Jazz concert review: Charles Lloyd New Quartet at the Dakota

When: Sept. 30, 2010, second set • Where: Dakota • Who: Charles Lloyd, tenor saxophone; Jason Moran, piano; Reuben Rogers, bass; Eric Harland, drums

He knows bliss in the Atman

And wants nothing else.

Cravings torment the heart:

He renounces cravings.

I call him illumined.

Not shaken by adversity,

Not hankering after happiness:

Free from fear, free from anger,

Free from the things of desire.

I call him a seer, and illumined.

For the final song in last night’s second set at the Dakota, Charles Lloyd pulled up a piano bench beside Jason Moran’s chair, brought the mic close, and quoted a lengthy section from Christopher Isherwood’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita from memory (portions above). It made perfect sense in an evening of musical meditation.

Over the years, I’ve seen Lloyd several times—at the old and new Dakota; at the 2006 Monterey Jazz Festival; at UC Santa Cruz, where I traveled last December for a conference on improvisational music, in part because I knew he would be there. But I’ve never seen a performance as subtle, understated, and nuanced as last night’s.

Lloyd and the other members of his quartet—newly minted MacArthur fellow Moran on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass, Eric Harland on drums—filled the room with music and a profound, almost ethereal calm. They played a lot of notes, often very quickly—Lloyd can take the first phrase of “Monk’s Mood,” for example, just 12 notes, and turn it into dozens more—but without urgency or excess. Early in the set, a thought came to mind: When you speak quietly, people lean in to listen. I have rarely heard the Dakota as quiet as it was during this performance.

Lloyd would play, then sit at the side of the piano while his trio played, surrounded by their music, their communication and interplay, like the eye of a storm. He gave them a lot of room, and why not? Each is an artist of depth and inventiveness. What drummer plays a lengthy solo during the first song of a set? Harland did, interspersing feathery rimshots with pops and thuds. Rogers’s beautiful solos on the acoustic bass hummed and sang. Even Moran, the restless young innovator whose music can be full of sharp turns and edges, seemed centered in stillness. His solos were delicate and restrained, while his comping was almost a whisper, one you leaned in to hear.

When Lloyd played, each passage was a torrent of ideas, a saxophonic language with words you understood not in your head but in whatever you want to call it—your heart, your spirit, your soul. (For this set, he played just the tenor sax, no flute or Tibetan oboe.) The only spoken words were those from the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred “song of God,” during which Harland hummed like a Tibetan monk, rumbly and low.

Lloyd wrote on his website: “Music is a healing force. It has the ability to transcend boundaries, it can touch the heart directly, it can speak to a depth of the spirit where no words are needed.” That’s what I felt. Others did, too. I heard it in conversations after the show, read it in emails and postings later. People were moved by this experience, and uplifted. It’s rare these days to feel uplifted and not wonder later if you’ve been manipulated or gulled. So much popular music is about packaging, branding, and gloss. This was the real thing, ravishing and rapturous, neither entertainment nor diversion but something more substantial: spirituality, emotion, gift. It was the jazz version of an audience with a great teacher. The church of Charles Lloyd. After which, incredibly, he thanked us.

Here's what we heard in the 90-minute second set:

“New Blues" (with Harland's wonderful solo)

"Monk’s Mood” (a sweeter, more tender version than on the new CD, "Mirror")

“Dream Weaver" (Meditation/Dervish Dance) (so many notes, not one too many)

"Passin' Thru" (why hasn't Lloyd ever recorded this on one of his own CDs as leader? He plays it often enough)

"Mirror" (pure gossamer)

"Forest Flower: Sunrise" and "Sunset" (the last time I heard Lloyd play "Forest Flower," Geri Allen was at the piano)

“Tagi” (the Bhagavad Gita piece)

_____

Thanks (once again, and not for the last time, I sincerely hope) to John Scherrer, who tipped me on the Bhagavad Gita and most of the set list.

