Craig Taborn wins Paul Acket Award 2012

Craig Taborn was born in Golden Valley, Minn., and grew up with the likes of Reid Anderson and Dave King. He left Minnesota years ago for New York and the world at large, but we still claim his as our own. Many of us were pleased to learn that earlier this week he received the Paul Acket Award. 


The press release:


Every year, the North Sea Jazz Festival hands out the Paul Acket Award to an artist deserving wider recognition for their extraordinary musicianship. The winner of the Paul Acket Award 2012 is the American composer and pianist, Craig Taborn.

Craig Taborn Speaks

The innovative and daring young pianist/keyboardist/composer gives us glimpses into his process and thinking in an interview with WBGO's Josh Jackson. If you have time, go listen to the whole thing (and download a free concert from the Care Fusion festival) on NPR's excellent "A Blog Supreme." Meanwhile, here are a few illuminating excerpts.

On solos and soloing:
"A lot of my groups have very little soloing going on. It's all group improvisation, and solos may emerge, but it's less geared toward that...It's hard for my improvisational process to dictate solos, or even solo spaces. It's hard for me to say, 'Okay, now there's going to be a saxophone solo,' and have that hold in the moment, because it may not want to happen then...I'd rather just let the musical moment and the musicians themselves decide. If a solo emerges, it emerges because somebody is playing some really interesting material and everybody else decides to let that be at the forefront. For me, that seems like the only reason to really have a solo."

On playing both piano and synthesizers/electronic instruments:
"They're just different instruments and different ways of making music. They don't present to me much of a dichotomy that needs to be bridged...They feed on each other in my playing...I can access a certain kind of technical thing when playing a keyboard, for instance--or anything with buttons, actually. I have a digital dexterity that comes from playing piano, so I can make certain things happen live with synthesizers that is facilitated by having finger and hand independence. If I didn't play piano, I don't know if I'd be able to pull off some of the things I do, just because I can have my left hand doing something while my right hand's doing something else and really not think about it too much."

On playing two leads at once, one with the left hand and one with the right:
"It's all an illusion, but I'm trying to think of two things at once. What that boils down to is a kind of strobing between the ideas, the two hands and the ideas I'm trying to develop...I always to try to work on even more, like maybe if I get a third idea...It's just something I'm continually working on, and trying to hear that way, trying to hear counterpoint, contrapuntal ideas...I'm trying to hear multiple ideas all the time. A lot of that is an extension of things I heard Sun Ra do. "

On what it means to live with music:
"Not to get too Cage-like, but tuning into the environment--it's just sounds in time. Extending that, it's just events in time. For me, living with music is just more of an active participation in that, trying to create things that isolate or abstract from a larger world of sound and organize them in some way. That's the 'art form' I choose. But I think we all live with music all the time."

Thanks to Craig's mom, Marjorie Taborn, for alerting me to this interview and concert.

Drew Gress’s 7 Black Butterflies and Prezens Quartet

When: 3/28/08
Where: McGuire Theater, Walker Art Center
Who: 7 Black Butterflies is Tim Berne on alto saxophone, Ralph Alessi on trumpet, Craig Taborn on piano, Drew Gress on bass, Tom Rainey on drums. Prezens is David Torn on guitar, Berne, Taborn on electronics (Fender Rhodes, mellotron, bent circuits), Rainey.

Jazz at the Walker is always edgy and tonight is no exception. Gress and his group are the opening act for Prezens, which gets top billing. They give us a beautiful acoustic set of improvised music. Since no one announces anything and I’m not that familiar with Gress’s music, I just listen and enjoy. The first piece is fiery and thrilling, the second a gorgeous ballad. I'm listening to the first 7 Black Butterflies CD (2005) as I write this and thinking how much I like the sound.



