Jazz concert review: Jekyll and Hyde Come Alive

When: Friday, Oct. 29 • Where: MacPhail Center for Music • Who: Nicollet Circus Band: Kelly Rossum, trumpet/director; Scott Agster, trombone; Chris Thomson, saxophones; Brandon Wozniak, saxophones; Bryan Nichols, piano; Brian Roessler, bass; Eric Strom, percussion; Steve Roehm, drumset

More jazz musicians are writing and performing live scores to silent movies, a kind of performance art that merges two worlds, jazz and film. My first taste of this was in February 2006 at the Walker Art Center, when John Zorn and Electric Masada played Zorn’s scores to experimental American films from the Walker's collection including Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart. Avant-garde art films plus avant-garde music doubled the fun.

In April 2009, we went to the Armatage Room (now closed) to see Patrick Harison play his score to Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief. It was extraordinary, not only because of the music—solo accordion all the way—but also because this was my first time seeing an extended performance by Harison, one of the most consistently interesting artists on the Twin Cities music scene.

Earlier this month, Dave Douglas and Bill Morrison brought their Spark of Being project to the Walker. Trumpeter/composer Douglas and his band Keystone played Douglas’s music to Morrison’s film, a pastiche of archival and found footage retelling the Frankenstein myth. Both Douglas and Morrison used Shelley’s Frankenstein as “loose inspiration.” Neither the music nor the film was narrative, but it was a complete and provocative experience. Not just a movie with a soundtrack, but denser, more complex, often puzzling.

Jazz concert review: First concert in MacPhail's Mingus series sets the stage for more

Originally published at MinnPost.com, Monday, Oct. 18, 2010

L2R: Adam Linz, Alden Ikeda, Chris Thomson

Inspired performances, a warm and relaxed vibe, and an ideal setting combined in a thoroughly enjoyable experience at Thursday’s “Meditations and Revelations” concert at MacPhail Center for Music’s Antonello Hall.

Created by MacPhail’s jazz coordinator Adam Linz, supported by a grant from the NEA, “Meditations and Revelations” is a four-concert series showcasing the music of jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus, one of the most important figures in 20th century American music. Thursday’s concert, titled “Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon” (after one of Mingus’s compositions), was the first in the series, and it got things off to a great start.

Bassist Linz and the other members of the trio — Chris Thomson on saxophone, Alden Ikeda on drums — have played Mingus’s music together for 10  years. Their camaraderie and comfort with the often daunting compositions was evident. The program included “Prayer for Passive Resistance,” the speedy showpiece “Slippers,” the beautiful Ellington-inspired ballad “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love,” “Dizzy Moods” (Tijuana meets Dizzy Gillespie), and “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting.”

About halfway through, Linz performed a solo section (which he introduced by joking with the audience, “If you don’t like solo bass, now’s the time to leave”). People often think that just because an instrument is big and low (like the bass or the tuba), it lacks range and expression. Slapping the fingerboard, dancing, humming and singing, Linz made his bass an orchestra in joyous interpretations of “Freedom,” “Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon,” and what he called “a mash-up from ‘Meditation.’ ”

All the musicians were in top form, whether playing together or soloing. The solos were delicious in the Antonello’s superb acoustics. (The Antonello is a small hall, seating 250 tops, wrapped in honey-colored wood and velvet curtains. Instruments don’t need amplification, musicians can speak from the stage without a mic, and even if you’re sitting in the back, you’re near the front.) Thomson’s tenor saxophone wailed, soared, and whispered; in the bebop bursts of “Slippers,” you could hear each note, and “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love” was gorgeous. Ikeda used every voice in his drum kit, from bass to rims to splashy cymbals, adding layers of rhythm and texture to the mix.

Throughout, Linz told us bits about Mingus and the music they were playing. The mood was less concert hall, more livingroom — music shared among friends. That MacPhail is a community music school was reflected in the crowd, which included children who listened as closely as the grownups. (In a brief welcome prior to the concert, MacPhail president Paul Babcock told us that current students range in age from 6 mos. to 104 years.)

Many jazz musicians today play Mingus’s music. Tribute shows aren’t uncommon. In New York City, the Mingus Big Band, Mingus Dynasty, and Mingus Orchestra, all managed by the composer’s widow, Sue Mingus, play his works exclusively (there are plenty to choose from). But it’s rare for anyone else to devote a year to studying, performing, and teaching his challenging, mystifying work. That — along with the quality of the music, the musicianship, and the hall — makes this series worth noticing.