It’s not entirely true that the only spoken words were from the sacred “song of God.” Lloyd did not address us from the stage—he didn’t introduce his band members or tell us what he was playing or mention that he had a new CD for sale. He did, however, express displeasure with an audience member who called out a request, and ask another who had been shooting video with his camera directly in front of him for most of the night to stop (“No more, brother”). Please, people, show some respect. Please, club owners, set some ground rules—fair and reasonable ground rules that permit nonintrusive photography (no flash, no bounce light, no standing in front of the stage) when the performers allow it. HH took the pictures included here but he wasn't a jerk about it.

Photos by John Whiting.

Newly minted MacArthur Fellow Jason Moran comes to the Dakota on Thursday

Originally published at MinnPost.com on Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2010

By now, we all know that being named a MacArthur Fellow is a very big deal. Established in 1981, the award carries enormous prestige; its nickname, the “Genius Grant,” says it all. And for anyone involved in the arts, it’s a godsend: $500,000, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years, no strings attached.

Over the years, the MacArthur Foundation has recognized and rewarded several jazz musiciansm including Regina Carter, Ornette Coleman, Steve Lacy, George Lewis, Max Roach, Cecil Taylor, Miguel Zenon and John Zorn. On Tuesday, a new name was added to this short but stellar list: Jason Moran.

Just 35, jazz pianist and composer Moran is one of the most interesting and inventive musicians working today. His compositions, recordings, and performances cross genres and incorporate unusual elements — the human voice, archival recordings by Thelonious Monk and Jimi Hendrix, visual images — to create jazz both forward-looking and respectful of tradition.

Moran is no stranger to the Twin Cities. In 2005, the Walker commissioned him to create a music-theater work, “Milestone.” In 2009, he returned with a multimedia performance built around Monk’s famous 1959 Town Hall concert. If you blinked, you missed this, but Augsburg College brought him in for its annual Convocation Series in October, 2009.

Moran has his own estimable trio, called the Bandwagon, with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen; their latest CD, “Ten” (Blue Note), released this summer, has earned raves. At the Dakota, Moran most often performs as part of Charles Lloyd’s New Quartet, which will play two sets on Thursday night.

Lloyd and his quartet are on tour with their new CD, “Mirror” (ECM), an exquisite collection of standards, originals, gospel songs, and the Beach Boys’ “Caroline, No.” With Lloyd, the jazz shaman, on saxophone, Moran on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass and Eric Harland on drums, this was a not-to-be-missed show before Moran won his MacArthur. Based on my own past experience hearing this quartet, I can promise you a rare experience: uplifting, thought-provoking, richly musical and deeply satisfying. The CD is beautiful but live music is better.

Charles Lloyd New Quartet, 7 and 9:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 30, Dakota, 1010 Nicollet Mall ($50/$35). Tickets online or call 612-333-5299.

Jason Moran: Outtakes from the Augsburg convocation

Pianist/composer Jason Moran spoke and performed at Augsburg College in Minneapolis yesterday (Oct. 12) as part of its 2009–2010 Convocation Series. Augsburg English professor Mzenga Wanyama, who curates the Fine Arts convocation, brought him in; Wanyama didn’t know Moran or his music before this but someone recommended him.

A moment to say how much I enjoyed meeting and speaking (if briefly) with Professor Wanyama, born in Kenya, educated at the University of Nairobi, then at Howard University and the University of Minnesota (where he earned his Ph.D.), now teaching English (postcolonial theory and literature; African American literary history) at a small Lutheran college in Minnesota. How did that happen?

I like Moran very much and have heard him speak before, at the Walker Art Center in conversation with performing arts curator Philip Bither. He’s an educator so he’s comfortable addressing audiences, and he has interesting things to say about his music, his influences, and his process(es). A report on the convocation is up on MinnPost. Here’s more of what Moran said during his hour in sunny Hoversten Chapel.

“Music is the form that has given me opportunity and possibility.”

After noting that hearing Thelonious Monk’s music changed his life (and kept him from quitting piano studies): “Monk is a descendant of people whose history is still uncharted and unfound…. As I play his music now, I see it as a reflection of his history.” (This is a helpful clue on how to listen to Moran play Monk; he’s not just dealing with the music, but thoughtfully and profoundly with his own considerable research into Monk’s life and background and ancestors.)



