoking a cliche, I sometimes think of this as junkie music -- the push-pull of intensity and relaxation, of bitter and sweet, of heart on the sleeve emotionalism and offhanded hipness. Personally I think these are incredibly soulful records. Jackie remains one of my greatest heroes. I wrote this when he died in 2006. Reprinting whole since the link is long dead. By Mark Stryker Detroit Free Press There was nothing in jazz like the sugar-free sound of alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, who died last week at his home in Hartford, Conn., at age 74. McLean produced a searing, anguished wail that rode the sharp side of the pitch like a cowboy trying to tame a wild steer. Even those of us who worship McLean recognize that his acidic tone and slippery tuning are not to everyone's taste. But for true believers, McLean's bittersweet sound remains one of the most soulful cries in American music, and the hot-blooded intensity of his style manifests the same urgent quest for self-expression that made us fall in love with jazz in the first place. McLean's music was rarely pretty by conventional standards, but it was profoundly honest. In a society that rewards prepackaged stars and false emotion, McLean was the real deal: a beacon for truth, justice, individuality and the blues. He was also a cultural warrior who inspired cult devotion. Acolytes packed his performances, their mouths agape at the gale force of his attack. I once drove hundreds of miles to hear him in Chicago, where I happened to meet Detroit pianist Kenn Cox outside the club. I was first in line; Cox was second. Part of McLean's allure was his pedigree. He was one of the last direct links to the mid-20th century bebop innovators, his mentors defining geniuses of the age: alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and trumpeter Miles Davis. Harlem-born, McLean was given an alto for his 15th birthday. Soon he was studying with Powell, working small jobs with Monk and sharing the bandstand with Parker. At age 20 he was working and recording with Davis. In the mid '50s there were stints with bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Art Blakey, though McLean was still so enthralled with Parker's style that Mingus often challenged him: "Jackie, you have your own sound. Now why don't you look for your own ideas." McLean soon found them, absorbing Parker's rhythmic phrasing and fervor into his own angular phrasing and tart melodic vocabulary. A string of Blue Note LPs starting in 1959 document his early maturity: "Jackie's Bag," "Swing, Swang, Swingin'," "A Fickle Sonance" and "Bluesnik." Then the story takes a surprising twist. While many of his contemporaries turned a cold shoulder to the avant-garde in the '60s, McLean, in a firm act of artistic bravery, embraced it. He reinvented himself, grafting expressionistic, modal forms onto his bop roots, expanding his compositional palette and forming bands around young vanguard musicians. "The new breed has inspired me all over again," McLean wrote in 1962. The titles of his LPs reflect the exploratory spirit of the space age and the heat of the civil rights era: "Let Freedom Ring," "One Step Beyond," "Destination Out," "It's Time," “Action,” "Right Now." That McLean was able to reshape his destiny is remarkable given that he was still struggling with heroin addiction, which he had picked up as a teenager. McLean eventually kicked his habit and in 1970 began a long teaching career at the University of Hartford. He and his wife, Dollie, became community leaders, founding the Artists Collective, a Hartford cultural center for city youth. When McLean resumed performing in earnest around 1990, his playing had progressed again; his technique was suppler, his sound richer and the sweep of his conception registered a newfound majesty. You can hear it on the brilliant "Dynasty" (Triloka), which includes an impassioned reading of "A House is Not a Home," a saccharine Burt Bacharach ballad McLean transforms into a transcendent anthem. If there is a lot of hurt still in McLean's sound, there is an equal amount of triumph. His solo is about overcoming adversity. The struggle is audible. Stuttering phrases explode in delirious bursts of lyricism. McLean was never sentimental, but he was a romantic. McLean's sound hit me like a bolt of lightning when I was a kid studying the alto. Just as he once wanted to be Charlie Parker, I wanted to be Jackie McLean, and like most McLean freaks, I have a hard time relating to those who don't get him. Years ago someone told a friend of mine who also played alto that his sound resembled McLean’s. Since my friend didn't know McLean's music, he borrowed a record from the library. Turned out he didn't dig it. All I could say was, "I'm sorry." (End)

http://www.freep.com/article/20120429/ENT04/204290417/Stakes-are-high-as-top-concertmaster-candidate-prepares-for-weeklong-trial-with-the-DSO?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p I don't usually post the classical pieces I write for the Free Press but thought folks might find this interesting since the broader discussion of the role of the concertmaster transcends the particular (though fascinating) details of the post-strike rebuilding in Detroit.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304811304577366332400453796.html Read this today. Laughed out loud -- many times.

OK, that's a little spooky ...

