Jazz

For Jazz Musicians Looking For Mentors, Things Ain’t What They Used To Be

Posted by kjem

One of the great things about jazz is that it bridges generations. Because it relies on interactive improvisation and live performance, and thus can’t be completely taught in a classroom or with a book, aspiring younger musicians seek the direct guidance of older, wiser ones. And more experienced musicians have plenty of reasons to take fresh talent under their wings, like gaining new bandmates with fresh skill sets, or helping future torch-bearers to thrive.

Such mentorship has changed a lot in the last half century. Collegiate and even post-graduate jazz education has become a huge engine of talent cultivation. Meanwhile, performing opportunities have greatly diminished. So the previous model of mentorship, where promising musicians learn “on the job” by joining the bands of established musicians, is becoming less common. But as Nate Chinen’s recent New York Times article explains, plenty of “apprentices” are still “availing themselves of counsel” — they’re just taking different paths to it. Continue reading →

A Piece Of Technology That Makes Listening To Jazz Better

Posted by kjem

Maybe you remember when you first realized that the rabbit hole of jazz was far, far deeper than you’d possibly imagined. That the same tenor saxophone player on Kind of Blue also made Blue Train and Giant Steps and A Love Supreme and Interstellar Space and dozens of other albums and who knows how many guest appearances, and that that was just what people recorded of John Coltrane. And that all those records involved scores of other contributors, who in turn played with scores of other people over scores of years. And that this hopelessly convoluted network reflected just a small slice of jazz history to begin with.

What allowed you to dive in was a guide to the data — maybe a book, or a radio broadcaster, or someone you knew who knew something. A voice who could translate the wilderness to human terms, and made it appealing to jump into.

The new Spotify app from Blue Note Records, released yesterday, isn’t the perfect guide. But as a music discovery tool, it’s a huge leap in the right direction, and it’s certainly the first digital music technology I’ve seen which begins to make sense of the dense jumble in which jazz fans happily abandon themselves. Continue reading →

On The Future Of Jazz Among Black Folk

Posted by kjem

Every year, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation throws a concert and panel discussion as part of its annual conference. It’s notable not only as a musical event — this year’s show features drummer Terri Lyne Carrington’s take on the classic album Money Jungle, featuring vocalist Lizz Wright, as well as alto saxophonist Antonio Hart’s quintet with special guest Jimmy Heath — but also as a cultural one. In this century, anyway, it’s become surprisingly uncommon to see documentation of black jazz artists performing for primarily black audiences.

By the time you read this, the concert will be transpiring or over. But earlier in the day, many of its star musicians and a few distinguished authors assembled for a forum in a cramped Washington Conference Center boardroom. Around 100 to 150 people — the majority African-American, in business attire and middle-aged — were in the house for a discussion titled “If You Really Are Concerned: An African-American Agenda for Jazz.” It took its title from a Billy Taylor song, the last stanza of which goes:

If you really are concerned, then show it
If you really want to help, you can
But you’d better start right now
By making changes when you’re able
Or your world will disappear

As one of the panelists, writer and consultant Willard Jenkins, said in his prefatory remarks, every time African-Americans are gathered to talk about jazz, the room sighs, as if it’s lost control over something which emerged from its community. “Nothing has been stolen — we’ve given it away,” he said. “And we’ve given it away through our neglect.” Continue reading →

Why J Dilla May Be Jazz’s Latest Great Innovator

Posted by kjem

Visionary hip-hop producer J Dilla never found mainstream success during his brief lifetime. But in the seven years since his death, Dilla — who would have turned 39 today — has come to represent a major inflection point on hip-hop’s evolutionary tree. At his peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he suggested syntheses that hadn’t seemed possible. He played fresh games with texture and tone. He recast the sample as a malleable component, rather than the monochromatic backbone it had seemed to be. And he injected a softened, swaggering humanity into the rigid slap of classic hip-hop drumbeats.