“It’s the duty of musicians to be as honest and truthful as possible—as honest as they can stand.”

He asked how many students in the audience have passports and was surprised by the large show of hands. Then he encouraged everyone else to get one and use it. His first serious travel experience happened when he was still in college (at the Manhattan School of Music, where he now teaches). Saxophonist Greg Osby needed a pianist for a three-week tour of Europe and asked Moran to come along. “I started to see what’s happening outside America. It was eye-opening.”

He talked about his teacher, Jaki Byard, whose unsolved murder in 1999 still haunts him. “Jaki was kind of a crazy piano player, with hair that shot out the back of his head like Frederick Douglass. Crazy dresser. He taught me to explore the possibilities of the piano. I always play a piece of his in performance.”

“To me, the piano is therapy… I have to travel through myself to get to the point where I can look forward.”



“Monk, Jaki Byard, and my parents all made it possible for me to do something artistic, satisfying, and also soul-searching.”

Words to young pianists (in response to a student’s question): “First, practice. Practice what your teacher says, and practice what you like. Second, listen to as much music as you can, including music you don’t like, so you know what it is.”

When a student asked him to explain what he was doing inside the piano, Moran talked briefly about John Cage and prepared piano, then demonstrated by putting a drumstick and mic on the strings and playing several notes and runs. “The instrument can be a toy. The sounds that come from it are up to you. The piano can be whatever you want it to be…. Once I poured potpourri inside my parents’ piano. It didn’t do much, but it still smells like flowers.”

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.

That headphones moment during Jason Moran's "In My Mind"

Actually there were two headphones moments during In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall 1959, which Jason Moran and The Big Bandwagon brought to the Walker Art Center last Saturday.

The first was at the beginning, when Moran walked on stage alone, sat down at the piano, put on a pair of headphones, and improvised to a recording of Monk's original Town Hall performance of "Thelonious." The second happened toward the end, when all eight band members put on headphones and started playing.

It was a wall of sound that somehow made sense. I kept shifting my focus from one musician and instrument to another. There were no solos or duos or back-and-forth exchanges, no negotiations or responses to what someone else had just played, so no specific person or sound drew your attention at any particular moment. Egalitarian and kind of noisy but interesting.

I scribbled in my notebook "Are they all listening to the same thing?" I also wondered if they could hear each other. Later I asked Moran by email. His reply:

"Yes, in the headphones, we were all listening to Monk's Town Hall version of 'Thelonious.' That is the only thing we could hear. No musician can hear each other, and the volume is so loud in the headphones that we cannot hear much of ourselves. We interact with the recording, not each other. But since we are all hearing the same thing, the outcome could be structurally sound."

Jason Moran and The Big Bandwagon: Monk in motion

When: Saturday, May 9, 2009 • Where: Walker Art Center, McGuire Theater • Who: Jason Moran and The Big Bandwagon: Jason Moran, piano; Logan Richardson, alto sax; Aaron Stewart, tenor sax; Ralph Alessi, trumpet; Howard Johnson, tuba; Isaac Smith, trombone; Tarus Mateen, bass; Nasheet Waits, drums

Jason Moran is snobby about chairs. He keeps a lot of photographs in the studio where he works. He learned classical piano as a child with the Suzuki method; he grew up hearing Glenn Gould at home and jazz on the car radio. His older brother played violin. One day, when Jason was 13 and bored with the piano, his parents played a recording of Thelonious Monk's “’Round Midnight.” It was the second most important moment in his life, after being born. In his words, it "set everything in motion."

(Monk did it for me, too. I came to jazz through the fusion door. Then one day I heard Monk on the radio. I don’t remember which tune it was, but I remember feeling that the man with the strange name was playing those lurching rhythms and dissonant chords just for me. I fell hard.)

The facts of Moran’s life were projected on a screen in stenciled letters during In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall 1959, which came to the Walker Art Center as a shared presentation with the Northrop Jazz Season. Commissioned by Duke University, the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the Chicago Symphony Center, and the Washington Performing Arts Society, Moran's new work was originally supposed to be a re-creation of Monk's famous big-band concert of 50 years ago, with Moran playing piano and Monk's son T.S. on drums.