Future concerts will feature more music and more musicians. Dates have changed since the series was first announced; here’s the latest information:

• Thursday, Nov. 18: “Meditations and Revelations” concert II: “So Long Eric.” A quintet: Michael Lewis, saxophone; Greg Lewis, trumpet; JT Bates, drums; Adam Linz, bass; Bryan Nichols, piano.
• Thursday, Feb. 3: “Meditations and Revelations” concert III. Not yet titled. This concert will be performed by a nonet.
• Thursday, May 12: “Meditations and Revelations” concert IV. Not yet titled. This concert will feature a septet.

All concerts are at 8 p.m. at Antonello Hall, MacPhail Center for Music, 501 South Second St., Minneapolis. Each will be preceded by a Q&A with the artists starting at 7 p.m. Tickets ($10 adult, $5 youth) available by phone (612-767-5250) or at MacPhail.

A night of new music at MacPhail: The Bryan Nichols Trio and the Paul Renz Quintet

When: Saturday, January 23, 2010 • Where: Antonello Hall, MacPhail Center for Music • What: MacPhail’s Spotlight Series, featuring members of its teaching faculty; this was “Jazz Innovations” night

First set: The Bryan Nichols Trio
Bryan Nichols, piano; Adam Linz, bass; JT Bates, drums



When pianist/composer Bryan Nichols told me that his upcoming performance at MacPhail would consist of all-new music written the week before and rehearsed only once, I was more excited than skeptical. I’ve heard Nichols and the other members of his trio—Adam Linz on bass, JT Bates on drums—often enough that I know to trust them. Pretty much anything they do is interesting, much of it deeply interesting, whether they’re playing ensemble or taking solos.

I expected to like the music; I loved the music. Five selections, the first four untitled. “Song 1” was a perfect opener, a warm and welcoming piece in which Linz literally leaped into his first solo, playing a rapid series of low-to-high notes on his bass and rising to his toes. Not an in-your-face piece, but an invitation to sit back and enjoy.

“Song 2” began with mallets on drums, a solo that went from soft booms to sticks on rims and a moment during which JT seemed to be squeezing the snare drum head. This one was freer, edgier, wilder. More like what I originally expected, though “Song 1” had already taught me the futility of prediction. We were in for more surprises.

“Song 3” started with Nichols playing what sounded like a very old tune, something Bill Carrothers might play. Sweet and nostalgic, it took a sharp left into swing, with Linz walking the bass. Fierce drumming by JT brought it up to the present and kicked it into the future.

“Song 4” was the most traditionally structured piano-trio tune: Linz and Bates playing rhythm, Nichols chording with his left hand and exploring the keys with his right. Enjoyable hard bop, with band members trading eights.

The fifth and final selection had a title, “Stories about Stories,” which Nichols explained was inspired by the tales jazz musicians enjoy telling. A tune in the once crazy, now lilting 5/4 rhythm (thanks, Lisa Meyer, for pointing that out). Moody, lovely, and reflective, like the big floor-to-ceiling windows in front of which the band was playing. The curtain was open for this event, revealing the glories of the Antonello’s glass.

Throughout the set, the music was intriguing, engaging, sure-footed, and pleasing to a large crowd that included families with children.

Aside: Bryan Nichols on playing with Fat Kid Wednesdays

Nichols’ new groups feature members of Fat Kid Wednesdays (his quartet includes all three—Linz, Bates, and saxophonist Michael Lewis) but none of them sounds like Fat-Kids-plus-piano. Like The Bad Plus, Fat Kids is not a group whose members are interchangeable. It’s a unit, one piece, and formidable.

Here’s what Nichols said recently about this trio and his quartet:

“JT and Adam and I love playing trio, but that’s never been something we have pursued intensely. It just happens every now and then, and we really enjoy it. It’s been happening since I was 17. It’s a really fun group….

“The quartet right now will be 95 percent my songs. That’s one of the biggest differences between that and Fat Kids itself. They have a couple of originals, but for the most part they’re not a band that’s deeply concerned with playing original music. Which I totally dig, because the way they deconstruct standards or free tunes or whatever is amazing. They take stuff and make it their own in a cool way. But if I went and decided to do that same mix…. That’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to just hire them and then copy exactly what they do. I don’t want to insert myself into Fat Kid Wednesdays.”

I mentioned that I had been at the quartet’s debut in late December at the Dakota and remembered thinking how tough it would be to make a dent in Fat Kids. Nichols laughed and said, “They’re guys I play with all the time, guys I’ve grown up both listening to and playing with…. I’ve been talking about putting together a regular group for quite a while now. I’ve been back in town for four years, doing various pick-up groups, because one of the things about here I really like is I can play with a ton of different people. It’s tough to limit myself [to hiring certain people and not others]. There are all these great players. This town is a special town. For a place its size, it’s impressive….

