Bobby Bradford at Umbrella Festival next week

[Chuck Nessa]

He's playing Friday and Saturday nights with Dave Rempis and a bunch of other good musicians.

Hope to see some of you there.

[johnlitweiler]

He's playing Friday and Saturday nights with Dave Rempis and a bunch of other good musicians.

Hope to see some of you there.

A must-hear. He's also playing on Saturday with Mike Reid's People Places and Things group, another good band. Bradford sounded so lyrical and bright and poised at the Vision Festival in June. Wonderful music.

[relyles]

I caught him when he played the Jazz Standard in NYC earlier this month with David Murray, Marty Ehrlich, Mark Dresser and Andrew Cyrille. He was in fine form on that day. I definately would encourage those in the area to make the effort.

[rpklich]

Umbrella Music does have schedule: http://umbrellamusic.org/2009FestPR.html

See you there

[Chuck Nessa]

I just got off the phone with Bobby. He's had to cancel his appearance in Chicago for health reasons. Nothing life threatening but he needs surgery and can't play trumpet. We had planned to have dinner in Chicago and that's why he called. Otherwise he's in good spirits and is disappointed he won't be able to experience the players in Chicago.

[Larry Kart]

I just got off the phone with Bobby. He's had to cancel his appearance in Chicago for health reasons. Nothing life threatening but he needs surgery and can't play trumpet. We had planned to have dinner in Chicago and that's why he called. Otherwise he's in good spirits and is disappointed he won't be able to experience the players in Chicago.

Shoot. Hope all goes well for him and that the fest can fill in the big empty spot. I'll pass on any info on the latter if I hear it.

[clifford_thornton]

Sorry to hear that. Hope all goes well. He's scheduled to play in Texas in January with Frode.

[ejp626]

I just got off the phone with Bobby. He's had to cancel his appearance in Chicago for health reasons. Nothing life threatening but he needs surgery and can't play trumpet. We had planned to have dinner in Chicago and that's why he called. Otherwise he's in good spirits and is disappointed he won't be able to experience the players in Chicago.

Shoot. Hope all goes well for him and that the fest can fill in the big empty spot. I'll pass on any info on the latter if I hear it.

Yes, pass it along. I was thinking I might actually be able to make the 10 pm show, but probably will pass under the circumstances.

While this isn't quite as exceptional as the Umbrella Fest, Stefon Harris will be at the Jazz Showcase Thurs-Sun. I intend on making the Sun. matinee.

[Larry Kart]

News flash:

LAST MINUTE LINEUP CHANGE FOR Umbrella

Music Festival 2009 !!

Due to an unexpected injury this past weekend, trumpeter Bobby Bradford is undergoing a minor surgery that will prohibit him from participating in the 2009 Umbrella Music Festival. We wish him a speedy recovery and hope to have him appear in Chicago in the near future.

Despite this setback, festival organizers are happy to announce that one of improvised music's greatest innovators will step into the slot. Saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell will perform Friday, November 6th at the Elastic Arts Foundation in an improvised quartet featuring Dave Rempis on saxophones, Junius Paul on bass, and Frank Rosaly on drums.

For the Saturday, November 7th performance at The Hideout, Mitchell will be featured with Mike Reed's Loose Assembly. This set will debut new sextet material featuring the band's special guest.

You can find all other lineup, schedule, and venue information at www.umbrellamusic.org.

We look forward to seeing you all this weekend!!

[Larry Kart]

A semi-grumpy report on the first two nights -- semi-grumpy in part because I've got a flare-up of bursitis in one shoulder and can't find a position that isn't uncomfortable; thus one's tolerance for music that is less than absorbing tends to be limited. So (again and throughout IMO) the first three sets on Thursday were almost total duds:

6:00 PM : Liudas Mockunas Quartet (Lithuania)

Liudas Mockunas - saxophones

Jim Baker - piano

Brian Sandstrom - bass

Steve Hunt - drums

Claudia Cassidy Theater

6:45 PM : Martin Brandlmayr Solo (Austria)

Martin Brandlmayr - solo percussion and electronics

Preston-Bradley Hall

7:30 PM : David Stackenas Trio (Sweden)

Jason Stein - bass clarinet

David Stackenas - guitar

Josh Abrams - bass

Claudia Cassidy Theater

Mockunas is just another huffer and puffer; Brandlmayr is a "delicate" twiddler; and Stackenas goes scritchy-scratch, sometimes very fast.