But Moran went his own way. ("Technical re-creations can be a recipe for disaster," he wrote for the Guardian [London] in May 2008. "I thought of the Gus van Sant shot-for-shot remake of Hitchcock's Psycho.") Following his curiosity, digging into history, drawing on his knowledge of conceptual art (learned in part while composer-in-resident at the Walker in 2005, where he spent his free time exploring the museum’s collection), Moran created a multimedia work that combines words and music, sounds and images, past and present, biography and autobiography, concert and theater in a personal, lavishly inventive and musically satisfying take on a historic event in jazz.

Last night at the Walker's intimate and lovely McGuire Theater, we heard Monk in conversation with his arranger, Hal Overton; we heard him tap dancing; we saw impressionistic images of the plantation in North Carolina owned by Archibald Monk, where the composer’s great-grandparents were slaves, and grainy images of Monk rehearsing in the Jazz Loft, filmed by W. Eugene Smith. Sometimes we saw double as the band we were watching was projected onto the screen; cameras were placed on either side of the stage, and to the left of the Steinway Moran was playing.

All were interwoven with live performances of Monk’s music, interpreted and explored by Moran and his eight-piece Big Bandwagon. To start, Moran came on stage alone, put on a pair of headphones, listened to Monk play “Thelonious” (we could hear it, too, barely), then improvised along with the music. The other band members entered and began playing and the music expanded to fill the room.

Throughout the evening, the octet reformed into small groups, sometimes classic trio (piano, bass, drums), sometimes all horns (trombone, tuba, alto and tenor saxes). There was much room for improvisation during solos and musical conversations, times when Monk's tunes opened up and new music, some invented on the spot, rushed in. At first I was surprised that Tarus Mateen played electric bass, not upright; it brought a more modern sound to the mix and left room for the rumbly low notes of Howard Johnson’s tuba.

They played the music Monk and his band performed during the original 1959 concert: “Thelonious,” “Friday the 13th,” “Little Rootie-Tootie,” “Monk’s Mood,” “Crepuscule with Nellie.” All were re-imaginings, not reiterations; “Crepuscule” was full of old-time gospel fervor, and parts seemed almost symphonic, lush and full. Throughout the night, Monk’s music (which Ben Ratliff has called “some of the best songs ever written in jazz”) was the core, not an enclosure. We also heard new music: to a recorded reading of a poem titled "In My Mind" (solo piano), and to the scenes of fields on Archibald Monk's plantation (tuba and cowbells).

One of the things that makes jazz so interesting (to me, at least) is its wide-openness to interpretation and reinterpretation. I’m guessing that most contemporary orchestras play Bach and Beethoven, Mozart and Shostakovich fairly straight. All the notes, nothing more and nothing less. A jazz tune, on the other hand, is a sketch, an outline, a compass pointing north. Classical musicians have scores. Jazz musicians have fake books—melodies, lyrics, basic chords. The rest is up to them.

Listening to the solos—Moran’s brilliant, unpredictable piano, Nasheet Waits’ fierce and thundering drums, Ralph Alessi’s shining trumpet, and Isaac Smith’s joyous, unfettered trombone (to me, the dreadlocked, exceedingly animated Smith was the highlight of the evening)—I wondered, if Monk were in the audience tonight, what would he think? Would he enjoy the sound of his music filtered through the intelligence and experience, imaginations and mad skills of these eight musicians? Part homage, part documentary (thanks to the newly discovered recordings and images Moran was able to use), part confessional (Moran saying “This is where I came from, this is what I care about”), In My Mind stands on its own as a new work grounded in tradition. It's Monk brought into the 21st century, tap-dancing feet and all.

Hear clips from In My Mind.
Read about the Jazz Loft and the things that were found there.
See and hear Moran in conversation with Walker Art Center Performing Arts Curator Philip Bither in February 2007.
Photos of Moran and the "In My Mind" painting from Moran's website.