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.

Jazz concert preview: Five years after Katrina, Los Hombres Calientes to reunite at Orchestra Hall

Originally published at MinnPost.com, Friday, Aug. 20, 2010

Irvin Mayfield (L) and Bill Summers

Los Hombres Calientes was living up to its name — the Hot Men — in 2005. A spicy gumbo of rhythms and sounds from New Orleans and Africa, the Caribbean and Brazil, the band had released its fifth CD, “Carnival,” in a series that combines infectious party tunes with ethnomusicology. It had toured and recorded around the world, won a Billboard Latin Music Award and earned a Grammy nomination. It was a huge hit each year at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, where it usually had the top-selling CD.

Co-led by trumpeter Irvin Mayfield and master percussionist Bill Summers, Los Hombres was a band with a future.

Then came Hurricane Katrina. Mayfield lost his father, Irvin Mayfield Sr. And Summers lost everything but his computer’s hard drive. Priorities changed.

On Saturday at Orchestra Hall, Los Hombres Calientes will perform for the first time since the storm. A concert earlier this year at the House of Blues New Orleans, a benefit for Haitian relief, was billed as a Los Hombres reunion. But as Mayfield told me earlier this week by phone from New Orleans, that was really “more Bill and I getting together. The one in Minneapolis is the first time the actual band is getting together.”

And, who knows, it may be the last. Since the storm, Summers and Mayfield have gone their separate ways. Summers, who began his career as one of Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters and went on to record and appear with a very long list of luminaries, is playing with his new band, Jazalsa, and running the Summers Multi Ethnic Institute of Arts. Mayfield is everywhere doing everything: leading his New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, running his own jazz club on Bourbon Street, heading the New Orleans Jazz Institute at the University of New Orleans, serving as the Minnesota Orchestra’s first artistic director of jazz.

A large fan base here

The Saturday concert is highly anticipated and nearly sold out. Over a series of appearances starting in 2000, just two years after the group was formed, Los Hombres built a large and enthusiastic fan base here, making annual treks to the old Dakota (in Bandana Square in St. Paul) and its current home on Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis. Mayfield credits the Twin Cities with breaking the group nationally.
Whose idea was the reunion? “I don’t know if I would say it was any one person’s idea,” Mayfield says. “It was the fans’ idea.” (Last year Mayfield told the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “Although I’ve done a lot, [Los Hombres Calientes] is the thing I am most known for. Around the world, wherever I am, people love that band.”)

Lilly Schwartz, the orchestra’s director of pops and special projects, “pushed to make it happen,” Mayfield says. “She put it on the schedule before we got it all together. So Bill and I decided we’d come back and do this one date. Outside of New Orleans, there’s no better place to do this music than Minneapolis.”

What was it like to play with Summers in February, after more than four years apart? “It set the stage for Bill and I to regain a mutual respect for what each of us brought to the table,” Mayfield says. “Bill is in that period of his career where he’s looking back. That’s typically not where I look at things from. Not that Bill isn’t still looking forward, but there’s 30 years difference between us. When we were co-leading a band, that’s where a lot of challenge came from. That’s also what created some of the magic.

“It’s one of those relationships where when we have agreements it’s beautiful, and when we have disagreements it’s crazy. All that was continuous through the years we were together as a band.”

Five CDs released from 1998 to 2005

We won’t hear anything brand-new on Saturday, but it won’t matter. The five CDs Los Hombres released from 1998-2005 comprise a wealth of exciting, polyrhythmic music. (Side note: All came out on Basin Street Records, which was hit hard by Katrina but survived.)

The first two, the eponymous debut (1998) and Volume 2 (1999), are full of reimagined standards and original compositions by Summers, Mayfield, and the group’s third founder and drummer at the time, Jason Marsalis. For Volumes 3-5, “New Congo Square” (2000), “Vodou Dance” (2003), and “Carnival” (2005), the band traveled to Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad, and Haiti, learning from, playing with, and recording local musicians, connecting the sonic dots between the African diaspora and New Orleans. So there’s no shortage of material to draw from.

“Consider it a compilation performance,” Mayfield suggests. “All that music, all those islands, New Orleans, Brazil, Jamaica — so much music. We’ll play until it feels like time to stop.”

