Remembering Teddy Charles: Composer, Vibraphonist, Sailboat Captain

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This album cover represents some of the greatest work of one Teddy Charles. As a vibraphone player, composer, arranger and record producer based in New York City (and briefly Los Angeles), he had opportunities to work with the greats of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s: Charles Mingus, Mal Waldron, Miles Davis and many others. These talents and opportunities coincided with the January 1956 recording sessions most famously released as The Teddy Charles Tentet, on Atlantic Records.

Charles died after a storied life in and out of music. He was as much Teddy Charles, jazz pioneer, as Captain Ted Charles, operator of commercial charter sailboats. He left music in the early 1960s to run boats in the Caribbean, and even when he returned to the New York region, he continued to own and operate charter vessels alongside his musical activities. In recent years, collaborations with saxophonist Chris Byars brought about a small resurgence of interest in Charles’ music, including a studio album (2009’s Dances With Bulls) and increased performance opportunities — including with a 10-piece ensemble. Continue reading →

40 Years Of Mondays: One Saxophonist’s Addiction To The Fringe

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I was an 18-year-old saxophone student at Berklee College of Music when my new best friend, a trumpeter named Willy Olenick, told me about The Fringe. “You’ve got to hear this band,” he said. “They’re an amazing trio. You can hear them any Monday night at Michael’s and you’re nuts not to go.”

Willy didn’t mention anything about what style they played, and I didn’t ask. I just took his advice and went.

Michael’s was a small, narrow bar behind Symphony Hall in Boston. There was a WPA mural on the wall. They only served beer and wine, and let’s just say a contingent of a few regulars might have been there just for the Rolling Rocks. (In fact, they may have been there all day for the Rolling Rocks.) A man named Bill was at the front door at night, collecting the $2 cover charge. Michael himself manned the bar.

Frankly, on first hearing The Fringe, I wasn’t sure what was happening. The trio took the stage, and I don’t think I was even sure when the set started. At some point, I realized that this music was not like the other jazz I had heard. Until that time, my jazz listening had been mostly big bands and straight-ahead, swinging jazz groups. Continue reading →

Why One Saxophonist Covered His Idol

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The late alto saxophone giant Jackie McLean died after a long illness in 2006, but continued performing and teaching until late in his life. One of the last songs he wrote and recorded was “Mr. E,” which leads off his 1998 septet album Fire and Love.

I’m thinking of it because I recently heard another version of the song by the much younger alto saxophonist Steve Lehman and his trio. Their take on “Mr. E” comes from a recording called Dialect Fluorescent, which came out just a few months ago.

“I really love the composition,” Lehman said. “I love the way the melody is structured; I love the way that the harmony is set up. And I think it’s really ingenious, actually, the way that every aspect of the composition … is really set up to create a kind of musical framework that at once is really grounded, and gives you a kind of sense of place and sound as a listener, but also has an incredible amount of flexibility and is kind of malleable as musical material.” Continue reading →

Back Home With Canada’s Greatest Living Jazz Musician

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Oliver Jones — the greatest living jazz musician in Canada — played his hometown Montreal International Jazz Festival, one of the world’s largest. “Oliver Jones Plays Oliver Jones,” read the bill. It was the first time, he said in a conversation earlier last week, that the pianist, now 77, would be playing strictly his own tunes for an entire set.

The show was an affirmation of his legacy, in Canada and abroad, and — backed by his trio of Jim Doxas on drums and Eric Lagacé on bass — he played brilliantly into the night. Highlights included “One More Time,” the swinging title track of his 2006 release, and “Lights of Burgundy,” a wistful ballad recorded in 1985 and named after the poor, black neighborhood in Montreal where he grew up, Little Burgundy.

For the final song, however, Jones strayed from the script. He chose the late pianist Oscar Peterson‘s powerful “Hymn to Freedom,” which wound up a fitting conclusion to the show. Earlier that evening, Jones had presented Canadian vibraphonist Peter Appleyard with the Festival’s Oscar Peterson Award, a prize bestowed to a great Canadian jazz musician. Jones received the award himself in 1990. Continue reading →

Introducing The Reginald Cyntje Group: Who Are These Guys?

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The artists featured on last month’s Jazz Night In America Wednesday Night Webcast are, by a fair margin, the least-known performers we’ve had on the program. Their names don’t travel far outside the underrated musicians’ community of the mid-Atlantic — specifically, Washington, D.C. — but not for lack of talent. They’re among the premier musicians in the region, some being bandleaders themselves, and they all have strong individual sound identities.

So we wanted to introduce them to you. Collectively, they’re a group led by trombonist Reginald Cyntje, who composes and arranges all the music you’ll hear. His personal style reflects the Caribbean music he heard growing up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the spiritual leanings and social-justice missions that are a part of his persona, and the driving grooves for which D.C. jazz is known. He took time out to explain to us why he assembled his band the way he did — and introduced us to all of its members.

“I feel that in a band situation, you should have a really deep connection between the members,” Cyntje says. “When you have a family unit, when you have folks that are really invested — not just friendship-wise, but musically — it changes the sound. The audience can feel that. They can feel when you have a connection musically and spiritually with the band. So over the years, my focus has always been performing with musicians who I connect with — not just musicians who I want to use on a resume.

“When we have rehearsals, everyone comes prepared. When we go to the recording studio, everyone comes prepared,” he says. “We make good music together because we have a connection.” Continue reading →

A Concerned Dizzy Gillespie Explains All Of Human History

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The iconic trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie is best remembered as a jazz pioneer. But somewhere in his 50+ year career, he also lent his talents to a trippy animated parable made for an activist think tank. For “Voyage to Next,” he voiced the part of Father Time (alongside Mother Earth, played by Maureen Stapleton) and scored the soundtrack. Everything about this screams “the ’70s” and is, not incidentally, wonderful. A summary:

With Maureen Stapleton and Dizzy Gillespie as Mother Earth and Father Time, the characters wonder whether or not the human race will survive. As the humans float by, Mother Earth explains the nature of their relationships—they share everything, from their food, their energy, and their thoughts. “But what if somebody withholds?” Father Time wonders, “Do they have some sort of tribunal?” Optimistically, Mother Earth explains that there is no tribunal; rather, each day is a choice of what to do, and she believes the humans will make the right choices.

But as they watch the humans destroy the environment and stock up on arms, it’s revealed that Father Time already knows what will happen. Humans have already stopped sharing; they have built these boxes—nationalistic boxes—to protect themselves. From what? Father Time wonders, perhaps from themselves? As Father Time and Mother Earth implore each other to help the humans before they destroy everything, they realize that there is nothing they can do—humans have to change their ways and need to take responsibility for their own actions, if they expect to survive. Yet, even as they realize the potential for humans to create a better world the actors worried that they won’t change in time.

This film was made in 1973 by the World Policy Institute (then called the Institute for World Order) by animator and directors John and Faith Hubley. It’s actually the third such project from the Hubleys and Gillespie. In 1964, also under the auspices of the Institute, they called attention to disarmament with “The Hat” (part one, part two), where Diz and actor Dudley Moore play out the parable of two soldiers fighting over a hat. Their first collaboration, 1962’s “The Hole,” won an Academy Award.

It might be pointed out that Gillespie had a history at the frontlines of activism; for instance, in 1964, the year “The Hat” came out, he actually made a run for U.S. President which started as a publicity stunt and became a civil rights campaign. In any event, he certainly was a natural voice actor.

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