Jazz in NYC this weekend

An email I sent out earlier today to my contacts at the St. Paul JCC:

In case you haven’t heard, guitarist Gilad Hekselman will be at the Artists’ Quarter in St. Paul this weekend. He’s playing with drummer Ari Hoenig and bassist Adam Linz.

http://www.giladhekselman.com/
http://www.artistsquarter.com/

A response:

Actually, I’m going to be in NYC this weekend. Do you know of any specific jazz events? Or some clubs to check out besides the obvious ones? I usually go to Smalls.

It's hard to resist checking into what's happening in NYC clubs any weekend. Just in case I end up there, perhaps by teleportation. Here's what I found:

—Lee Konitz at the Vanguard CORRECTION: Al Foster Quartet (thanks, Don)
—Steve Turre Sextet at the Jazz Standard (Turre, Ron Blake, Christian Scott, Xavier Davis, Ray Drummond, Ignacio Berroa)
—Pharoah Sanders at Birdland
—Jean-Michel Pilc Trio at the Kitano
—Paul Metzger at Stone (improvisations on modified banjo)
—Bill Charlap Trio with Peter Washington and Kenny Washington, Dizzy's, Jazz at Lincoln Center
—"Miles from India" (a cross-cultural celebration of the music of Miles Davis) at the Iridium (Nicholas Payton/Tim Hagains, John Beasley, Victor Bailey, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Bill Evans, Dave Libman, Pete Cosey, Badal Roy, Lenny White, Ndugu Chancler, Vice Wilburn, Hidatat Khan, V.K. Raman)
—Woody Witt featuring Jim Rotondi at Smalls

As much as I love the jazz scene here--and I do love it--this is a damn fine weekend to be in NYC.

Jaleel Shaw on Being an Artist

News flash: Ted Gioia just named Jaleel Shaw one of the Hot Young Altoists.

Jaleel Shaw is a young alto sax player I respect and admire. Check out his CDs, Perspective and Optimism. I first heard him play with Roy Haynes at the Artists' Quarter in January 2006, and since then he has returned with Haynes and as a leader. I interviewed Jaleel for MinnPost last February and recently added that interview. Earlier today, he wrote a blog entry I liked a lot. I'm including it here with his permission. An interesting perspective for us non-artists, especially for those of us who write about jazz, or try.
***

Being an Artist

Lately I've been reflecting on my life as a musician and the positive and negative experiences that have shaped it. And with that came thoughts on what I've learned as an individual and a musician. I'd like to share some things that I've think I've learned so far.

1.) Sense of Community: I think this is one of the first things I found myself learning/experiencing when I began playing music. By performing, I learned how to interact with not only other musicians, but also with an audience. I think it's an amazing way to for a group of people to get to know, understand, and trust one another. Also, the more people you play/perform with, the bigger your community becomes. I think community is important.. Especially when it comes to music. And this doesn't only go for musicians, but also for critics, journalists, club owners, booking agents, managers, and festival directors. I think if they all actually interacted with the musicians more (showing up to the performances, being approachable and social), I think the jazz world would be a much better place. I'm realizing more and more how few "critics" I have actually met in person. I rarely see critics/journalists at any performances. But if I do, I'm surprised if they don't leave before the set is over. If they don't leave, they usually don't bother to approach anyone in the band say hello or even introduce themselves. There needs to be more dialogue between musicians and critics. Critics should be open to discussions with musicians about past reviews, the history of the music, and the future of it. I think it would bring about a more healthy, stable jazz community.

2.) Respect.... Now I have to start by saying that I am in NO WAY speaking for every artist on this one. But from my experiences, I feel like I lose out if I don't first RESPECT what someone is doing or has done. Even if I may not be able to understand what that artist may be trying to say at first. I always remind myself that there's something that I can learn from that person. I can't begin to tell you how many musicians I couldn't get into years that are probably my favorite musicians now. So I think it's very important to keep an open mind.

3.) Discipline: I don't think I REALLY knew what discipline was until I got to Berklee and got my butt kicked by my first teacher at the school - Andy McGhee. After my first lesson, I went home and practiced HARD. EVERYDAY. Only to go back for my second lesson and have Andy tell me that I was wasting my time and if I really wanted to be a serious musician, I had to put in SERIOUS time. That was it for me. I went back to my dorm and started practicing like a mad man. I wrote routines for everyday of the week to make sure I go 6hrs of practice time in. My life was changed forever. I don't know where I would be if it were not for discipline..