Last night over Mai Tais, Irvin Mayfield’s bassist Carlos Henriquez reminded us he’d been in Minneapolis/St. Paul several times before, with Danilo Perez and Gonzalo Rubalcaba. “A lot of people come through this town,” he said. I remember that as I watch Gress (who was here with Ravi Coltrane earlier this month), Taborn (here in February with Chris Potter Underground), and Berne (here last September with his band Buffalo Collision). Alessi is new to me but I like him a lot. The 7 Black Butterflies set last about 45 minutes—too short.

The Walker’s Steinway (which Taborn played in the first set) goes away before Prezens comes on. Now the making of music has much to do with turning dials and stepping on buttons and pedals.

Torn is wearing a big fur hat and his guitar looks like something out of the Jetsons. Rainey starts out by hitting his sticks together, then transitions to shaking something wrapped in plastic bags. The band crescendos into buzzing and screaming, decrescendos into soft beeps.



Taborn dances before his stack of keyboards and boxes with buttons. Rainey plays drums with his elbows and Berne mutes his sax with a water bottle. Torn reaches into the back of a box with a lot of wires coming out of it. I can tell (mostly) what Berne and Taborn and Rainey are doing, but Torn is a puzzle.



I’m happy to see and hear Taborn and Berne play almost anything, but the Prezens set is a challenge for me. I don’t love it. Since then I’ve heard that Torn’s music is best approached on recordings, since he layers and edits so much. Until now I’ve preferred free/avant jazz best in live performance. Maybe that’s not possible when the music is so tied to electronics?

Photos, top to bottom: Dave Torn's busy foot, 7 Black Butterflies (not shown: Taborn and the Steinway, off to the left); Torn, Berne, and Rainey; Taborn

Chris Potter's Underground rocks the Dakota: Concert review

When: 2/7/08 
Where: The Dakota
Who: Chris Potter (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet), Adam Rogers (guitar), Craig Taborn (Fender Rhodes), Nate Smith (drums)

One night, two sets. We stay for both because local appearances by Underground are rare; the last time they played the Dakota was February 2006. The first set is open curtain and both sets are packed, the second with more twentysomethings than I’ve seen at the Dakota in a long time. I hear talk that a bus came in from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

The two sets are completely different—no crossovers, no repeats. Although they’re supposedly on tour for their new CD, Follow the Red Line: Live at the Village Vanguard, that is not the focus of the evening, and I don’t think Potter mentions the CD even once in a buy-one-before-you-leave way. The focus is music, including tunes from the new CD, at least one from the original Underground (2006), a couple of covers, and several new tunes as yet unnamed. Potter describes the latter as “songs we’re introducing into the book” and explains that “naming these tunes is the last thing I get around to.” In 2006, they played something Potter called “Pop Tune #1” because it didn’t yet have an official title. On Follow the Red Line, it’s “Pop Tune #1.”

Underground is not your typical jazz quartet (if there is such a thing, on second thought). Its sound is big, room-filling. Sometimes it seems more like a rock band. A funk band. A band that has heads bobbing and feet tapping and white people getting wiggy in their seats. Tunes open with solos, add instruments and layers, and resolve into steady grooves that provide a solid foundation for all sorts of antics overhead.

Set 1 begins with “Facing East,” a new piece. Next up is “Pop Tune #1,” which starts as a lovely ballad in which Potter’s saxophone and Rogers’s guitar do a pas de deux. You can almost feel the tension between the notes, like elastic stretching. Then “Arjuna” from the new CD, during which Smith pats and rubs the drums with his hands while the trio lays down a strong, dark beat. Taborn plays the Fender Rhodes like the old-fashioned electric piano it is, with a high and beepy sound. For “Zea,” a love song from Follow the Red Line, Potter switches to bass clarinet and starts with a tender solo. Over the course of the evening, he plays bass clarinet for two, maybe three songs, but he always ends on the saxophone, which seems like where he most wants to be.