8:15 PM : Gratkowski/Kaufmann/de Joode (Germany)

Frank Gratkowski - reeds

Achim Kaufmann - piano

Wilbert de Joode - bass

Preston-Bradley Hall

Things began to look up with Gratkowski et al., but that set, relief though it was, had an air of "professional" routines to it, and also was more or less eclipsed for me by the following set by Hans Koch and Chicago friends:

9:00 PM : Hans Koch Quartet (Switzerland)

Hans Koch - reeds

Fred Lonberg-Holm - cello

Brian Labycz - electronics

Marc Riordan - drums

Claudia Cassidy Theater

This was a genuine four-way conversation throughout, with a fine sense of "phrasing" to it -- a discovery of what, for these guys on this night, a phrase was going to be, and then an eager, relaxed, cumulative placement of phrase upon phrase until one had "a piece." Lonberg-Holm's indefatigable nerviness/headiness was crucial (he's never seen a musical "pool" in which he wasn't prepared to jump); Riordan is a very compositional, lucid percussionist; and Labycz is ... "darn cool" are the words that come to mind.

Finally, Guus Janssen -- that cross between Conlon Nancarrow and Crazy Otto (with a soupcon of Erroll Garner and Teddy Wilson). I've heard a fair amount on Janssen on record, but the power and dynamic range of his in-person pianism is well beyond what I'd expected. That plus his quite varied, at times almost impossibly "pearly" sense of touch (as in, perhaps, a very large mouthful of pearly teeth -- the grin of an armed-and-dangerous Cheshire Cat). Janssen's disruptions of harmonic and rhythmic expectation are at once quite extreme at times but always tuneful/parsable -- a kind of cheerfully subversive whisking away of older remembered versions of the normal in the name of a new askew normality, which finally feels quite solid because its structures are all tongue in groove.

10:00 PM : Guus Janssen Trio (The Netherlands)

Guus Janssen - piano

Anton Hatwich - bass

Wim Janssen - drums

Preston-Bradley Hall

Friday:

Ernest Khabeer Dawkins' New Horizons Quartet was rather trudging rhythmically, but Dawkins himself was in strong form on tenor. Matthew Shipp's solo set -- a single hour-long improvisation -- struck me as very diffuse for playing of that length. Without doubt, Shipp's head and fingers are full of good stuff, but a lot more shaping would have been welcome. And I've heard that shaping from Shipp before, on record.

Finally, Roscoe Mitchell, Dave Rempis, bassist Junius Paul, and drummer Frank Rosaly. One knew what to expect from Mitchell; the question was whether the others would rise to the occasion in terms of intensity and collective music making. They did. A long skirling two-alto-plus-rhythm passage was quite something on the part of all, as was a later one with Mitchell on soprano and IIRC Rempis on alto, then tenor. I thought Rempis, who is "strong like bull" would be "strong like" etc., and he was, but he also was very heady on alto in particular, not drawn overmuch into matching power against power. Paul was supple and alert; and Rosaly, as so often is the case with him, played some stuff that not only sounded right but also new -- as in "I've never heard THAT accent before." My shoulder was killing me by this time, so I left at the last note, but I would like to know what Roscoe thought of this set.

[AllenLowe]

thanks Larry. I wish you would review more music for us here. Always illuminating.

[johnlitweiler]

In general my own feelings about Friday's music were much like Larry's, and also Guus Janssen's trio was a joy to hear. On Thursday, though, 3 bass clarinetists in a row were 3 too many -- they all made the same sounds and the same spacy, fragmented phrasing, though at times the Chicagoan Jason Stein at least seemed to be trying to introduce some sense of shape into the free improvisation (unlike the 2 European bass clarinetists). For me, not much sense of creating together in these 3 sets. The Lithuanian saxophonist Liudas Mockunas was the one horn player with some sense of melody and distinctive sound (his soprano must have called ducks from miles away). Bassist-guitarist-trumpeter Brian Sandstrom and drummer Steve Hunt were both quick and expansive, so at times they had real integration with Mockunas.

Martin Brandlmeyer's faint taps and scrapes were the kind of empty, portentuous crap that made me wish the Hells Angels would show up. I once spent 2 hours with him and his similarly trivial trio Polwechsel, which was like putting the nerve endings through a shredder. The kind of oh-I'm-so-sensitive stuff that gives sensitivity a bad name.