Over the years, Los Hombres was more a fluid project than a fixed band. Mayfield and Summers were the core, but other members came and went. Marsalis left in 2000 and was replaced by Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, then Ricky Sebastian and Jamal Batiste. David Pulphus was the original bass player, followed by Edwin Livingston. Pianists included Victor Atkins and Ronald Markham. Plus, on the CDs, there were guests (Kermit Ruffins, Delfeayo Marsalis, John Boutte, Rebirth Brass Band, Mardi Gras Indians, members of Burning Spear) and field recordings of indigenous music.

The Minneapolis incarnation of Los Hombres Calientes will be almost all musicians who have played with the band in the past: Mayfield, Summers, and fellow Crescent City residents Aaron Fletcher on saxophone, Leon Brown on trumpet, Michael Watson on trombone, Ronald Markham on piano, and Jamal Batiste on drums. The exception: New York salsa star Ruben Rodriguez on bass.

The forecast: Hot.

Here’s “Fofori Fo Firi” from a live performance. And here’s a music video of “Vodou Hoodoo Babalu” from Basin Street.

Los Hombres Calientes, 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 21, Orchestra Hall,  ($22-$60 VIP). Tickets online or call 612-371-5656.

Melody Gardot sort-of concert review

When: Saturday, June 12, 2010
Where: The Depot, Minneapolis
Who: Melody Gardot, vocals; Irwin Hall, saxophones and flute; Charnett Moffet, bass; Charles Staab, drums

This is a sort-of review not because it was a sort-of concert, but a concert at an event and venue that are challenging for performers with any degree of subtlety: the Minnesota Orchestra's annual Symphony Ball at the Depot in Minneapolis.

The Depot is cavernous, a former train shed with high peaked ceilings. The Ball is the Orchestra's annual fundraiser. Ladies wear gowns, men wear tuxes, and people are there to see, be seen, socialize, and give money. (Live auction items included a trip to Hawaii valued at $50,000.) Co-hosts Sarah Hicks and Irvin Mayfield were charming, HH looked dreamy in his tux, I had the privilege of meeting maestro Osmo Vanska, meteorologist Paul Douglas walked by, and I saw at least one pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. But I digress from the music. See how easy it is?

The Depot. Not our event, but you get the idea.



Gardot and her band were the featured entertainment. I had never seen her live but had heard her debut CD, Worrisome Heart, and like it very much. She's her own singer with her own voice and style, but if you've never heard her before, it might be helpful (sort of) to think Madeleine Peyroux meets Patricia Barber meets Nellie McKay.

Here's Gardot live on the Swedish-Norwegian talk show "Skavlan" in 2009, singing "Baby I'm a Fool."



Her personal story is compelling: a devastating accident in 2003 left her in chronic pain, hypersensitive to light (her dark glasses are not an affectation), and needing to walk with a cane. Just 25, she seems older, but who wouldn't. She credits music and music therapy with saving her brain.

She has a distinctive and beautiful voice--sultry, bluesy, with a feathery vibrato--and enormous personal style. Her sound, her way of singing, her demeanor, and her name seem French; she was born in New Jersey, but the French love her. For the Symphony Ball, she wore a very little black dress and very high heels.

She brought a killer band. The saxophonist and drummer were new to me, but not her bassist, Charnett Moffett. Any band with Charnett Moffett in it is worth sitting quietly and listening to, which many people didn't do. Had Frank Sinatra come back from the dead or Barbra Streisand appeared on stage, I'm not sure the results would have been much different.

Despite the talking and laughing and milling around and the fact that many people left early (this was, it must be said, mostly an older crowd, the event started early and ran long, and once the wine was poured, there were no bars), Gardot prevailed. The people who stayed gradually moved closer to the stage as spaces opened up at tables. Toward the end, mostly serious listeners were left, and we were richly rewarded.

Gardot sang and played piano and guitar. Her singing is warm and intimate, her banter relaxed and engaging. She sings with real emotion--not just the words, but the feelings within and behind them, whether serious or playful, hopeful or consumed with longing or nostalgia or regret. She performed many of her own songs--I wasn't taking notes, and now that I've been listening again to Worrisome Heart and (for the first time)  My One and Only Thrill (her latest, a giveaway at last night's event), I can't recall which songs I heard last night and which I heard this morning. But I do remember a delicious "Summertime" and her closer, "Caravan." I hope to hear her again before too long, in a club setting or a small hall or even a festival where people come for the music.