Well.. there's a lot more that I've learned... but that's all I can think of and have time to write now.. I'll write more later if i think of anything...
***

Jaleel's blog
Jalee's website
Listen on myspace

That Maude thing

So last night, after my son's wedding reception, we stop by Cafe Maude late for a burger and some vitamin M. Fat Kid Wednesdays (Michael Lewis, Adam Linz, JT Bates) were originally slated to play, but we already knew that JT would not be there and Jay Epstein would be (the reason: JT was called to A Prairie Home Companion, where he often plays with the Guy's All-Star Shoe Band, something we didn't know until last night). We're more than ready for Lewis's tenor sax and Linz's bass and the always surprising drums of Epstein.

What we get is a quintet, with Bryan Nichols on piano and Greg Lewis on trumpet. Greg is Mike's dad, a musician for more than 30 years, but I have never heard him play, and he rarely plays with Michael.

We arrive in time for Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman," during which the famously chatty crowd at Maude actually quiets down to listen. Also in the house: saxophonists Scott Fultz and Chris Thomson, trumpeter John Raymond, bassists Matt Peterson and Graydon Peterson. Michael's mom, Mary, is there, too--I don't think I've ever heard Michael play in any of his many bands without seeing her in the audience, which says a lot for both of them. Later we talk and she recalls the days when Michael was a boy and he and his father would listen to music and play for hours.

On the way out, we pass Michael and Greg chatting on the patio. "I love you, Dad," Michael says. "Let's do this again."

Stompin' at the Grand Terrace: A Jazz Memoir in Verse

…He puts the record on his
Thorens Transcription turntable.
They listen. It’s early November 1960.
Election time, Nixon vs. Kennedy.
But when my father
hears Lester’s first upturned note,
he smiles a knowing smile
at Preston. “Ahhh!
The President!”



Poems about Lester Young (“Prez”), Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Bill Evans, about two old friends listening to precious jazz records, arguing about what they hear, reminiscing, talking about life. Philip S. Bryant’s new book, Stompin’ at the Grand Terrace: A Jazz Memoir in Verse pulls you back in time to Chicago’s South Side in the 1950s and '60s, where Bryant grew up and his jazz-loving father, James, and James’s friend Preston shared a passion for music. We learn that Preston had a massive record collection (“a conservative estimate would be more than twenty thousand albums…broken into fifty or so sections, each meticulously ordered and numbered”) in his otherwise Spartan apartment, empty of almost everything else after his most recent divorce.

I’ve seen record collections like that, known jazz fans who cherish vinyl, wished I could take time out of each week to sit and listen to music with friends. Now we mostly listen alone on our iPods, if we listen to jazz at all, or go out to clubs, if we go, where the conversation is rarely about the music. Stompin’ made me feel nostalgic, and glad that I have hung onto the few jazz LPs I have.

The book is a good read. Once I started, I read all the way through to the end, putting post-its on poems/prose pieces I want to return to—“Miles: Prince of Darkness,” “The Death of Bill Evans,” “Basement Apartment: Blues and the Abstract Truth,” “Washing Aunt Janey’s Feet,” “Poinciana” ("Somewhere on a hot/and stormy Saturday night/in Kasota, Minnesota,/ Poinciana is playing/on the radio/above the kitchen stove"), “Chubby Checker Comes to North Dakota.”

The first part is James and Preston and jazz. The second part is about the author’s colorful Aunt Janey, who held strong opinions. The third part seems drawn from poems written over several years about jazz and music, love, and living in Minnesota, where Bryant teaches English at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter. Jazz singer Kurt Elling is a Gustavus alum; he writes poetry, too. Maybe there’s something in the water down there.

The book includes a CD of Bryant reading to music by jazz pianist Carolyn Wilkins, who teaches at Berklee College of Music in Boston. The two plan to tour Minnesota together later this year, in October. I met publisher and editor John Gaterud a few weeks ago when he brought a copy of Stompin’ to my door. Gaterud taught mass communications at Minnesota State University, Mankato, for more than 20 years before retiring to pursue his passion, the small literary publishing company Blueroad Press, which he founded in 2007 with his daughter, Abbey. This is their second book.

Publishing, poetry, jazz, poetry about jazz, publishing poetry about jazz: They're all labors of love. Some labors of love are amateurish. Stompin' is a class act all the way—well-written and crafted, beautifully produced, with the added gift of the CD and its fine music and the sound of Bryant's voice. It's on my shelf beside Sascha Feinstein and Yusef Komunyakaa's Jazz Poetry Anthology, good company, where it belongs.

Bryant reads from Stompin' at the Grand Terrace on Saturday, May 23, at Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis.

MORE:
A Q&A with Bryant.
Amy Goetzman’s article about Stompin’ on MinnPost.
The evolution of the book, from the Mankato Free Press.