“The Wheel” from Underground is a wild ride. I’ve heard this song several times (they played it in 2006 and I’ve listened to it often on the CD) but it’s still impossible to predict where this group will take it, especially during their solos. You have to follow them into the woods and trust them to lead you back out again. This time, the rhythm repeats, Chris steps back, Adam and Craig keep the beat, and Nate takes off. The melody returns, the song ends, and so does the first set.

Set 2 opens with a new Adam Rogers composition called “Rumples.” (“We’re doing a set of music not recorded yet,” Potter explains. “A sneak peek.”) Rogers plays a low guitar solo, and Taborn’s Fender Rhodes growls along beside him. The groove on this tune is very deep. The Fender Rhodes sounds like a bass, then a horn. This is followed by another yet-unnamed new tune, fiery and daring. Potter plays a big, muscular solo, one of the single most amazing saxophone solos I’ve ever heard. Then “another new one,” more mellow than the last.

The second set is turning out to be higher energy, more out there. The crowd is different, too, maybe more demanding? Even the air seems electric.

Potter’s playing is fierce but I don’t detect any anger in it. (Some horn players seem full of anger, but I hesitate to name names because I could be totally off about this.) There’s no strutting or machismo. The music is the message, and the joy of making the saxophone go everywhere and do everything, supported by that underlying groove. It’s fun to hear and very stimulating, a workout for your head and your ears.

A new cover: Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe.” At first it comes across as pretty straight. I'm suspicious. Taborn and Rogers lay down chords, Smith keeps time, Potter goes crazy, but you can actually hear the melody. Rogers’s guitar has a sweet, strummy 1960s sound. The whole thing has a jingle-jangle feel and it's lovely.

Another as yet unrecorded Potter tune, "Boots" opens on bass clarinet. (They played this one in 2006, too.) Potter takes a very fast solo and dances with the guitar again. Rogers shows off on an arena-style rock-star solo. Then Smith makes the walls come tumbling down. How does he have any energy left?

We suspect it’s probably over—they have played two lengthy, no-holds-barred sets—but we keep clapping and they return for an encore, a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Ladies of the Canyon.” Joni’s music is being rediscovered by everyone. Potter plays an exquisitely beautiful solo, and the band rises up around him. Perfection. And now the music is over for real.

Read more about Craig Taborn in my MinnPost preview.

Photos, top to bottom: Chris Potter, Adam Rogers.

Keyboardist Craig Taborn surfaces with Underground

Saxophonist Chris Potter is the star of February's "DownBeat" and the headliner at the Dakota next Thursday (Feb. 7), where his Underground quartet will play a one-night stand. Potter is always exciting and I look forward to seeing him again. But I'm just as eager to see his keyboardist, Craig Taborn.

Since leaving his hometown of Golden Valley, where he went to Breck and held basement jam sessions with his friends bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King (both now of the Bad Plus), Taborn has covered a lot of ground geographically and stylistically.

He lives in New York, where he plays with the cream of the contemporary jazz scene, but tours frequently throughout Europe. He plays all kinds of keyboards — piano, Hammond B-3 organ, Fender Rhodes electric piano, synthesizers — and he composes. You can see Taborn here in a performance from last year's Sur Seine festival in St. Paul.  

So far he has made three albums as a leader. "Craig Taborn Trio" (1994) came out on the indie label DIW, "Light Made Lighter" (2001) and "Junk Magic" (2004) on Thirsty Ear. His many recordings as a sideman include work with Potter, violist Mat Maneri, bassists Drew Gress and Scott Colley, saxophonist Tim Berne and percussionist Susie Ibarra -- iconoclasts all. In 2007, he recorded "Gang Font Featuring Interloper" with local heroes Greg Norton (Hüsker Dü), Erik Fratzke (Happy Apple) and King. Norton calls it "punkprogfreefunkmathmetal."

Recording started in college
Taborn began recording when he was still a sophomore at the University of Michigan. He met the adventurous saxophonist James Carter at a restaurant gig. They hit it off and eventually made five albums together.

