Live jazz to see in Minneapolis-St. Paul: This week’s picks

Are you in your car or near a radio at 8:30 CST on Friday mornings? Tune to KBEM to hear me and Mr. Jones—Jazz 88 "Morning Show" host Ed Jones—talk about these events and more. 88.5 FM in the Twin Cities; streaming live on the Web.

Friday, Dec. 17: Dee Dee Bridgewater and Irvin Mayfield with the Minnesota Orchestra at Orchestra Hall

The cover of "Eleanora Fagan"

One stage, two jazz stars (maybe more). Vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater has a mantel full of serious music awards—a pair of Grammys, France’s Victoire de la Musique, a Tony for her turn as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wiz—and she’s exciting to see in person, passionate and uninhibited. She sings, she scats, and she makes jazz standards new again; on her latest CD, Eleanora Fagan (1915–1959): To Billie with Love from Dee Dee (Emarcy, 2010), she conveys the spirit of Billie Holiday without imitating her.

Irvin Mayfield

New Orleans-based trumpeter and composer Irvin Mayfield has been the face of the Minnesota Orchestra’s jazz series since being named its first Artistic Director of Jazz in 2008, a position he still holds. (He has since gone on to win a Grammy and a seat on the National Council on the Arts, which advises the NEA.) Founder and artistic director of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (NOJO), he serves as cultural ambassador for his city and proud papa of Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse, a club on Bourbon Street.

On Friday, both artists will perform with Mayfield's rhythm section—Ronald Markham on piano, Neal Caine on bass, Jaz Sawyer on drums—and the Minnesota Orchestra led by Sarah Hicks.

The first part of the concert will feature Mayfield playing a program of holiday faves including “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” He may be joined by a special guest. I can't get more specific than that, but (big hint) who else is in town this week playing at Orchestra Hall?

Following the intermission, Bridgewater will sing "The Christmas Song" and other classics, plus jazz and pop standards including “The Way We Were” and Ellington’s “Mood Indigo.” It's likely that Mayfield will be at her side for at least part of her set.

The final concert is still in the works. I spoke with Lilly Schwartz, the Orchestra's Director of Pops and Special Projects, on Thursday morning, and she put it this way: "It's jazz, It's always improvised. You go in with a plan and it creates itself. The concert itself becomes a jazz song."

8 p.m. Friday, Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis ($22–$50, $60 VIP). Tickets online or call 612-371-5656.

Friday-Saturday, Dec. 17–18: Red Planet at the Artists’ Quarter

If memory serves and my notebooks don’t lie, I last saw Red Planet—the trio of Dean Magraw on electric guitar, Chris Bates on bass, and Jay Epstein on drums—in February 2009. Not long after, Magraw dropped out of sight to battle a life-threatening disease.

Red Planet's latest CD

He’s back with a new immune system and two new CDs, the just-released How the Light Gets In with tabla player Marcus Wise (Red House, 2010) and last year’s Space Dust with Red Planet (GoneJazz, 2009), which I’m counting as new because it came out during Magraw’s absence and hasn’t yet gotten the celebration it deserves. Featuring original compositions by Magraw and Bates and “deep-space tributes” to Coltrane (“Africa”), Hendrix (“Little Wing”), and Solomon Linda (“The Lion Sleeps Tonight”), it’s part poetry, part rock-and-roll, part flamethrower.

I saw Magraw play at Café Maude a couple of weeks ago and he looks and sounds great.

9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Artists’ Quarter,  in the basement of the Hamm Building in St. Paul ($10). Tickets at the door.

Saturday, Dec. 18: Zacc Harris, Adam Linz, and Babatunde Lea at Café Maude

Jazz guitarist Zacc Harris and bassist Adam Linz are familiar faces around town, but Babatunde Lea? The Afro-Cuban jazz/world beat drummer/percussionist who has played with Pharoah Sanders, Stan Getz, McCoy Tyner, Steve Turre, Ernie Watts, and Van Morrison, to name just a few?* What brings him to Maude in south Minneapolis? I called Harris to find out.

Lea from the cover of his "Soul Pools" CD

“I was doing a restaurant gig in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and during our last set a drummer asked if he could sit in,” Harris said. “We were like, all right, sure, and he came up and swung like crazy. Turns out he’s moving to western Wisconsin. We exchanged information, and later I went and checked out his website. He’s a heavy, but I knew that from playing with him. Since then, I’ve called him a couple of times to see when he would be in town. This gig [at Maude] was around the holidays, so I thought there was a good chance he’d be around.”

How would Harris describe Lea’s style? “Hard swinging, with a hard bop vibe going on, and a lot of world influences.”