“The fun thing about playing with [Lewis, Linz, and Bates] is not only do they have this deep connection to all the music I do, not only do they have the same reference points as far as growing up in a similar place and playing a lot of different music, but they all obviously have huge ears, they’re great listeners, they have a ton of energy, so I can take anything and bring it in there and it’s given a new life. Most of the material we’re playing is new anyway, but it becomes extra new….

“Those guys have a really intense and idiosyncratic and impressive thing themselves, and I love it, but just because I know them so well personally and musically, I don’t want to feel intimidated by them. And on one level I do, because they’re my favorite band to listen to. If I have to pick a jazz group in town to listen to, it’s them and Happy Apple, obviously. On that level, I’m impressed and intimidated constantly by what they can do, and the interaction, but on a level of ‘Can I play with them?’ the answer is ‘Absolutely.’”

Second set: The Paul Renz Quintet
Paul Renz, guitar; Andrew Schwandt, tenor sax; Brian Ziemniak, piano; Eric Graham, bass; Nathan Fryett, drums



The music Renz and his quintet played was not quite as new as Nichols’; all of the tunes were released a few months ago on Renz’ latest CD, In My Own Hands. All were written by Renz. I like the CD very much but hadn’t listened to it since December, when I included it in a list of holiday gift possibilities.

It was good to hear several of the tunes played live, with more room for the individual artists to stretch out—on the loose and funky “Take It Home,” for example. I enjoyed seeing Graham and Schwandt play, though I kept imagining Schwandt sharing the stage with Brandon Wozniak, another tall saxophonist (they could do it, too, now that Wozniak has switched from tenor to alto, at least when playing with the Atlantis Quartet). But while Renz’s guitar and Graham’s fretless electric bass were amped, Ziemniak was on his own with acoustic piano. The Antonello’s gorgeous Steinway couldn’t stand up to the amps. Much of the piano was lost—even where we were sitting, in the center of the front row. Ditto for Fryett's drumming. Schwandt usually played toward the front of the stage, near a mic, so we heard his saxophone clearly (but later learned that people seated further back weren't so lucky). The acoustics in Antonello can be pristine, but when some instruments are amped and others aren't, they need a little help.

Photos by John Whiting

Winter Jazz Fest: Sonny Fortune

When: 3/2/08
Where: MacPhail Center for Music
Who: Sonny Fortune (alto saxophone and flute), Michael Cochrane (piano), Cecil McBee (bass), Steve Johns (drums)

Jazz history came alive in Minneapolis near the river when Sonny Fortune closed the Winter Jazz Fest. Performing in MacPhail’s splendid Antonello Hall, the man who has played with Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie (he’s 78 but you wouldn’t know by looking at him) led his quartet in a program of mostly standards: a driving, exciting “Charade,” “Besame Mucho,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” and two originals including “Awakening.” He alternated between alto sax and flute, an instrument that sounds wimpy when some people play it, robust and beefy when he does. He blows like he has all the air in the world.

The second set (the one we saw) was completely different from the first, as described the next morning by Dan Emerson in the Pioneer Press. Too bad more people didn’t stay over from the first set; there would have been no repetition (as if there ever is in jazz) and the audience would have numbered more than the 50 I saw. So it was a Sunday night, it was cold, it was dark, and Monday loomed, but Fortune deserved a larger audience.

We gave McBee a ride to the Dakota afterward. What a charming man. He told us he had recently married again, to a German woman whose family had traveled to the US for the big day. We talked about taking happiness when and where we find it and being glad for the chance. McBee was born in 1935, making him 73.

Photos by John Whiting: The man with the horn; Mr. McBee.
Bottom: The quartet.

Winter Jazz Fest: Chris Thomson's Bells + Whistles

When: 3/2/08
Where: MacPhail Center for Music
Who: Chris Thomson (saxophones), Bryan Nichols (piano), Adam Linz (bass), Alden Ikeda (drums)

At 5 p.m. on the day of the Winter Jazz Fest, I left the Dakota Foundation table in good hands and went back up to MacPhail's sixth floor to see Bells + Whistles, one of Chris Thomson's many groups. Knowing who was in it, I expected it to be wild. But every time I see Thomson, he surprises me, and this was no different. Bells + Whistles plays lyrical, dreamy straight-ahead jazz. Beautiful!