His magnum opus, Donuts, was reissued on vinyl last month, and the posthumous Music From the Lost Scrolls Vol. 1 came out on Tuesday — the first in a series of previously unreleased recordings. In Detroit on Saturday, the rapper Talib Kweli, violinist and arranger Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and a handful of other artists will perform at the second annual Dilla Day, a concert celebrating Dilla’s career.

Dilla’s reach stretches way beyond hip-hop: For one, he’s recently cast a long shadow over contemporary jazz. He never belonged to jazz’s inner circle, but since his death in 2006 from a rare blood disease, his legacy has helped pull the genre back into kissing contact with modern popular music. Continue reading →

Reflections On A Dozen Years With Abbey Lincoln

Posted by kjem

Marc Cary came to New York City to find and save his father. Instead, he found artists like Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln — and saved himself.

“I hadn’t seen my dad in 10 years,” Cary says over a recent lunch in downtown Manhattan. “He’s a percussionist, but he was living another lifestyle, and I came to rescue him. He was living at the Port Authority Bus Station.”

Cary was 21; he arrived with only $20 in his pocket. But he was also a talented jazz pianist. On the recommendation of a friend, he soon connected with the late Art Taylor, a venerated jazz drummer. Taylor was assembling a new incarnation of the Wailers, his own seminal jazz group.

“I called him that night, and he told me to come over immediately,” Cary says. At the time, Taylor lived a block away in Harlem. When Cary arrived, Abbey Lincoln was there; she lived next door. “[Lincoln] checked me out, gave me a lot of encouragement and told me that one day we’ll play together.” Continue reading →

After 18 Years Of Marriage And Two Children, A Couple Releases Their Debut Albums

Posted by kjem

The basic story behind drummer Rudy Royston’s first album sounds like that of many sidemen in jazz. He moved to the New York area. His talent got him into bands led by higher-profile artists like Bill Frisell, JD Allen, Ben Allison and Dave Douglas. And when it came time to document his own composing and arranging, he could rely on the network he had tapped into. Douglas issued Royston’s album 303 earlier this month on his own record label, Greenleaf Music.

But consider that Royston is 43, an age when similarly ambitious top-tier jazz musicians have often already waxed several recordings. In fact, he’s not even the first musician in his household to make a record under his own name.

In 2011, pianist Shamie Royston, his wife, recorded a trio date with Ivan Taylor on bass and Rudy on drums. The resulting album Portraits came out in 2012 with little fanfare, though it did catch the ear of the New York Times critic Ben Ratliff, who praised its maturity, calling it “a first album that probably would have been a second or third one 10 years ago.” Continue reading →

‘When The Bus For The Record Label Comes By’: Behind Hot Tone Music

Posted by kjem

by PATRICK JARENWATTANANON

Camille Thurman (left), Mimi Jones (center) and Shirazette Tinnin all released new albums this week on Hot Tone Music, Jones' record imprint.

Camille Thurman (left), Mimi Jones (center) and Shirazette Tinnin all released new albums this week on Hot Tone Music, Jones’ record imprint. Courtesy of the artist.

This past week, the bassist and vocalist Mimi Jones released three albums at once. They weren’t all her music, but they were her work: As the founder and producer of the record label Hot Tone Music, she brought all three albums to fruition.

Continue reading →

WSU’s Murrow College launches jazz radio station 89.9 KJEM

Posted by kjem

PULLMAN, Wash. – With the flip of a switch Friday, KJEM 89.9 FM, the newest radio station in the Palouse, began filling the airways with the sounds of jazz in honor of WSU alumnus and broadcast pioneer J. Elroy McCaw.

At the controls, his son Bruce R. McCaw officially signed on the station 76 years to the day after his father launched his first radio station, KELA in Centralia, Wash.

J. Elroy McCaw, WSU alum and Northwest radio pione

KJEM, whose call letters are derived from J. Elroy McCaw’s initials, is the newest of the 19 stations in the Northwest Public Radio (NWPR) group, the largest National Public Radio network in the Pacific Northwest. Unlike other NWPR stations, KJEM will be run by students but under the guidance of NWPR’s professional management team. Continue reading →