I wish I I could have been in two places at once last night. In another part of the Depot, Maud Hixson and her  new band, French 75, were performing at Crash the Ball, an event for young professionals. Wish I could have seen them, too.

Ramsey Lewis at Orchestra Hall: Concert review

When: Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009 • Where: Orchestra Hall • Who: Ramsey Lewis, piano; Larry Gray, bass; Leon Joyce Jr., drums. Opening set: Bruce Henry, vocals; Peter Vircks, saxophone; Bryan Nichols, piano; Chris Bates, bass; Daryl Boudreaux, percussion; Kevin Washington, drums. Host Irvin Mayfield.

Last night’s program at Orchestra Hall was billed as being all about the blues. It wasn’t, but nobody cared. Instead, the audience was treated to a sublime set of music by the Ramsey Lewis Trio.

Anyone who thinks this group is about resting on laurels, delivering hits, and playing it safe is mistaken. The music was as rich and sophisticated, melodic and complex, inside and out there as any I’ve heard in a long time.

The opener, “Wade in the Water,” became a sweet samba, with Joyce stroking his drums with his hands. The crowd applauded wildly and Lewis joked, “Shall we quit while we’re ahead?”

At 74, Lewis has embarked on what is almost a new career, or at least a new passion: composing. A series of commissions for the Joffrey Ballet and the Ravinia Festival, where Lewis serves as artistic director for jazz, has made him feel “like a kid on Christmas morning.” His new CD, Songs from the Heart, due out on Concord on Sept. 29, is his first-ever (out of 80 to date) to include all original compositions.

We heard “To Know Her Is to Love Her” (from the Joffrey work) and “Conversation,” written for Ravinia and performed there in 2008 by the Turtle Island String Quartet. The latter made me hold my breath, it was so beautiful—and much like a conversation, perhaps between lovers, with changes in mood and tempo. Another original, “Exhilaration,” showcased Gray on the bass, bowing like a classical master, plucking and tapping like an avant-garder. We heard a lot of arco (bowed) bass during the evening; Gray used his bow almost as much as he used his fingers.

Throughout, Lewis made occasional references to the blues, inviting us to “find where it is” in the music he was playing, reminding us that jazz was born in the blues. For the centerpiece of the set, he took us back to before the blues with a medley of gospel tunes and spirituals. Not the usual play-a-few-notes, awkward-pause, switch-tunes medley, but a lengthy, elegantly constructed series of phrases, whole songs, and variations within songs, linked together by improvisation, like pearls on a string. Between selections, as Lewis moved his fingers over the keys, you could almost hear him thinking “What next?”

I recognized “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” “Precious Lord,” Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” “How Great Thou Art,” and (I think) “Lift Ev’ry Voice.” Lewis and Joyce traded melodic phrases (Joyce played notes on his drums, with help from his elbows) on the way to Joyce’s big solo of the night, a breathtaking display of speed, invention, and precision.

Except for the originals, much of this was music many of us had heard before, made new by surprising changes and phrases, rhythms and transitions. People talked afterward about how modern it was, how “outside,” and how it wasn’t what they expected.

We got the encore everyone wanted: “The ‘In’ Crowd.” A soft and lovely solo piano introduction worked its way there, the familiar chords burst forth, and the audience loved it. Joyce’s whistle midway through signaled a detour into an Afro-Cuban tempo.

If you’re going to have a huge hit, make it a good one, like “The ‘In’ Crowd” or “Take Five” or "Poinciana," and don’t get stuck singing “Muskrat Love” for the rest of your life.

For the last song of the night, Lewis finally gave us a classic blues tune: Jimmy Reed’s “Baby What You Want Me to Do.” (Hat tip to Dan Emerson for the title.) Which, as it happens, appears on Lewis's first-ever live album, Ramsey Lewis Live at the Savoy (1982).

A note on where we sat: We moved during intermission from a row midway down the main floor to empty seats on Tier B looking down at the stage. With help from my handy binocs, I could see everything: how Leon Joyce reached casually over his right shoulder to tap the inverted cymbal to his right, Larry Gray pressing the strings of his bass, the red felt lightning bolts inside the Steinway, Lewis’s hands on the keys. I thought the sound was better, too—it rose up to us from the monitors and the instruments themselves, rather than passing over and between hundreds of people

And I have to say that Lewis, Gray, and Joyce looked good. I mean really good All three were impeccably attired. Their posture was perfect, their stage presence professional. Handsome men. Lewis, the legend, great statesman of jazz, is 74? Don’t believe it. Skin like a baby.