Top to bottom: Thomson, Nichols, Linz, Ikeda

Winter Jazz Fest: Snowblind

When: 3/2/08
Where: MacPhail Center for Music
Who: Shilad Sen (tenor saxophone), Adam Rossmiller (trumpet), Scott Agster (trombone), Graydon Peterson (bass), Reid Kennedy (drums)

I previewed the Winter Jazz Fest for MinnPost but didn't see much of it. I spent most of the day at table for the Dakota Foundation for Jazz Education, conveniently located next to a table for Jazz is NOW! (Hi Jason, hi Meg!) I sneaked away long enough to hear a tune and snap a few pictures of Snowblind, a group I've heard a lot about but hadn't yet seen live. Except for bass and drums, it's all horns. Visit their Web site and hear "Dark Mambo" from their second and latest CD, Taking Shape. Very nice.

Snowblind's set was in a room on the sixth floor of Macphail that holds about 60 people. A great space with clean, clear sound and beautiful light during the day.

Top to bottom: Peterson and Sen; Agster; Rossmiller.

Jazz 101: What Is Jazz?

In our final class (for now) with Kelly Rossum at MacPhail, we returned to the question he asked at the start: What is jazz? We talked around it as people who hadn't been at last week's class described performances they had seen; the assignment for that class had been to go hear some jazz. Then we veered into a discussion about the future of jazz and what that might bring.

Not for the first time, Kelly said he feels jazz is tied to technology, and technology will be important for advancing the music. On the other hand, one of the problems of technology is "you can listen to a thousand songs and never hear any of them." As David Berkman and Scott Wendholt said during their master class at MacPhail, it's important to fixate: to listen in a focused, concentrated way if you really want to hear. Pick an album, a whole album, and listen to it again and again. Then do the same with another album. Kelly did this with Miles Davis's 'Round About Midnight, and Wynton Marsalis's J-Mood, and Donald Byrd's Live at the Half Note Cafe.

Meanwhile, jazz.com, the major new jazz Web site that launched this week under the direction of Ted Gioia, author of The History of Jazz (and brother to NEA chair Dana Gioia), is publishing reviews of individual tracks, not whole albums/CDs. Each day, they publish a "Song for the Day" review of a track from a new CD. "A Classic Revisited" reviews a track from a classic jazz album. A section called "The Dozens" lists, for example, 12 essential Brad Mehldau performances, or 12 essential modern jazz trumpet solos, or 12 tracks by jazz organ trios. Click on BUY THIS TRACK in any section and you'll find yourself on amazon.com, where you'll have to buy the whole CD after all. But it's very modern of jazz.com to focus on tracks. As Chris Reimenschneider wrote last week in the Strib, "If we're to believe SoundScan, Apple, teenagers and Mark Wheat, the full-length album is a dying art form."

Yet people keep making them. Christine Rosholt will record a new CD next week at the Dakota. Mary Louise Knutson is writing songs for her next CD. And Kelly ended our class by previewing Family, his new quartet CD with Bryan Nichols, Chris Bates, and J.T. Bates, due out later this year. We heard "If I Were a Bell," Kelly's utterly charming original "Mr. Blueberry" (he calls it "my first country song," and it makes you want to dance, but not line dance), and "After the Snow," a tune that was almost wholly improvised in the studio and recorded on the first take. It began as an eight-note melody, the same two notes played four times, and opened wide into one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. How can two notes turn into something so exquisite? As Kelly said, "It's about the people." Which may be the real definition of jazz, and it's certainly the future of jazz.

Photo: The sign on the wall by the elevators at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

David Berkman and Scott Wendholt

When: 1/8/08
Where: MacPhail Center for Music
Who: David Berkman (piano), Scott Wendholt (trumpet)

Following a short break after their master class/jazz clinic, Berkman and Wendholt returned to the stage of the Antonello Performance Hall for a program of richly layered, densely rhythmic, beautiful music. At times it felt more like classical music than jazz. Berkman rarely used the pedals and he seldom ventured above middle C; using only half the piano, a marvelous Steinway, he filled the hall with big, deep notes and chords. Wendholt's trumpet was the perfect partner—sometimes a bright fanfare, sometimes muted, sometimes a sighing breath.

After hearing the two musicians talk, it was interesting to sit back and watch the give-and-take, the jazzy interplay of one man asserting himself and the other backing off, then the other bringing his ideas to the foreground and being supported.