The plan: Meet at Maude (with no rehearsal ahead of time), introduce Lea to Linz (the two have never played together before), play some standards, see what happens. Given the musicians, it’s bound to be good, it has the potential to be really good, and it’s definitely going to be as new as it gets. 

* Lea is not a household name; he's mostly known around the Bay area, where he spent several years. I happen to have heard him because someone gave me his Soul Pools CD a few years back, and I learned more about him then.  So there's no implication here that Zacc Harris doesn't know his drummers.

9 p.m. Saturday, Café Maude, 5411 Penn Ave. S., Minneapolis. No cover, but reservations are recommended: 612-822-5411.

Ten reasons I’m glad to be at the Monterey Jazz Festival

Numbers don’t imply preference or order of importance, they’re just a reminder to stop at 10.

1. Vijay Iyer. Say “VID-jay EYE-ur.” When Ben Ratliff writes “Presto! Here is the new great piano trio,” people notice. I haven’t seen Iyer since he was at the Walker Art Center with Rudresh Mahanthappa in 1996. Monterey may be wishing they had booked him into a larger space than the Coffee House Gallery. With Stephen Crump on bass, Marcus Gilmore on drums. Hoping we’ll hear several cuts from the forthcoming Historicity. Sunday, September 20, 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.

2. Buffalo Collision. I’m not joking when I say that if you’re a jazz fan in Minneapolis/St. Paul and you leave town for even a few days, you will miss something you wish you had seen. As I looked ahead to Monterey, I rued missing Buffalo Collision at the Dakota this Friday and Saturday. Somehow they will play the late set there on Saturday (which ends around 1:30 a.m.) and end up in Monterey in time to play the Garden Stage at 5:30 on Sunday afternoon. Ethan Iverson on piano, Dave King on drums, Tim Berne on saxophone, Hank Roberts on cello.

3. The Monterey Jazz Festival All-Stars Featuring Kenny Barron, Regina Carter, Kurt Elling, and Russell Malone. Supergroup! All four of these artists have pleased me immensely in the past—the elegant pianist Barron and adventurous violinist Carter together in Montreal, Malone in various configurations (and in conversation; the angel-faced guitar player tells wicked jokes); vocalist Kurt Elling so many times I should have Platinum Elite status. Jonathan Blake on drums, Kiyoshi Kitagawa on bass. Friday, 9:40 p.m., Arena/Jimmy Lyons Stage; Saturday, 8:00 p.m., Dizzy’s Den.

4. Pete Seeger. Not a jazz artist but let’s all get over it. Like many jazz festivals and clubs, Monterey has broadened its scope (it has long featured blues on Saturday afternoons) and if that helps to keep the gates/doors open I’m all for it. Seeger is an icon. Earlier this week my husband and I met someone who had volunteered at the Haight-Ashbury free clinic in the 60s. He talked about the songs, the protests, the artists, the mood, and the excitement of the times as if they all happened yesterday, with special reference to and affection for Seeger. I’m not a folk fan but I’d be a fool to miss this. I’m expecting at least a mention and perhaps a tribute to Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, who died on Wednesday.

5. Jason Moran & The Bandwagon Premiering Feedback. Someone (and I can’t remember who—tell me and I’ll correct this immediately) recently wrote about how rock music is finding new life in video games and why can’t jazz do the same? So, why not a video game with Vijay Iyer and Jason Moran as riff-to-the-death piano players? Maybe throw in Robert Glasper and Eldar (whom I missed seeing in Minneapolis earlier this week). Back on topic, I most recently saw Moran at the Dakota with Charles Lloyd, Reuben Rogers, and Eric Harland. For many in the audience, Moran stole the show. Can’t wait to hear his new commission. Thank you, Monterey, for commissioning new work by important artists. 7:00 p.m. Sunday, Arena/Jimmy Lyons Stage. Moran and the Bandwagon also play at 9:00 p.m. on Sunday in the Night Club.

6. Dave Brubeck Quartet Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Time Out. Has it really been half a century since Brubeck recorded a tune in 5/4 time that is not only instantly recognizable today but still catchy, infectious, and fun? Brubeck has been part of the Monterey festival since the start. Earlier this year, health problems interrupted his touring schedule. People will rise to their feet en masse when he comes on stage on Sunday night at 8:20 p.m. (or thereabouts) in the Arena. It’s going to be a thrilling, memorable moment. I was here for Brubeck's “Cannery Row Suite” premiere in 2006 (with vocalists Kurt Elling and Roberta Gambarini) and it was unforgettable. With Randy Jones on drums, Bobby Militello on alto sax and flute, Michael Moore on bass. Go Dave!