Ramsey Lewis Trio Setlist
"Wade in the Water"
"To Know Her Is to Love Her"
"Conversation"
"Exhilaration"
"Spiritual Medley"
"The 'In' Crowd"
"Baby What You Want Me to Do"

Starting what I hope will be a regular thing at OH jazz shows, the evening began with an opening set by area musicians, led by soulful vocalist Bruce Henry, who now lives in Chicago but was here long enough to become part of our music scene (plus we’re not willing to let him go).

He and his band brought out the big crowd-pleasers: “Statesboro Blues” (“Wake up, mama, turn your lamp down low”), a lovely “Embraceable You” (nice solo, Chris), Henry’s composition “Jump That Broom,” and “House of the Rising Sun,” which Henry said he was inspired to sing by Nina Simone.

They were given half an hour—not long enough, even though Lewis and his trio were up next.

After last night’s “Broom,” Boudreaux needs a new washboard; he broke a leg on the one he had.

Thursday's musical feast

It is not decadent or greedy to see two or more live jazz performances on the same night. Jazz fans did it all the time on NYC's 52nd street back in the day, and musicians ran from gig to gig to play, sit in, or listen. Some nights it's possible to do it in downtown Minneapolis or St. Paul, and you can also go from city to city if you start early enough or stay out late enough.

Last night began at Orchestra Hall's outdoor Peavey Plaza with a free concert by Fat Kid Wednesdays: Michael Lewis on saxophones (tenor and alto), Adam Linz on bass, JT Bates on drums. The crowd was sizable, the beer cold, the music as intriguing and unpredictable as always with this trio. Looking worldly from his recent tour with Andrew Bird, during which he's been playing electric bass and singing, Lewis wore a new tattoo. FKW is (are?) at Cafe Maude tonight, at the Clown Lounge in the basement of the Turf Club on Monday.

At 7:30 we were inside Orchestra Hall for a concert by the Minnesota Orchestra and the Irvin Mayfield Quintet. With the charismatic Andrew Litton conducting (which tonight included jumping up and down, suit jacket flapping), we heard Gershwin's An American in Paris (which HH said sounds like music from The Simpsons--it does). We rarely hear the orchestra (so much jazz, so little time) and I had forgotten how delicious one can be--all those musicians and dynamics, that big instrumental voice. It was fun to see both Pete Whitman (who played last weekend at the AQ and returns there soon with his X-tet) and Dave Milne in the saxophone section.

Then the symphonic arrangement of Duke Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige, which Ellington called a "tonal parallel to the history of the American Negro." Dismissed by critics in 1943, now beloved, it includes the gorgeous and wistful "Come Sunday." The original is over 40 min. long; this shorter (18 min.) version is the one most often performed.

With the orchestra still on stage, Maestro Litton sat down at the piano to play Oscar Peterson's arrangement of "'Round Midnight." Litton told us how much he loves Peterson, that he probably owns 140 Peterson CDs, and that when asked "What's on your iPod?" he'll likely answer "All jazz and the occasional Ring Cycle." He was a classical musican playing a jazz arrangement, with great affection and skill. Afterward he joked, "It's so much easier when nobody's listening." (He played with a dislocated finger, injured in the Bahamas during a fall from a scooter and scheduled to be splinted for months.)

For the final piece before the intermission, trumpeter Irvin Mayfield, bass player Neal Caine, and drummer Adonis Rose joined the orchestra in an arrangement of "Over the Rainbow" that Litton commissioned during his tenure with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. (In Dallas, the trumpet part was played by Texas-born Roy Hargrove.)

After intermission, the focus of the concert: the world premiere of Mayfield's The Art of Passion, commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra. Mayfield introduced it by talking about passion, how important it is, and how when passion is absent, resentment takes its place. He praised the orchestra as "the best distillment of love we do as humans." His quintet—which also included John Chin on piano and Ronald Westray on trombone—stood at front center stage with Maestro Litton behind them on his podium and the orchestra wrapped around them, like an embrace.