2010 NEA Jazz Masters named

This just in from the NEA (thanks, Janis, for forwarding it to me):

Washington, DC - The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) today announced the recipients of the 2010 NEA Jazz Masters Award -- the nation's highest honor in this distinctly American music. The eight recipients will each receive a $25,000 grant award and be publicly honored in an awards ceremony and concert on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The eight 2010 NEA Jazz Masters are:

Muhal Richard Abrams
Pianist, Composer, Educator
New York, NY

Kenny Barron
Pianist, Composer, Educator
Brooklyn, NY

Bill Holman
Composer, Arranger, Saxophonist
Los Angeles, CA

Bobby Hutcherson
Vibraphonist, Marimba Player, Composer
Montara, CA

Yusef Lateef
Saxophonist, Flutist, Oboist, Composer, Educator
Amherst, MA

Annie Ross
Vocalist
New York, NY

Cedar Walton
Pianist, Composer
Brooklyn, NY

George Avakian, a jazz producer, manager, critic, and educator from Riverdale, New York, will receive the 2010 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy.

See the full press release at http://www.arts.gov/news/news09/2010-NEA-Jazz-Masters.html

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."

Omer Klein: Jazz with roots in Israel

Jazz happens in a lot of places around Minneapolis-St. Paul: clubs, cafés, concert halls, galleries, parks, pizzerias. Under the radar for many of us is the jazz that happens in synagogues and at Jewish community centers.

Israeli jazz musicians are a vital part of today’s New York City jazz scene. But when they come to the Twin Cities, artists like bassist Avishai Cohen are more likely to perform at the Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Minnetonka or the St. Paul JCC.

A center for Jewish cultural art performances, the JCC will feature jazz again on Thursday, May 14 -- Israel’s 61st Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut). Omer Klein and his trio, bassist Omer Avital and drummer Ziv Ravitz, will present original music by Klein, a pianist and composer since age 7.

Born in Netanya, Israel, in 1982 (he turns 27 on Friday, so if you meet him, be sure to wish him Yom Huledet), Klein graduated from the prestigious Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, the Juilliard of Israel, which has a serious jazz department. In 2005, he moved to the U.S. to study at the New England Conservatory with Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez.

Klein already had his own sound, a mélange of Israeli, Middle Eastern, and North African influences with American jazz. Speaking by phone from his New York apartment on Monday, Klein recalled, "The first time [Perez] heard me, the first lesson we had, he said, 'Listen, man, we’re going to work on several aspects, but this thing you do that sounds so Israeli, don’t ever lose that. ... It’s original, it really comes from you.' "

His music is exotic yet accessible. Minor-key inflections add shadows and emotion to his pensive and beautiful melodies. It’s probably a good thing he’s playing at the JCC -- no club chatter. If you go, you’ll want to hear every note.

Since moving to New York in 2006, Klein has released three CDs. “Duets” (2007) with bassist (and Klein’s former Boston roommate) Haggai Cohen Milo was followed by “Introducing Omer Klein” (2008) with Avital and Ravitz, the musicians he’ll bring to St. Paul, and percussionist Itamar Doari. (Here’s a video of that quartet performing in Tel Aviv.) In March 2009, the solo piano outing “Heart Beats” had its release at the Blue Note jazz club.

Every track on all three CDs is an original composition by Klein. "Oud Song" from "Introducing" is the one I heard first, as an MP3 linked in an email. I stopped messing around on my desk and listened hard. Then I went in search of whatever else I could find.

Klein is already moving on to the next thing. After playing some of the "Heart Beats" compositions with Avital and Ravitz, he began writing new compositions specifically for his trio. "I was imagining Omer and Ziv in my mind while I was writing the different parts, and we have been rehearsing this music for a while now," he said. "They feel this is a new stage in my music and could be a new direction for the trio. We’ll play a lot of this new material in St. Paul. Some of it will be heard for the first time outside of New York City, and some will be heard before New York City. Since everything is so fresh, not all songs have titles."

Avital grew up in Tel Aviv, Ravitz in Beer-Sheva. You may be wondering why Israelis have become such a force in jazz. (More names jazz fans may know: trumpeter Avishai Cohen - same name as bassist Avishai Cohen, but no relation; his sister, clarinetist Anat, and brother, saxophonist Yuval; trombonist Avi Liebovich; pianist Shai Maestro; guitarist Gilad Hekselman; saxophonist Eli Degibri.)

Speaking for himself, Klein says, "I was a musical kid, playing melodies, inventing different things, learning songs from the radio. When I discovered jazz, in which you have to invent things all the time, I immediately knew that I had to be involved with that. I wanted to play differently every time I play."