I recently listened to tracks from Carter's first CD as a leader, "JC on the Set" (1993). Taborn's piano is impeccable, intelligent and fairly straight-ahead. Scott Yanow of the All Music Guide called it "supportive." Then I played some "Gang Font," "Junk Magic," "Prezens" (Taborn's 2007 recording with guitarist David Torn), "Architect of the Silent Moment" (2007, with Colley) and Underground's latest, "Follow the Red Line: Live at the Village Vanguard" (2008).

While Taborn's travels can be measured in miles, his musical journeys are better expressed in light years. He does it all: jazz, pop, rock, funk, hip-hop, trance, techno, free, forms, gorgeous melodies, moody minimalism, noise.

It's said that the music we hear as teenagers shapes our preferences for life. While other kids were glued to the Top 40 — in the 1980s, that meant Foreigner, Michael Jackson, Hall & Oates, Phil Collins, Journey and Wham! — Taborn checked out records from the library and listened to public radio. He discovered the artists of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) in Chicago, whose influence on contemporary music is incalculable, and Sun Ra, the cosmic philosopher of jazz. He went to the Walker Art Center and heard master improviser Tim Berne, who thinks Taborn is "insanely brilliant."

Taborn's parents, psychologist John and social worker Marjorie, knew to nurture without pushing. "It's about being a good parent," Marjorie told Jazz Police and JazzInk writer and photographer Andrea Canter, who has known the Taborn family for years. "Don't make your goals theirs. It's their passion." They provided the resources he needed: lessons, transportation, a piano, a Moog synthesizer for Christmas when Taborn was 12. He grew up playing acoustic and electronic keyboards. Sometimes in performance he'll play both at the same time, one hand on each.

I know why I'll go to see Taborn: because I like his music. Canter offers more reasons why music fans should catch him whenever he's in town. "There's a lot of talent in the Twin Cities, and Craig is a good example of someone who came out of this environment. It's a chance to see one of our hometown musicians who's made quite a reputation for himself. Plus he's a fabulous musician who does all sorts of interesting things with sound."

Taborn will return March 28 to perform at the Walker with Berne and Gress. Those will be wild shows. Underground is modern jazz but still accessible. Wet your feet at the Dakota, then get tickets for the Walker show and jump into the deep end of jazz.

What: Chris Potter Underground (Chris Potter, saxophone; Adam Rogers, guitar; Craig Taborn, Fender Rhodes; Nate Smith, drums)
Where: The Dakota, 1010 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis
When: 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 7
How much: $25 (7 p.m.) and $18 (9 p.m.)
Phone: 612-332-1010
Website

Upcoming picks

Happy Apple with the James Buckley Trio: You can fly to New York City, dress in black and go to the Stone to hear free jazz, or you can stay home, don your North Face jacket and head to the Cedar for Happy Apple. Erik Fratzke, Dave King and Michael Lewis will make you forget you're getting Cedar butt from the metal folding chairs. James Buckley, J.T. Bates and Bryan Nichols open. The Cedar, 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1 ($15).

Ari Hoenig & Jean-Michel Pilc Project: Drummer Hoenig and pianist Pilc came to the Artists' Quarter in March of last year and blew people away. I missed them then but won't repeat that mistake. The Artists' Quarter, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 1–2, ($20).

The Gospel According to Ramsey Lewis: The 2007–08 Northrop Jazz Season continues with Ramsey Lewis, three-time Grammy winner and National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. His most recent honor was the 2006 Stellar Award for Best Gospel Instrumental Album, and it's gospel he'll bring to our frozen little souls. Ted Mann Concert Hall 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2 ($35 and $45). Call 612-624-2345 or check one of the ticket offices listed here.

Originally published on MinnPost.com on February 1, 2008

Photo of Craig Taborn at the Monterey Jazz Festival, September 2007