Through his music, Mayfield dealt with topics he cares about deeply: love, passion, truth, adventure. Sometimes the orchestra and the quintet played together, sometimes just the quintet, with lots of room for solos by individual members. The first part began and ended with a bass solo; the final part ended in a blaze of trumpet glory. The music was by turns thoughtful, beautiful, and lively. This was the first time it had been performed in public and the audience loved it.

We went from OH to the Dakota to see the final hour of the Jazz is NOW! NOWnet, the composer's forum led by Jeremy Walker. Bonus: it was Jeremy and Marsha's fourth anniversary--a good feeling in the room, with friends all around. I've seen the NOWnet several times and like this group very much. It's more-or-less the same six musicians, with the occasional variation due to someone being out of town or otherwise engaged. This time was Walker at the piano, Chris Thomson on tenor sax, Scott Fultz on alto sax, Kelly Rossum on trumpet, Jeff Brueske on bass, Kevin Washington on drums.

They sounded great, their music new and modern yet very approachable--it approaches you. I spent a few moments talking with Larry Englund (KFAI host and the man who books the Hat Trick Lounge), who said, "What I like about their music is there's so much space in it." He's right. Walker doesn't play a single extraneous or disposable note. No one in the NOWnet does. Another reason to like them, and to pay attention to what they have to say. Some of what we heard: "Summer Sunday Afternoon," "So Long New York," Walker's arrangement of Ellington's "New York City Blues," something brand-new, and the lovely, romantic "Dorothy and Robert," Fultz's homage to his grandparents.

As the NOWnet wrapped up, people began arriving from OH: Mayfield and his quintet, Maestro Litton and his wife, Lilly Schwartz (the reason Mayfield is artistic director of jazz at Orchestra Hall, a position that was recently renewed), audience members who had heard that Mayfield might perform at the Dakota, as has become his tradition when he plays OH. After the NOWnet left the stage, once the quintet had dined and relaxed, they gave us what we wanted: an impromptu late-night jam. Mayfield played and sang and laughed and joked. We heard more of the marvelous Chin. Rose, still wearing his OH stage clothes, kept his jacket buttoned. Caine and Westray let loose. It was glorious.

And it was all one night and into the morning.

Photos: Fat Kid Wednesdays; Michael Lewis.
NOWnet; Neal Caine and Irvin Mayfield; Mayfield Quintet by John Whiting.

Talking with Irvin Mayfield

When Irvin Mayfield was named artistic director of jazz at Orchestra Hall in July 2008, he was also commissioned to compose a new work to be performed by orchestra and jazz quintet in July 2009.

Orchestra-with-jazz has been done before; examples that come to mind are Wynton Marsalis’s All Rise, Roberto Sierra’s Concerto for Saxophones and Orchestra, commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra with James Carter, not yet recorded; further back, Bill Evans Trio with Symphony Orchestra, The Modern Jazz Quartet & Orchestra—what else? Please comment if you know about more.

Word is that Mayfield’s The Art of Passion will be worth hearing. At the tender age of 31, he’s an experienced composer; conductor Andrew Litton is a jazz fan (the two become best friends at the Dakota last week when they came to hear Tia Fuller play); and everyone wants this to work. Someone at Orchestra Hall who’s heard bits and pieces says it’s beautiful.

I interviewed Mayfield last week for MinnPost. Here’s more from that conversation.

On the origins of The Art of Passion:
I was at a concert when a young lady came up to me and said she had been a clarinet player in high school and wished she had kept playing. All over the world, people say, “I wish I had kept playing.” I started thinking about, why did I keep playing? This turned into a global conversation about what it takes to be a musician—what it takes to be so many things in life.

On passion:
You can’t be great in music unless you’re passionate. You can’t have a great life if you’re not passionate. I think what happens—why a lot of people stop and don’t follow their passion—is they get to the not-fun factor. You get the instrument, have to practice, and have to do a bunch of technical things that rob you of the romantic ideal you had.

If you don’t know what you’re passionate about and you’re looking for something, investing in other people’s passions can be a great catalyst. Coming to Orchestra Hall is one way you can start investing in other folks’ passions and start becoming passionate yourself.