Speaking as one of many Israeli jazz musicians -- some living in New York, some back in Israel teaching the next wave -- he says, "One thing we all seem to agree upon is there might be something in the Israeli way of life that requires improvisation in everyday life, that requires being creative. ... What we all want to do is express ourselves, be able to express something universal, but still tell our own story."

Omer Klein & His Trio. Thursday, May 14, 7 p.m., St. Paul JCC, 1375 St. Paul Avenue. Tickets at 651-698-0751 ($10 members/$15 public).

Originally published at MinnPost.com, Wednesday, May 13, 2009.

Omer Klein: Jazz with roots in Israel

Jazz happens in a lot of places around Minneapolis-St. Paul: clubs, cafés, concert halls, galleries, parks, pizzerias. Under the radar for many of us is the jazz that happens in synagogues and at Jewish community centers.

Israeli jazz musicians are a vital part of today’s New York City jazz scene. But when they come to the Twin Cities, artists like bassist Avishai Cohen are more likely to perform at the Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Minnetonka or the St. Paul JCC.

A center for Jewish cultural art performances, the JCC will feature jazz again on Thursday, May 14 -- Israel’s 61st Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut). Omer Klein and his trio, bassist Omer Avital and drummer Ziv Ravitz, will present original music by Klein, a pianist and composer since age 7.

Born in Netanya, Israel, in 1982 (he turns 27 on Friday, so if you meet him, be sure to wish him Yom Huledet), Klein graduated from the prestigious Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, the Juilliard of Israel, which has a serious jazz department. In 2005, he moved to the U.S. to study at the New England Conservatory with Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez.

Klein already had his own sound, a mélange of Israeli, Middle Eastern, and North African influences with American jazz. Speaking by phone from his New York apartment on Monday, Klein recalled, "The first time [Perez] heard me, the first lesson we had, he said, 'Listen, man, we’re going to work on several aspects, but this thing you do that sounds so Israeli, don’t ever lose that. ... It’s original, it really comes from you.' "

His music is exotic yet accessible. Minor-key inflections add shadows and emotion to his pensive and beautiful melodies. It’s probably a good thing he’s playing at the JCC -- no club chatter. If you go, you’ll want to hear every note.

Since moving to New York in 2006, Klein has released three CDs. “Duets” (2007) with bassist (and Klein’s former Boston roommate) Haggai Cohen Milo was followed by “Introducing Omer Klein” (2008) with Avital and Ravitz, the musicians he’ll bring to St. Paul, and percussionist Itamar Doari. (Here’s a video of that quartet performing in Tel Aviv.) In March 2009, the solo piano outing “Heart Beats” had its release at the Blue Note jazz club.

Every track on all three CDs is an original composition by Klein. "Oud Song" from "Introducing" is the one I heard first, as an MP3 linked in an email. I stopped messing around on my desk and listened hard. Then I went in search of whatever else I could find.

Klein is already moving on to the next thing. After playing some of the "Heart Beats" compositions with Avital and Ravitz, he began writing new compositions specifically for his trio. "I was imagining Omer and Ziv in my mind while I was writing the different parts, and we have been rehearsing this music for a while now," he said. "They feel this is a new stage in my music and could be a new direction for the trio. We’ll play a lot of this new material in St. Paul. Some of it will be heard for the first time outside of New York City, and some will be heard before New York City. Since everything is so fresh, not all songs have titles."

Avital grew up in Tel Aviv, Ravitz in Beer-Sheva. You may be wondering why Israelis have become such a force in jazz. (More names jazz fans may know: trumpeter Avishai Cohen - same name as bassist Avishai Cohen, but no relation; his sister, clarinetist Anat, and brother, saxophonist Yuval; trombonist Avi Liebovich; pianist Shai Maestro; guitarist Gilad Hekselman; saxophonist Eli Degibri.)

Speaking for himself, Klein says, "I was a musical kid, playing melodies, inventing different things, learning songs from the radio. When I discovered jazz, in which you have to invent things all the time, I immediately knew that I had to be involved with that. I wanted to play differently every time I play."

Speaking as one of many Israeli jazz musicians -- some living in New York, some back in Israel teaching the next wave -- he says, "One thing we all seem to agree upon is there might be something in the Israeli way of life that requires improvisation in everyday life, that requires being creative. ... What we all want to do is express ourselves, be able to express something universal, but still tell our own story."

Omer Klein & His Trio. Thursday, May 14, 7 p.m., St. Paul JCC, 1375 St. Paul Avenue. Tickets at 651-698-0751 ($10 members/$15 public).

Originally published at MinnPost.com, Wednesday, May 13, 2009.