[Larry Kart]

Saturday: Can't really do justice to the nice set from Tim Daisy's Vox Arcana (Fred Lonborg-Holm, James Falzone), or even to Mike Reed's' Loose Assembly with Roscoe Mitchell (though I'll try), because the final explosive set from Akira Sakata (with Jeff Parker, Nate McBride, and John Herndon) was such a revelation. Highly touted by some knowledgeable friends, before this Sakata was just a name to me. Taking the comparative route, one friend had likened Sakata to Albert Ayler on alto; in the event I heard as much or more Ornette, or perhaps Ayler's fire coupled to what struck me as an essential happiness/sweetness/cheerfulness. On the other hand, what bursts the comparative bonds, I think, is the uncanny sharpness and detail of Sakata's climbs toward (and into) ecstasy. I emphasize "into," because one does/he does get over the top in ways that seem not easy but almost relaxed (his physical presence FWIW has a no-sweat near-stillness to it, despite the amazing cascades of sound); and then once he's there (i.e. over the top, or what seems to be the top, of the walls of ecstasy) one finds oneself with him on a fairly broad plain, where fire/heat has less to do with the drama/struggle of getting there than with the abundance of needle-sharp events that can take place only in this place at this temperature. The response of Parker, McBride, and Herndon to this grin-inducing firestorm was something else -- bravo! (BTW, lest "grin-inducing," etc. be misunderstood -- by that I'm only trying to record the fact that I was smiling in response and register my resulting thought that the intense vehemence of Sakata's music is a vehemence of realized ardor and its attendant complexities, not of anger or conflict).

Of the Mike Reed plus Mitchell set, and it's 40-minute or so piece that involved passages cued by different colored panels wielded by the musicians, the cuing certainly was not a problem for the listener but also (so far as I could tell) not an apprehendable by the listener expressive element. On the other hand, the written and improvised passages were subtle and rich, and there was no waste motion -- so there ya go. Mitchell's stature, as I said of Friday night's performance, almost goes without saying, and one tends (or at least I do) to listen for and through the responses of others. I thought vibist Jason Adasiewicz in particular was in great form -- fittingly more percussive, less-shimmering than his norm -- and in the long piece and in the followup handsome rather Mingus-like ballad by the late Steve McCall (its title keeps slipping my mind), I was reminded for the umpteenth time that Mitchell's ability to at once state and infuse a melody is pretty darn unique. (Yes, I know that "infuse" calls for "with" and a noun, but that will have to do.)

[rpklich]

I forgot to ask anyone when I was as the Hideout on Sat., but why was Reed's band in uniforms?

[Larry Kart]

I forgot to ask anyone when I was as the Hideout on Sat., but why was Reed's band in uniforms?

Each outfit had colored strips attached; this was linked to the score, in which certain players did certain things when their color was displayed by the musicians who were wielding paddles of that color.

[johnlitweiler]

Yes, Sakata was a revelation on Sat. I've been sleeping on him -- guess I thought he was a push-button-instant-intensity player -- but the amazing technique, the clarity of phrasing (even in the ecstatic alto parts you could hear every note), and the more overtly lyrical clarinet section were very real. Roscoe's introduction to "I'll Be Right Here Waiting" was beautiful, another festival high point. And James Falzone's clarinet playing was especially affecting in Vox Arcana.

Sunday night I ate a big bowl of noodles before the concert, then nodded off during the opening act. Sakata returned, this time with his own trio, played much the same as on Sat. but seemed less incisive, more diffuse; maybe the unfamiliar players (electric b. and g., drums) on Sat. had stimulated him. The Joe McPhee-Vandermark Nonet conclusion was a perfect ending. Vandermark somehow inspired these players to create as well as to play together and there was harmonic color in his charts of McPhee pieces. One of Dave Rempis's alto solos broke away from the high-energy mold and made a strong melodic argument, Josh Berman's cornet solos were bright and wild, and McPhee himself sounded good. Well, they all sounded good.

Dawkins' New Horizons quartet started with a bang on Friday, Vandermark-McPhee ended the festival with a bang on Sunday, lots of good music along with banging in between. Makes a body glad to be alive in Chicago in 2009.