The tunes included Benny Golson's "Stablemates," the Berkman original "Not a Christmas Song," Herbie Hancock's "Toys" from Speak Like a Child, Wendholt's tribute to Woody Shaw, "Through the Shadows," and a few with names I didn't catch. I believe it was Hancock's "Toys" that Wendholt filled with scales...up, down, up, down, up, down, varying each one. Breathtaking.

Photo by John Whiting. Berkman at the piano, Wendholt standing. This photo is more about the space than the musicians, and what a great space it is. The floor-to-ceiling windows look out on the Ceresota Building sign.

Notes from a Master Class

When: 1/8/08
Where: MacPhail Center for Music
Who: David Berkman (piano), Scott Wendholt (trumpet)

Prior to their concert in the new Antonello Performance Hall at MacPhail, a jewelbox of a venue, pianist David Berkman and trumpeter Scott Wendholt gave an hour-long master class/jazz clinic. They began by playing a 12-bar blues, then spent most of the rest of the time telling stories and anecdotes, talking about how they play together, and discussing their influences. Here is some of what we heard. (I'm also including a few quotes from the concert, which became an extension of the clinic, only with more music.)

David Berkman: One of my goals as an improvisor is trying to play something really wrong against the form and seeing if anything good comes out of it.
***
Scott Wendholt: Jazz is entirely idiosyncratic music.
***
DB: Freedom and tradition are kind of the same thing.
***
SW: There's always more to [jazz] than I thought.... There is no end to it.
***
DB: You think you know it but there's always something else to hear and learn.... Everything you learn you can reuse.
***
SW: It's good to hear lots of music, but it's important to fixate. Give something hundreds of listenings. Take one record at a time and go crazy with it until you can sing along with the most important moments.
***
DB: What inspires me as a composer is trying to change the process.
***
SW: A really good way to write a song is to find a song you really like and write one a lot like it.

Berkman's influences: Oscar Peterson. "My father had 112 Oscar Peterson records. Canadiana Suite (1964) was the first jazz record I liked." Wynton Kelly. Kenny Kirkland. Monk. Bill Evans. Herbie Hancock. "My most lasting influence."

Scott's influences: Miles Davis. "The whole history of his music." And: "Trumpet players, check out any Art Blakey band."

The first record Wendholt listened to over and over again was Jean-Pierre Rampal and Claude Bolling's Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio (1975). I can still hum the opening notes to that album...and I still have the album, as in LP, which is pretty beat up by now.

Berkman told us how, during a tour of Japan that involved a lot of riding on trains, he gave drummer Nasheet Waits a Tony Williams CD and Waits listened to nothing else for three days. When he gave it back, Berkman said he could keep it, and Waits said no thanks; he had learned everything he could from it.

I'm inspired to choose a few CDs and listen to them very carefully, and I think I'll begin with the Berkman CD we bought last night, which just happens to be titled Start Here, Finish There (2003).

Photo of Berkman from his Web site gallery.

Jazz 101: Homework: Go Hear Some Jazz

Our teacher at MacPhail, Kelly Rossum, spent most of December in New York City on a grant from the American Composers Forum. Our assignment in his absence was to attend a live jazz performance and think about what we were hearing.

As Brer Rabbit told Brer Fox: "Hang me! Roast me! Skin me! Eat me! Just don't throw me into that briar patch."

No surprise, we all had heard a lot of music in the interim: Bill Carrothers, the Bad Plus, Tierney Sutton (in Los Angeles), Chris Bates, Chris Thomson, Mike Lewis, Irv Williams, Red Planet, Rhonda Laurie, Mary Louise Knutson, Happy Apple, the Enormous Quartet. Etc. We had a lively discussion about what we liked and didn't, the threads and traditions we heard in the music.

We asked Kelly about his stay in New York. It was good, he enjoyed it, he played a lot, he heard a lot of music (including Craig Taborn solo at the Stone)—and he was glad to come home to one of the healthiest, most interesting and active jazz and arts communities in the US. "The Twin Cities music environment is unique," he said. "Large enough to have great musicians, small enough that everybody has to play with everybody, crossing from traditional to avant garde."

Now that Jazz 101 is almost over (one class left), we've been after Kelly to teach Jazz 201, whatever that may be; he's considering it for the fall. Meanwhile, he'll be teaching a Jazz Book Club starting in February. Here's the description from the MacPhail course catalog:

Winter and Spring in Minnesota are the perfect seasons to sit by a warm fire and read about jazz. This course will dive into four books covering different aspects of our American art form. While the book discussions will occur once a month, the other class sessions will explore the music and issues surrounding each primary story. This year’s course will cover: Stomping the Blues, by Albert Murray; Kind of Blue – The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, by Ashley Kahn; Beneath the Underdog, by Charles Mingus; and Lush Life – A Biography of Billy Strayhorn, by David Hajdu.