We need passionate people today, because it’s going to take passion to meet the challenges we’re dealing with as humans, from the educational system to global warming to where we need to go as a society, as Americans. A lot of these challenges are going to require the same tools this orchestra puts in place on stage. People overlook and trivialize what great things the orchestra is doing.

On love:
One of the things I think is really hard right now in America is for people to understand love. We assume we don’t have to teach love, we assume we don’t have to use tools to give people an opportunity to develop love. We’re at a real loss. People have a hard time knowing how to love things and understand what that means.

You understand love when you can fall in love with something every day. It’s not just about relationships, but about careers. Folks in my generation will have 13 jobs over their lifetime. This is not a good thing…. I’ve had to fall in love with playing music every day. You get to a point where you have assistants, a career, commitments, you don’t have to worry about money, and it’s easy to forget the real purpose of why you’re doing it. The passion can elude you. You have to make an effort to remember why you’re doing this every day.

On practicing:
How many hours a day? That depends on what I need to practice. Obviously, if I’m writing a commission, I’m practicing writing and the trumpet goes down. If I’m working with students, I’m practicing techniques so I can add value to their experience. Practicing can be used for many different things, not just picking up the trumpet.

On building the jazz audience:
What needs to happen with jazz is the same thing that happened with the culinary arts. Fifteen years ago, nobody wanted to be a chef. Then came the cooking shows, and cooking became the center of what was going on. And it’s not about celebrity or personality—it’s about can they cook.

Irvin Mayfield Quintet with the Minnesota Orchestra. Andrew Litton, conductor and piano. Irvin Mayfield, trumpet; Ronald Westray, trombone; John Chin, piano; Neal Caine, bass; Adonis Rose, drums. Thursday, July 23, 7:30 p.m., Orchestra Hall ($45/$65 VIP). Tickets online or call 612-371-5656.

Photo of Irvin Mayfield by Greg Miles

Three Nights with the Irvin Mayfield Sextet

When: 3/26, 27, 28/08
Where: Dakota
Who: Irvin Mayfield (trumpet), Leon Brown (trumpet), Vincent Gardner (trombone), David Torkanowsky (piano), Carlos Henriquez (bass), Jaz Sawyer (drums)

Whenever I read about a jazz artist or group spending a week at Birdland or the Blue Note or the Jazz Standard, it makes me crazy. A residency of several days is the ultimate opportunity to hear what live jazz is about: creating, evolving, in the moment.

As I write this, Lee Konitz is in the midst of a six-day stay at the Standard with his trio (Rufus Reid on bass, Matt Wilson on drums) and guest Danilo Perez on piano. I can’t imagine that group is playing the same tune the same way even once.

Here in Minneapolis/St. Paul, most artists from out of town stay a day or two, sometimes three. Irvin Mayfield was here at the end of February with his New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. He returned for three nights at the Dakota with his sextet, and we went to all three late sets.

Wednesday is an all-music night: “Mack the Knife,” “All of Me” (with Leon singing; he’s been practicing and it shows), “Mandinga” (a Cuban tune from the Los Hombres Calientes days), “St. James Infirmary” (Mayfield sings, and his style is interesting: the word “hat” becomes “hay-ay-at,” and “song” becomes “saw-waw-wong”).



There’s a relaxed, loose playfulness to this band, with a lot of back-and-forth (verbal and musical) and laughter on stage. While one is singing, another eggs him on (“Where’d you go?” “What’d you say?” “What’d you do that for?”).

At one point Mayfield bumps Torkanowsky off his bench and takes over the comping. Later Brown picks up a water glass from a nearby table and uses it as a mute for his trumpet.

Toward the end of the set, Mayfield calls Christine Rosholt to the stage for a song. She announces “Squeeze Me” and nails it. She bosses the band around. She asks for and gets a duet with bassist Henriquez. She even gives us a bitty scat (be-de-be-da-be-doo) and Christine never scats. It’s a terrific performance. Go Christine!



Watch Don Berryman's video from Wednesday's early set.



On Thursday, Mayfield makes many references to the New Orleans Public Library, for which he serves as chairman of the board. The mezzanine is full of librarians from NOLA, in town for the Public Library Association annual meeting and enjoying the Dakota on Mayfield’s dime.