7. Alfredo Rodriguez Trio. Quincy Jones tried and failed to get this young Cuban pianist a visa. In January 2009--earlier this year, not a typo--he defected to the US. A friend saw him at the Detroit Jazz Festival and raved about him. That’s all I know, but it’s enough to put me in the bleachers at the Garden Stage on Sunday at 4:00 p.m.

8. Dee Dee Bridgewater. The lovely, endlessly creative and surprising Dee Dee! Does she still shave her head? Is she still singing Malian music? She’s coming to Minneapolis next year to sing with the Minnesota Orchestra. Does she have another new project for Monterey or will she draw from her extensive and colorful repertoire of French songs, Kurt Weill tunes, straight-ahead, Ella, Ellington, etc.? Not a clue. Saturday night, 9:20 p.m., Arena/Jimmy Lyons Stage; Saturday night, 11:30 p.m., Dizzy’s Den.

9. Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Quartet. I’ve seen flutist/saxophonist Tabackin at the Artist’s Quarter in St. Paul but never with his wife, pianist/bandleader/composer/arranger/NEA jazz master Akiyoshi. Must stop by the Night Club on Sunday evening at 7:00 p.m. Ack! Same time as Jason Moran's premiere in the Arena! Sometime around 6:30 I'll start gnashing my teeth and wailing.

10. The food, the ambience, the characters. (a) Monterey has good fair food—multi-ethnic, tasty, substantial, prepared in grills and ovens that send clouds of fragrant smoke into the air. This year there’s a salad bar. Heirloom tomatoes? (b) The ambience is laid-back, California-style party. No passing bodies over mosh pits, no fisticuffs or flying F-bombs. It’s genial and courteous, which is not to say it’s fuddy-duddy or boring, just that this is one place where civility apparently still exists and the excitement happens on stage. (c) Hoping the Hat Man (lobster hat, jailbird hat) is still at the Arena gates and Dee Dee Rainbow is feeling well enough to attend this year. She was absent last year and it was a Very Big Deal.

I’m at 10 (and I even fudged 10 a bit) so must quit, but not without mentioning Joe Lovano and Conrad Herwig, Randy Brecker, John Scofield, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the mind-blowing trio of Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, and Lenny White (awesome last week at the Dakota in Minneapolis), Esperanza Spalding, the John Patitucci Trio with Lovano and Brian Blade, and DJ Logic, all of whom will be here in the balmy ocean breezes and cool evening mists of Monterey at a jazz festival that has continued without interruption for 52 consecutive years. Times are tough so the festival has taken the unusual step of offering single-show arena tickets for sale; usually you have to buy a package to get a reserved seat in the Arena, where the biggest names perform. Please, people, come.

This year I'll be reporting on the festival for jazz.com and writing a wrap-up for jazzpolice.com when I return home. So you can check those sites over the weekend and into next week if you want to know more.

Jazz concert review: Dee Dee, Reborn: Dee Dee Bridgewater at the Dakota

Dee Dee Bridgewater by John Whiting

Describing her most recent project, Red Earth: A Malian Journey, Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater uses words like “reawakening,” “spiritual awakening,” and “journey home.” It’s one thing to read an artist’s claims to growth and evolution. It’s another to witness that transformation firsthand in live performance.

I was at the fourth and final show of Bridgewater’s two-day stay at the Dakota. I had seen her perform twice before—in 2002, during her tour for her Kurt Weill CD, This Is New, and again in 2006 for J’ai Deux Amours, her Grammy-nominated album of French love songs. The Dee Dee who walked on stage two nights ago was not the same Dee Dee I remembered from either previous time. Wearing pleated gold silk and velvet, head shaved, surrounded by musicians she loves, performing music that makes her spirit soar (her words), she was radiant, resplendent, and infectiously happy.

She told us what the evening would bring: that as a result of her journey to find her African ancestry and reclaim her roots, she would be merging the tradition of Mali, “where in my heart I know I come from,” with the tradition of jazz. We would, she promised, “experience the similarity between African-American culture and African culture.” The Dakota stage was crowded with her colorful band and their instruments, many made by hand.

Along with her regular trio of pianist Edsel Gomez, bassist Ira Coleman, and drummer Minino Garay, they included musicians from Mali and Senegal: Cherif Soumano on kora (precursor to the harp), Lansine Kouyaté on balafon (precursor to the xylophone), Baba Sissoko on tamani (talking drum, held under the arm) and ngoni (precursor to the banjo), Moussa Sissokho on djembe (hand drum) and congas. They would be joined during the set by two ethereal Malian vocalists, Kabine Kouyaté and Mamani Kéita. All of the African musicians, Bridgewater explained, are griots: storytellers, historians, keepers of tradition. Back when Mali was a kingdom, before colonization and coups and crushing poverty, griots were advisors to kings.