Another 12 weeks with Kelly, plus we learned last night that Matty B's, a nearby bar, has half-off-everything happy hour all night every Monday, the night of our class.

Thanks to Lisa Meyer, MacPhail board member and member of our class, for her tour of the new MacPhail Center for Music. One word: Awesome.

About the new MacPhail.

Rendering of the new MacPhail by architects James Dayton Design.

Jazz 101: Fusion

"Fusion in its original form was a good thing," Kelly Rossum tells us in our weekly class at MacPhail. What came out of it (smooth jazz), not so much. People are as divided about smooth jazz as they are about avant garde/free jazz: they love it or hate it. I'm in the latter camp myself. I simply cannot listen to smooth jazz. In 2004, pianist Bobby Lyle released a two-CD set called Straight and Smooth. One disc is straight-ahead jazz, the other smooth. Five minutes into the second disc, I was through, and I like Bobby Lyle a lot.

Because fusion (loosely defined as jazz-meets-rock) evolved around the same time as electronic instruments (electric guitars and basses, electronic keyboard synthesizers), it can be hard to separate the music from the sometimes strange, fuzzy and buzzy sounds of the instruments it's being played on. Kelly suggests we try, because the musical ideas are worth exploring.

We listen to "Frelon Brun (Brown Hornet)" from Miles Davis's Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968), where Tony Williams singlehandedly (okay, he uses both hands, and his feet, and maybe his nose and chin) takes the drums to a new planet. (Kelly's aside: "Fusion is all Tony Williams's fault.") From there, some Sly and the Family Stone ("There's a Riot Goin' On"), a big influence on Miles. Then "What I Say" from Miles's Live-Evil, which Kelly proclaims "way better than Bitches Brew." Miles, Keith Jarrett, Dave Holland, Jack de Johnette, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin...what a lineup. "That's what fusion should be," Kelly says. "Musicality, groove, harmonics, and Miles playing in a whole different way."

Next, "Teen Town" from Weather Report's seminal Heavy Weather. "Birdland" is the best-known track from that album; Kelly says it's the worst song and asks us to listen closely to Pastorius's bass on "Teen Town." We pause the music and talk about what we've heard so far. Fusion seems like a museum piece; it sounds dated because of the instruments used. But many of the ideas carried forward.

Kelly plays the driving title cut from Miles's Grammy-winning Tutu (1986). We learn that bassist Marcus Miller created most of it in the studio, then invited Miles in to play over his recorded and overdubbed tracks, which Miles did--impromptu, extemporaneous, unrehearsed. What we hear on the CD are first takes. The iconic photos on the album cover (now booklet) are by fashion photographer Irving Penn.

We end with "We're Y'all At?" from Wynton Marsalis's From the Plantation to the Penitentiary (2007). Wynton raps (yes, raps) about the sorry state of American culture...and we thought he was a traditionalist. Here at least, he's fusin'.

Jazz 101: Avant Garde

Jazz fans seem to feel most strongly about two styles of jazz: smooth and free. Smooth is scorned as wallpaper music. Free divides listeners into two camps: those who like it and those who don't. Free jazz, a.k.a. avant garde jazz, is the topic of this week's Jazz 101 class at MacPhail with Kelly Rossum. There's a lot of animated discussion, and Kelly plays several examples that are interesting to some of us, noise to others.

We talk about how most music has a purpose or function: relaxation, celebration, mourning (funeral music), dance, love. The function of avant garde jazz is music. Sometimes the point is internal dialogue. There usually is an intent. Kelly notes that "the presentation has more validity if the intent is true." And: "If art has no fringes, there is no center." People who like most other styles of jazz dislike avant garde because it lacks the historical elements they're accustomed to hear (form, rhythm, references...evolutionary fingerprints?), it lacks familiarity, and it lacks melody.

We hear part of the title track from Free Jazz by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet: one quartet for each stereo channel. Ornette (sax), Don Cherry (trumpet), Scott LaFaro (bass), and Billy Higgins (drums) on the left; Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Eric Dolphy (bass clarinet), Charlie Haden (bass), and Ed Blackwell (drums) on the right. (I can't wait to hear it that way, provided the CD still separates the tracks.) From there we move to one of Kelly's favorite recordings: the Naked Lunch soundtrack composed by Howard Shore. Ornette's saxophone wails over the London Philharmonic Orchestra. "The palette of sounds, the definition of vocabulary, has changed," Kelly says. "The center has moved." Then it's off to Miles Davis's Sorcerer, and finally Fat Kid Wednesday's new Singles. This is music Kelly clearly loves. "It's what jazz is supposed to be—people hanging around playing music."