Mayfield greets them and teachers from Kenwood School in Minneapolis, where he spent part of the day. He reads us a book he read to the children: The Jazz Fly by Matthew Gollub. His band plays along and the audience buzzes whenever Mayfield says “fly.” It’s charming and fun.

Mayfield is happy to be here. “There’s no better relationship than the top of the Mississippi River and the bottom of the Mississippi River,” he says.

He also reads a poem by the late film director and photographer Gordon Parks, with whom he collaborated on the Half Past Autumn Suite. And a poem by Pablo Neruda, “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines.” “Love is so short, forgetting is so long,” Mayfield reads, then adds “Lord have mercy!”



It’s a jazz book club, with music: “You Go to My Head” (Vincent sings, the first time I've heard him do that), a “Mandinka” reprise, “All of Me” (Brown sings), a second-line finale complete with guerilla tap dancers who show up on stage and bring the house down.

After the show, several of us go to the King and I Thai restaurant for Mai Tais. Brown, Henriquez, and Gardner are now on my Hats for Cats list.

We’re back on Friday after seeing 7 Black Butterflies and Prezens Quartet at the Walker (more about that separately). It’s an open curtain night, very crowded. I go to say hi to friends seated on the dining room side and am introduced to Kathleen Battle, in town for a performance Sunday at Orchestra Hall. I’m star-struck and babbling.

Tonight is more similar to Thursday than to Wednesday, with readings of The Jazz Fly, Parks, and Neruda. Brown sings “When My Dream Boat Comes Home.” Another guest singer takes the stage, and this one is nearly a train wreck; the band can't find the key she's in, everyone stops playing, and for a few bars she's singing "Summertime" a cappella. The audience falls stone silent. No one breathes. But she hangs in and so does the band. Afterward, a gracious Mayfield explains that these things happen.

The tap dancers return and we learn that they’re pros. Two tall, insane brothers named Rick and Andy Ausland from company called Buckets and Tap Shoes.



In retrospect, I’m not sure how much evolution I heard in Mayfield’s music, but it was a three-day party and I had a great time. I now have a signed Mayfield/Gordon Parks poster and Mayfield’s new CD with Ellis Marsalis, Love Songs, Ballads and Standards. I woke up on Friday with a Mai Tai headache. And I have to make three hats.

Photos, top to bottom: The sextet; Leon "Chocolate" Brown; Christine and Henriquez (all John Whiting). Henriquez plays while Mayfield reads from Neruda. Tap dancing (John Whiting).

Irvin Mayfield's Trumpet

A month or so after his appearance at Orchestra Hall with his New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, Irvin Mayfield is returning to Minneapolis, this time with his quintet, to play the Dakota. It's not quite clear yet who the other four musicians will be, but if they're drawn from NOJO, I'm guessing the rhythm section will be Victor Atkins (piano), David Pulphus (bass), and Adonis Rose (drums), though some people think Jason Marsalis will be the drummer. Then what, saxophone? Trombone? Or clarinet?

I've been hearing a lot on the radio about a $3.5-million violin (a 1741 Guarneri) recently purchased by Russian businessman Maxim Viktorov and played in a private concert by Pinchas Zukerman. Mayfield may play the world's most valuable trumpet. Hand-built by David Monette, commissioned in memory of all those who perished in Hurricane Katrina (including Mayfield's father, whose body was found on Elysian Fields Street), the Elysian Trumpet is a one-of-a-kind work of art insured for $1 million.



YouTube Trick: Add "&fmt=6" (minus the quotes) to the end of any YouTube URL and get the hi-def version of that video. (Thanks, Don Berryman!)

An article from Bloomberg.com about the Guarneri.

Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra: Do You Know What It Means Tour

When: 2/22/08
Where: Orchestra Hall and the Dakota
Who: Irvin Mayfield (artistic director, trumpet), Evan Christopher (alto saxophone, clarinet), Aaron Fletcher (alto saxophone), Ed Petersen (tenor saxophone), Derek Douget (tenor saxophone), Dan Oestriecher (baritone saxophone), Vince Gardner (trombone), Ron Westrey (trombone), Terrance Taplin (trombone), Barney Floyd (trumpet), Leon Brown (trumpet), Eric Lucero (trumpet), Maurice Brown (trumpet), Victor Atkins (piano), David Pulphus (bass), Adonis Rose (drums)

Irvin Mayfield is a man on a mission: making sure we don’t forget about New Orleans. His concert at Orchestra Hall with his New Orleans Jazz Orchestra begins with a short film about the birth of jazz in NOLA and ends with another about Hurricane Katrina and its devastating effects. In between, the music is wonderful.

