Comparisons have always helped me appreciate jazz. An artist plays a tune fast; another does it as a ballad. A trumpeter finishes his solo, and a saxophonist takes that closing phrase and morphs it in a different direction. A musician revisits a composition years later with a new arrangement and ensemble. Aligned side by side, you get a good sense of why jazz is a music of individual style, and of gradual accretion, and of friendly “Oh, yeah, watch this” motivation.

I got that feeling recently listening to a recent duet album from the late pianists Tommy Flanagan and Jaki Byard. In 1982, they played a fondly remembered San Francisco club called the Keystone Korner as a duo: two guys, two pianos. It’s recently been released as The Magic of 2, and from the opening song, comparison is the name of the game. Here’s their take on Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple From the Apple”:

Tommy Flanagan can be heard stating the melody and taking the first solo. At 3:38, you hear applause as Flanagan wraps his solo and Jaki Byard gets his time to shine. A slightly chaotic closing section leads to a final melody statement from Byard. Continue reading →

Our friends at Deceptive Cadence, NPR Music’s classical blog, are celebrating the 100th anniversary of The Rite of Spring all this week. You’d be well-advised to wander on over there and check it out.

When I first heard about their plan, I immediately thought about Charlie Parker. Bird had enormous ears, and occasionally they fell on works of modern classical composers like Igor Stravinsky. In fact, he’s been documented quoting passages from The Rite of Spring and other Stravinsky works multiple times.

So I offered to unpack the connection between jazz and the Rite, and in doing so, found deeper links between the Russian-born composer and African-American-born jazz than I had imagined. The full essay is up on Deceptive Cadence now.

I wanted to share one of several little nuggets I couldn’t squeeze into the piece. In 1961, another fleet alto saxophonist, Phil Woods, recorded a gem of an album called Rights Of Swing. It’s a five-part suite for a tightly-arranged octet, and obviously puns on Stravinsky’s radical ballet. Musically speaking, it’s hard to discern much of a connection to the Rite itself, but in the final “Presto” section, he does leave an Easter egg for us. Continue reading →

When you read enough about the early lives of jazz musicians, you begin to spot a trend. A lot of artists caught the music bug from their parents.

With instruments and musicians around the house, it’s easy for kids to grow curious about playing. But that’s not nearly the whole story. Sometimes parents are the first teachers. Other times, parental guidance doesn’t fully kick in until much later.

With Father’s Day on the horizon, I recently tracked down five drummers who not only came from musical families but also had fathers who were drummers or percussionists, too. Here’s what Nasheet Waits, Sheila E., Ralph Peterson Jr., Billy Drummond and Kush Abadey had to say about what their dads taught them. Continue reading →

Composer and alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, 57, has been named one of 21 new recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship, commonly referred to as the “genius grant.” The award is worth a unrestricted stipend of $625,000 over five years, as dispensed by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Though often classified as a jazz artist, Coleman takes a broader search to improvised music. Since the 1980s, he has approached music through the original concept M-Base, which promotes the creation of structures or languages to better express personal experience (the M-Base acronym stands for Macro-Basic Array of Structured Extemporizations). In practice, Coleman has applied the idea to uncommon formal innovation, inspired often by metaphysics, mythology, natural science and travel throughout the African diaspora and Asia.

“If anything, that’s what this music is,” he told NPR Music in 2012. “It’s a lot of different influences, coming from different places — plus, whatever’s coming from inside you, which is the main thing.” Continue reading →

In November 1814, Col. Andrew Jackson marched on Pensacola, taking the Florida city away from Britain and Spain, while the Congress of Vienna was busy drawing new boundaries after the Napoleonic Wars. And 200 years ago today, in a little 10th-century town south of Brussels, Adolphe Sax was born.

Sax learned instrument-building from his father and soon was inventing new instruments of his own, including the one that bears his name. He patented the saxophone in 1846.

Originally intended for use in military bands, the saxophone caught fire after World War I as the Jazz Age blossomed. Since then, the sax, in its variety of sizes, has found its way into music of many stripes, from rock and jazz to classical and South Indian traditional music.

To celebrate the bicentennial of this ingenious Belgian, we challenge you to identify the sax solos in these songs. Score high and feel the spirit of John Coltrane descend upon you. Blow it and beads of sweat will signal defeat.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

With Supreme blogger Patrick Jarenwattananon on vacation, we asked jazz music directors from around public radio to highlight songs that have been in heavy rotation at their stations. Today’s pick comes from Matt Fleeger of KMHD and Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland.

Dennis Rollins is a British trombone player who’s worked with Maceo Parker, Marcus Miller and Roy Ayers. On his newest release, the 11^th Gate (named after the date 11/11/11, which Rollins believes will usher in a new age of ‘Global Awareness’) he brings forth his new “Velocity Trio” which is comprised of Trombone, Organ, and Drums.

This is not a groove-oriented release, though there are grooves to be found on the 11^th Gate. Instead, the trio takes a more subdued, nuanced approach in creating textures and spiritualized cerebral fields for the listener to explore.

Rollin’s trombone playing is unique, he has a sort of “cool” sensibility on the instrument and a strong tone that’s identifiable. On tunes like “The Other Side” his playing matches well with the Hammond Organ of Ross Stanley, who’s notes and playing are reminiscent of cosmic raindrops falling from some far part of the galaxy. Drummer and latin percussionist Pedro Segundo holds the session together with sharp flourishes and mellow conga pats thoughout the recording. Even though it’s been done to death, the trio finds some new territory to forge inside a rollicking version of Eddie Harris’ “Freedom Jazz Dance” which shifts tempo and time-signatures without losing the groove (or the listener).

While the 11^th Gate may not be a full-fledged concept album, it does take the listener on a trip through the intellect of this great composer and player. Best of all, it’s a solid listen the whole way through, worthy of a place in your collection.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The drummer Henry Cole plays brilliantly in the quartet of saxophonist and fellow Puerto Rican Miguel Zenón, a band responsible for my favorite jazz album of 2011 (Alma Adentro) and one of my favorites of 2009 (Esta Plena). This year, Cole released his debut album as a bandleader, an Afrobeat record called Roots Before Branches. As opposed to Zenón’s new-school jazz swimming in Caribbean folkloric music, Roots is a Fela-Kuti-inspired dance party. It’s the same drummer, but a different sonic setting, with a different sort of energy.

Or is it really? Here’s what Cole told JazzTimes contributor Fernando Gonzalez:

“There are some musicians today who consider themselves jazz musicians and would never go play a dance gig,” says Cole. “Or, if you take a musician who plays dance music, he would never go to hear a jazz show because he’d find it very boring. Something I find important in this project is that it brings those worlds together. The music goes along and then there is an incredible solo with a section in 9/8 or whatever, but it goes right back to the danceable rhythm and the singing.”

That sounds about right for Roots Before Branches, which features some of New York’s best jazz and salsa improvisers. Except Cole wasn’t talking about his own album — he was talking about his work with Zenón. Cole’s new record comes out sounding unlike his compatriot’s, but it comes from the same deep well of where Afro-Caribbean music and mainland jazz intersect. Continue reading →