Fat Kid is a so-called local group, meaning they live here. But they play all over and recently returned from a stay in France. All three members—Michael Lewis on saxophone, Adam Linz on bass, J.T. Bates on drums—play with other people. We'll hear Linz with George Cartwright on Thursday, and Lewis with Bryan Nichols at Cafe Maude on Friday.

See Fat Kid Wednesdays on MySpace.

Jazz 101: Hard Bop

Of all the styles of jazz, Kelly Rossum tells us in our weekly class at MacPhail, hard bop is the least popular with the public and the most popular among musicians. It exists for the pleasure of musicians and hardcore aficionados. I don't consider myself hardcore (enthusiastic, curious, even avid, yes; hardcore, no), but I do love hard bop, though I didn't know until recently that much of the jazz I enjoy falls into that category. So does much of the standard jazz repertoire. What does "hard bop" mean? To Kelly and many other jazz musicians, it simply means "jazz."

Clifford Brown's "I'll Remember April," with the great Max Roach on drums. A sparse collection of notes flowers into something intricate, complex, amazing. ("This further demonstrates the unsurmountable problem of teaching jazz," Kelly says, "which, in hard bop, further distances itself from other forms of music.") The role of the drummer evolves from timekeeper to active participant; today the drummer is on equal footing with the other members of a jazz group, and everyone is responsible for keeping time. Horace Silver's "Song for My Father" (I must have listened to that as often as Kind of Blue), with its Latin beat. Lee Morgan's "Sidewinder." Art Blakey, Ahmad Jamal, Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Jackie McLean, Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, Terence Blanchard, Roy Hargrove, Randy Weston, Joe Lovano, Christian McBride, and on and on...hard boppers.

In hard bop, the form is law, but that will change when free jazz comes along.

Photo: Clifford Brown.

Jazz 101: Cool Jazz

Cool jazz. The complexity shifts to composition. Jazz isn't just revamped show tunes anymore; composers are writing new music especially for jazz. It's serious stuff now, and when John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet perform, they wear tuxedoes.

In our weekly class at MacPhail, Kelly Rossum plays selections from Birth of the Cool, which has to be one of the all-time great titles for a jazz recording. We wonder if the title came from the artists or from the label. The CD includes the entire recorded output of the Miles Davis Nonet, a short-lived supergroup that included Davis on trumpet, J.J. Johnson on trombone, Lee Konitz on alto saxophone, Gerry Mulligan on bari saxophone, John Lewis on piano, and Max Roach on drums. It's more relaxed than bebop, more spare, more...cool. Kelly says that cool was a reaction to big band, and cool composition a reaction to swing. We talk briefly about third stream, a term coined in the late 1950s by Gunther Schuller to describe a synthesis of classical music and jazz. Kelly isn't convinced that third stream has ever really worked, but I like where it has led: the Modern Jazz Quartet's Blues on Bach; John Lewis's jazz interpretations of the Goldberg Variations (The Chess Game) and the Preludes and Fugues; Jacques Loussier's many jazz interpretations not only of Bach but also of Chopin, Ravel, Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Vivaldi, and Satie.

The class is just an hour long, so we move quickly to the West Coast, Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan (mellower and mellower); we hear Mulligan on "Line for Lyons," written for Jimmy Lyons, at the time a San Francisco DJ but soon after the founder of the Monterey Jazz Festival.

Kelly likes to end each class by bringing us up to date with an example of how a particular style of jazz has survived and remains current. This time he plays "Laughing Barrel" by the Ron Miles Quartet, which includes the Twin Cities' own Anthony Cox on bass. The tune is one of Kelly's Top 10 favorites; the tone quality of all the instruments is very cool. Why does he like it? Because, he says, it's not in the book we're reading for class.

Jazz 101: Bebop

Bebop. Look-at-me, listen-to-me, I'm-the-man music. One of the first historic periods of jazz still practiced and championed (jazz musicians today assume other jazz musicians can play it), bebop is about virtuosity, complexity, surprise, and speed. Bye-bye big bands, swing, and party music you could dance to, hello small groups and art music you're supposed to listen to.