Comparisons are inevitable between the jazz orchestra based in the Big Easy and another jazz orchestra based in the Big Apple, especially since both are led by trumpeters from New Orleans. But their music is different, as is the experience of hearing and seeing them live.

The first tune begins as a call-and-response; for a few measures, the whole band just breathes. They quote “Wade in the Water.” Mayfield plays the tambourine; Victor Atkins solos (it’s good to see Atkins again, and the deliciously named drummer Adonis Rose); Aaron Fletcher solos on his alto saxophone. All chant “Hold That Water,” a plea to the levee it did not hear.

Mayfield tells us how glad he is to be back in Minneapolis, “one of the best places in the world for jazz, with the exception of the weather.” He hasn’t been here since November 2004, the last time his former group Los Hombres Calientes (The Hot Guys) came to town.

The next tune is based on a phone conversation Mayfield heard with a 911 operator: “People in the city/Better get to higher ground.” It features a solo by bassist David Pulphus, and it’s great to hear a bass all by itself in this 2,500-seat hall. Vince Gardner takes a trombone solo. Everybody sings. Rose’s drums seem overmiked.

“Beat” is NOJO’s love letter to Cuba. “New Orleans and Cuba have a special connection,” Mayfield explains. “We consider ourselves our own third-world country, the tip of the Caribbean.” Atkins plays a Latin beat and all the horns either solo or duet; this tune brings forth some serious blowing. In terms of hotness and guyness, NOJO is doing fine.

Mayfield plays more to the audience than Marsalis does, and he wants more from us: our attention, our emotions, and our understanding that New Orleans is our national shame.

He dedicates the next song, “The Prayer,” to “the start of all great music in America: the church.” Atkins gives it that gospel feeling. Ed “Sweetheart” Peterson plays his tenor saxophone, Evan “The Ambassador” Christopher his clarinet. This far north, we don’t hear much clarinet. Mayfield reminds us that New Orleans takes it very seriously. For a tune I think is called “It’s a Creole Thing,” Christopher plays a big, sexy solo that closes by rising up and up.

For “All of Me,” Mayfield features Minneapolis native Leon “Chocolate” Brown, who sings and also plays trumpet in the band. Mayfield takes a moment to tell us about his own instrument, the spectacular Elysian Trumpet. Created in memory of Mayfield’s father, who died in Katrina, the hand-built, elaborately decorated horn is set with precious stones and finished with 24K gold.

The final tune, “May His Soul Rest in Peace,” is dedicated to all of the victims of the storm. The band plays while the screen behind them shows indelible images. Mayfield quotes “When the Saints Go Marching In” to close.

But it’s not quite over. One more tune, more upbeat—something by Ellington?—ends the evening. A young woman comes out of the wings and starts to play her saxophone. It’s Amber Woodhouse, a former member of the Dakota Combo, now a student at Berklee. I learn later that her family knows the Mayfields, and when Irvin found out Amber was in town, he invited her to join them on stage. It’s a thrill for everyone.

Mayfield has announced from the stage that he’ll head to the Dakota after the show to play the late night set. It’s worth the nearly two-hour wait to see them again. For part of the time, we’re treated to the sounds of fiery Cuban pianist Nachito Herrera and his group. When they pack up, their drummer, Kevin Washington, stays on—a good thing, because Adonis Rose skips the Dakota and NOJO needs a drummer.

The rest of the night (into the morning) is magical: loose, easy, joyful music, with band members entering and exiting the stage, standing around, sharing jokes, laughing. When it finally must end, Mayfield sings “Shoo Fly,” leads a dancing second line through the club, and chants “Do what you wanna! Stand on the corner!”

The NOJO Web site

Read Andrea Canter's profile of Amber Woodhouse on JazzInk. Scroll over Youth/Jazz Ed to the left, then down to Profiles of Young Artists.

Photos, top to bottom: Amber Woodhouse on stage with NOJO. Photo by John Whiting. NOJO at the Dakota with Kevin Washington on drums. Irvin Mayfield, Leon "Chocolate" Brown, and Evan Christopher.