Bridgewater’s first journey to Mali was as an ambassador to the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in 1999. She returned in 2004, drawn back to the place she had come to believe was her ancestral home. Her original plans were to record a CD of jazz and Malian music in France, where she now lives, with musicians who had emigrated there from Mali. Instead, she went to Mali again in 2006. Most of Red Earth was recorded there; it was appropriate—and incredibly lucky for us—that she brought Malian musicians along on her limited U.S. tour of only five stops also including the Blue Note in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Jazz Festival.

The CD’s opening track is Mongo Santamaria’s “Afro Blue,” and that was the song Bridgewater began with at the Dakota. Standing among her musicians, wrapped in polyrhythms, singing “shades of delight/cocoa hue,” she glowed. Then the majestic Kabine Kouyaté joined her for “Sakhodougou” (The Griots), a song of celebration for a successful hunt. After an introduction by Soumano on the kora, Bridgewater sang in English, Kouyaté in Bambara; when he sang, she sat at his feet. Rising, she scatted. And it all fit and flowed together: instruments, languages, voices, cultures. This was not jazz laid on top of African music, or jazz performed against a backdrop of African music, or even jazz side-by-side with African music. It was not Paul Simon’s Graceland. (Aside: I love Graceland, and without it, the West would probably not know Ladysmith Black Mambazo, but Graceland is Paul Simon’s music laid on top of African music.) Bridgewater and the Malians had merged into something lucid and joyous and whole. I would use the word “fusion” if it didn’t evoke Spyra Gyra and the Rippingtons.

When Kabine Kouyaté left the stage, Mamani Kéita entered for “Djarabi” (Oh My Love), written by Malian diva and women’s rights champion Oumou Sangaré, who sings it with Bridgewater on the CD. What began as a tender ballad of alternating Bambara phrases and English interpretations (“All my life I have searched and searched for someone like you to love”) escalated in intensity—vocal and instrumental—until Bridgewater was giving us a taste of over-the-top soul singing, a bit of Mary J. Blige, and it still all fit. At the end of the song, her head was perspiring.

By now, the room was electric, and the energy continued to rise. Kéita stayed for “Dee Dee,” a song written for Bridgewater by talking drummer Baba Sissoko. “This is the first and only song ever written for me,” Bridgewater said, pulling out a YSL-monogrammed towel to wipe her head. As Kéita sang to Bridgewater in Bambara, the two women faced each other on the stage. Bridgewater stood very still and listened, attentive and serious, as if Kéita were saying something of great importance to her alone. Near the end of the song, they embraced. We all had shared the emotion of a deeply private moment, and if that’s how it felt when Bridgewater went to Mali, no wonder she returned. She told us what most of us already knew: “It’s a blessing for me to share the stage with these musicians. There’s so much love.”

Kabine Kouyaté came back, even handsomer than before, to join Bridgewater and Kéita for “Massane Cissé” (Red Earth), the CD’s title song. Bridgewater sang of growing up in Tennessee and the connection she felt as a child with the red earth there—how she rolled in it until her hair turned red. It’s a big, loose blues. “The blues,” Bridgewater insisted, “is nothin’ but a branch on the tree of Malian music.”

The final song was on the horizon. It was late, two hours since the set had begun. Then someone on the audience requested Nina Simone’s “Four Women,” and Bridgewater said, “We cannot refuse.” Soumano re-tuned his kora, Coleman opened with a powerful bass solo, and Bridgewater tore the house down with Simone’s scathing, bitter mini-epic about four African-American women whose lives are affected by subtle differences in their skin color. When Bridgewater danced and shouted the song’s end, “My name is Peaches!” (following a splendid piano solo by Gomez), we couldn’t imagine that she or the band had any energy left. We were wrong.

“Compared to What” is a funky ’60s anti-war soul song made famous by Les McCann and Eddie Harris. It actually includes the archaic phrase “Sock it to me now!” but other lyrics are timely in a horrid, history-repeats-itself way: “The president, he got his war/Folks don’t know just what it’s for/Nobody gives us a rhyme or reason/Have one doubt, they call it treason.” Kora, balafon, and tamani, Malian beats, and chants in Bambara wove through and around the piano, bass, drums, and English, and once again, it all made sense and formed a perfect whole. At the start of the song, Bridgewater ordered us to stand up, and we did; had she asked us to storm City Hall with scythes and torches, we probably would have done that, too. The stage filled with people dancing, an ecstatic and exuberant salute. It was, in fact, the last song. No one could have asked for more.