In our weekly class at MacPhail, Kelly Rossum took us on an introductory tour of bebop, playing Charlie Parker's "Ko-Ko" and "Donna Lee," "A Night in Tunisia" with Bud Powell on piano, and the joyous "Salt Peanuts" from the famous May 1953 Live at Massey Hall recording by a group simply called "The Quintet": Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Powell, Max Roach, Charles Mingus. This is music worth giving up dancing for.

Kelly told his own story about Massey Hall. He had a copy on tape as a child (teenager?) and he didn't know what it was called, and he listened to it so often he wore out the tape. Then his mother gave him the recording as a gift, not knowing he knew it so well until he started singing whole tunes from it.

Some of us wasted our childhood memorizing songs by Herman's Hermits.

I've been watching the PBS "American Masters" episode David Hockney: The Colors of Music, about Hockney's opera sets. It includes an excerpt from a BBC Radio interview in which Hockney says, "I hate background music, always did. I only like music in the foreground, meaning, deliberately listen to it." You do have to listen to bebop—it's too assertive to be background music—but that doesn't mean you have to know anything about it. Think of it as riding the rapids in a big rubber raft with a very good guide. Just hang on and enjoy.

Paul Hoeffler's famous "No Dancing at the Pythodd" photo (1958) with Alfred "Pee-Wee" Ellis on saxophone, Ron Carter on bass

David Hockney had dachshunds

Jazz 101: Origins of Jazz

In tonight's class with Kelly Rossum, we explored the origins of jazz, the gumbo/cassoulet/ragout of African slaves, Creoles of Color, blues, ragtime, European classical music, musicians who learned their instruments in Storyville, those who were trained in Paris conservatories, military bands, workers in the fields, travelers, and God knows who else. Kelly played the last track from Wynton Marsalis's Live at the House of Tribes as an example of New Orleans second-line music. He told us that John Philip Sousa's cornet player hated jazz and thought it the work of the devil. And he played us selections from a 1919 recording by Lieutenant James Reese Europe's "Hell Fighters" Band, part of the African American 369th Infantry of World War I.

Picture Europe's band standing around a giant recording horn, playing for exactly three minutes as a needle etched a wax cylinder. Standing nearest the horn is the band's drum major, a man named Noble Sissle, who starts to sing:

I'm a jazz baby,
I wanna be jazzin' all the time.
There's something in the tone of a saxophone
That makes me do a little wiggle all my own,
'Cause I'm a jazz baby,
Full of jazzbo harmony.

Love to sit by the cradle and to-and-fro,
To-and-fro to the tune of a Tickle Toe.
Ever since I started in to grow
I love to hear the music playing,
See my dear old mammy swaying.
Jazz, jazz, jazz, that's all I ever knew.
All day long, I never would get through.
Jazz, jazz, jazz, that's all I want to do.
Play me a little jazz.

Read more about James Reese Europe and hear some of his recordings

Jazz 101: What Is Jazz?

Trumpet player and composer Kelly Rossum coordinates the jazz program at the MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis. He's currently teaching a 12-week class called "Jazz 101: What Is Jazz?" Those of us taking the class were asked to come up with definitions of jazz. This is his:

Jazz is a global art form which, through improvisation, combines traditional and popular music of multiple cultures within a modern social context.

Here are Kelly's tips for listening to jazz, especially if you're new to it:

• Listen for the mood
• Unfocus your ears
• Listen to the sounds
• Listen to specific instruments
• Isolate on one instrument and follow it
  

I came to jazz in the 1980s through the fusion door--David Sanborn, Jeff Lorber, Jean-Luc Ponty, Stanley Clarke, the Yellowjackets. One day I heard a tune by Thelonious Monk on the radio. Soon after, I met Suzan Jenkins on a school field trip with our children. What a lucky break for me. Suzan and Willard Jenkins are encyclopedias of jazz. They took a laid-back approach to my jazz education...basically "Try this, you'll like it, then try this."

Now I get to learn from Kelly, along with others who share a passion for the music. And I get to hear a lot of live jazz because I live in a town with a lot of venues, thanks in large part to Leigh Kamman, who hosted jazz radio shows for more than six decades. Before Leigh, someone noted in one of the many articles written about him prior to his retirement from Minnesota Public Radio last month, this was mostly a polka town.

I like Kelly's definition because it clearly describes the nature of jazz: Global. Art form. (In the days of the Depression and swing bands, jazz was popular music, but today it's art music.) Improvisation. Combination. Multiple cultures. Jazz is big, broad, and full of surprises.

When Louis Armstrong was asked to define jazz, he replied, "Man, if you gotta ask, you'll never know." Bix Beiderbecke once said, "One thing I like about jazz, kid, is that I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you?"