Kalamazoo her home town - interesting. There's a pamphlet, a short history of the old, pre-Civil War black community in SE Mich. (Cass, Berrien, St. Joe counties), that claims Abbey grew up away down there. (A Niles newspaperman wrote it.) IIRC she did not claim a Michigan background. I do remember in 1975 moseying across a pre-subway Washington DC with Ran Blake to catch a Jeanne Moreau movie. He was a Jeanne Moreau completist. He had good taste (probably still has). Actually, she spoke freely about her upbringing if asked. Very long and fascinating interview here. She was born in Chicago but grew up on a farm in Calvin Center, a rural place in the southeastern part of Michigan. She later lived in Kalamazoo, where she went to high school and apparently also lived briefly in Jackson, MI. Long and very interesting interview here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:0cqlssWxwt4J:www.newmusicbox.org/assets/38/interview_lincoln.pdf+abbey+lincoln+and+lisa+and+calvin+and+kalamazoo&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESi1vg8IBFeutNMWz5xBv3Z1Rs7-OrB1eQYxasQiQpU4_U-rV_SSN6HxwSH06uLkXe6o1OkvXybIRRtL3FVO5L11T_nvMSQb61bObMOwfBoriYlXagxVvdwNoowoGID6h1_4LIIr&sig=AHIEtbRnamkp5UU5UdeMWVb039qv7HG4bQ

Kid Rock is teaming with the Detroit Symphony in a couple of weeks for a benefit concert in which they'll raise $1 million for the orchestra. (Most of you probably know that Rock is from here and is a big booster for all things Detroit.) I've been thinking about issues related to this one-time marriage, etc., and what the larger context is. While I've studied quite deeply connections/mergers between of classical music and jazz, I really don't know symphonic rock stuff at all. Thanks all for the suggestions. Speak up with more ideas if you have them.

I've actually met Tüür. The Detroit Symphony has played some of his music (under Neeme Jarvi when he was music director here but also under son Paavo Jarvi as a guest). Tüür came to town for one or the other of those weeks and when I saw him in the lobby I when up and introduced myself. Nice man. Interesting composer too. Very eclectic but doesn't create pastiche and there's some rewarding guts and dissonance there.

Well, yes, of course that speaks to differences between good and bad, but I'm cool on the analysis front. I'm looking for specific bands/albums/songs ...

For something I'm working on relating to classical music and rock crossover (don't ask) I want to identify a couple of examples where the marriage works well and a couple where it doesn't. Does anyone here have any inisight on the matter? I'm especially interested in at this point in rock artists who have tried to cast their music in classical clothes. There are any number of "classical" composers like the Bang on a Can folks (Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, etc.) who write notated music that uses rock rhythms, instruments, textures, production, etc., but that's a separate but related topic. Thanks in advance.

If Tony came back from England and said "it didn't work," then I would take him at his word. In that light, Lundvall asking for a demo seems prescient -- one of the reasons he got to where he did was he didn't throw money at just anything, which is not to say he didn't take risks. But the prima facie evidence in this case suggests he knew what he was doing. On a broader note, leaving aside the discussion of the Lila Wallace issue (I basically agree with Allen on that one), I don't think it's fair to claim Lundvall as some sort of self-defined record company revolutionary and then complain when he didn't change the system. NOBODY could change the system. That's the issue with the SYSTEM. Lundvall was highly effective working within the system. I don't agree with all the artists he signed but he did do good work at Columbia (Dexter, Woody Shaw, Blythe too, yes?) and there are many Blue Note successes too, and he kept up the good fight far longer than anyone else might have in dealing with the bean counters that he had do deal with, creating revenue streams via, say, a Norah Jones to continue to fund jazz projects. I don't know him personally and can't speak to how he treats musicians, wives, children or puppies. And, again, if I were in charge, I would have made different choices along the way. I wouldn't deify him -- and think people who do risk overstating the case -- but on balance, he's clearly been a force for good not evil. That's not nothing in the record industry. What is the evidence that he talked as though it was his goal to literally change the model for the way business was done? And what would that changed model look like anyway. If it's only "sign more cats like Barry Harris," I would count that as a great and glorious thing and rejoice unto the heavens, but I wouldn't necessarily say that's changing the model in any fundamental way.

Specific words aside, placement and context can have an impact, especially if you are trying to write funny. The Pulitzer Prize winning feature writer Gene Weingarten once put it this way: “Always try to put the funniest word at the end of your sentence underpants.”

When I was in school in the early '80s in Urbana, there was a good juke box at this campus hangout right next to the Music School where folks would gather before rehearsals and where the big band would play regularly on Tuesdays. (Treno's for any other Univ. of Illinois folks out there.) We used to play Groove Holmes' "Misty" over and over and over. It was the edited single. Just two minutes long but very hip. The manager used to get irritated that we played it so much and one night he was so sick of hearing it for the 10th time or whatever that he literally pulled the plug on the machine for the night. Busted! Horace's "Song for My Father" was on the box too but in two parts, and if we were light on quarters we'd just play part 2 because that picked right up at Joe Henderson's solo.