Jazz repertory is full of options. Some interpreters take a classic piece and bend it, personalizing the texts with new designs. Others make a point of reveling in the original luster – marveling at the architectural essence. Ryan Truesdell is in the latter camp with his elaborate nod to Gil Evans, Ryan Truesdell Presents Centennial: Newly Discovered Works of Gil Evans (Artist Share). Working as copyist for bandleader Maria Schneider, a devout Evans acolyte, Truesdell caught Evans fever and delved deeper into the revered composer/arranger’s work, ultimately unearthing a handful of unrecorded scores. That’s strong scholarship, but the joy of the resultant music brings is even more important.
Evans, of course, is known for the poetry he brought to the fore on a flurry of Miles Davis collaborations, including 1960’s Sketches of Spain (their association began with landmark Birth of the Cool sessions). His work is marked by a lightness of timbre that somehow leaves room for a wealth of gravitas. The 10 tracks Truesdell displays have enough of an emotional arc to account for Evans’ myriad approaches. The opening “Punjab” boasts a tabla, an air of mystery, and an open-ended feel. “How About You,” a chart that Evans used during his stint with Claude Thornhill’s Orchestra in the 40s, is springy and grooving. The spin on Kurt Weill’s “Barbara Song” is as seductive as music gets, with Joe Locke’s vibraphone adding to the music’s nuanced majesty. “Beg Your Pardon,” one of three vocal tracks that nicely divide this lengthy program, is the oldest piece on the disc. It’s a romantic ditty dressed in gorgeous swirls of brass and strings.
Truesdell’s adherence to Evans’ pen is resolute. There are improvised moments here, but the script is king. Zeal wafts through the music, like everyone’s committed to nailing the innumerable subtleties. That’s a winning tack, because unity is key to a big band’s success. As the buoyancy spins this 32-member ensemble towards eloquent heights, their bonding becomes the music’s background virtue. Gil would have respected that.
I haven’t been Lamenting in several months, I’ve been Tumbling. So, it’s fair that lots of people asked if I went to the Newport Jazz Festival last weekend. Indeed, I did.
We got the sad news about the passing of Tommy Ardolino yesterday morning. The NRBQ drummer was a perpetual wonder, the hard-hitting bottom of a rhythmically sophisticated band that made complex maneuvers – combining swing’s glide with rock ‘n’ roll’s thwap – seem as easy as pie. Moon Pie, too be exact. My Facebook comment was something like “he was determined to bring pleasure to every gig.” There’s no question about that.
The beloved outfit has been adrift for a while. A health crisis hiatus turned into a dangerous fissure and then into an insurmountable crack from what I hear. Joey lives on the Cape and plays strong music with Johnny under the name the Spampinato Brothers. Al, who left long ago, lives in Nashville, writes hits for chart dudes and shows up for occasional reunion fests in Western Mass. Terry has won a fight with cancer and has recently morphed his well regarded Terry Adams Rock & Roll Quartet into NRBQ – a gutsy move, and quite a legend to live up to, of course; the Q is one of the most revered rock groups around, so no wonder lots of people have their eyebrows raised about the nomenclature thing. There was a big story on the transition in the Boston Globe, and Adams was cast as a guy defending a controversial decision. On the newish Keep This Love Goin’(Clang!) the band drives through a bunch of songs that are cut from the classique Q template. They’re jumping and fun, odd and entertaining. They tip the hat to zydeco kingpin Boozoo Chavis and raid Tin Pan Alley for “Gone With The Wind.”
Opinions differ as to whether the music is in the same ballpark as the group’s best work. One thing’s for sure: Adams is a charismatic bandleader who turns the stage into a hotbed of grooves. Jazz here, rockabilly there, pop all over the place. He knows a mess of tunes, and is a sage filter when it comes to connecting the dots. His new associates are an energetic lot. New Yorkers can sample the stuff for themselves at Iridium on Tuesday, 17 and Wednesday, 18. The group comes complete with the Whole Wheat Horns, this time around master trombonist Art Baron and wily tenor saxophonist Klem Klimek blending together. Wouldjaifyoucould? That’s good.
I’ve enjoyed the work of Armando Slice ever since I saw his first report. Glad he had an opportunity to connect with “great human being” Matt Wilson. I’m going to go spin “If I Were a Boy” now.
Take the eerie atmospherics of Scratch Perry and apply them to the realm of acoustic piano. Add a flair for insightful improvisation tempered by years of experimental derring-do, and voila: In a flash, you have Fight Against Babylon, one of the year’s most bewitching small ensemble records. Pianist Jamie Saft, bolstered by the springy riddims of bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Craig Santiago, comes up with a dub-influenced jazz program that reflects Jamaica’s studio sorcery while harking back to Alice Coltrane’s dreamy elaborations.
With several provocative titles on the Tzadik imprint, Saft works myriad arenas. But he’s no dabbler. The resonance of New Zion Trio stems from the music’s focus on getting the vibe right. As Santiago’s high-hat clicks and Grenadier’s bass lopes on “The Red Dies,” an airy atmosphere takes over. Saft’s right hand does lots of heavy lifting on this session. Trills are repeated, a mood is established, and as the groove insinuates itself in your head, a narcotic tone dominates. The threesome concocts something both engaging and ethereal.
On “Hear I Jah,” Saft switches to a Rhodes and launches into a prayer with fervid conviction. The band may be genuflecting to Scientist and Augustus Pablo, but it’s Lonnie Liston Smith who opens the Pearly Gates. Through warm clusters of keys, the pianist weaves a rich fabric of sound. “Lost Dub” allows things get sparse again, and the song’s insistence becomes addictive. Ultimately, the groove supplies the leader with all the liftoff his reveries need.
24 hours of the master on WKCR – from Monday at 12 am on. Guess I better start that Spotify list of fave Monk covers. It kicks off with Sphere’s “We See,” I know that much.
Fell asleep to “After The Rain” last night. Fun to seen so many Coltrane nods in the last few days. Yesterday, of course, was the great one’s birthday. Lately I’ve been unpacking ancient interviews, and came across chats with Wayne Shorter and Sonny Rollins about their thoughts on Trane’s approach. Here are two more from that era, the late 80s. Marty and Greg had spent lots of time considering the tenor saxophonist’s impact on jazz, that’s for sure. Think I’ll add Eugene Chadbourne’s thoughts to this tonight.
GREG OSBY
I once said that Trane had a harmonic density. I didn’t mean it in a “cluttered” sense, I just meant he had a whole lot of options. A lot of players exhaust their options quickly. Coltrane could hold your interest by just playing a vamp, or some modal stuff. He had more resources; he studied a lot more. He was more of a searcher, he never stagnated, he never stayed in one place for too long. To me, the main thing he represented was change. When his peers, or others of his generation, got hip to what he was doing, he was off into another thing. No idle time. Those are things I’m interested in.
There are a lot of people now who are trying to adhere to old principles, old ideas, and establish those as modern day traditionalism or whatever, and that’s cool if you want to preserve the things you think are jazz. But I don’t think there are any dictates or prescribe methods people should have in their playing. Trane knew that.
I heard him when I was still listening to funk. I guess it was around ’74 or so. I hadn’t been playing for more than two years, and we had a little funk band. I’d play my little funk licks on top of “Giant Steps.” I didn’t know any of his musical logic, but I could enjoy it. I knew it was bad, and I knew one day I wanted to get with that. That’s when I discovered Charlie Parker, too. I’d been listening to Ronnie Laws, David Sanborn, and Grover. But I was drawn to the magnetism and density of what Bird and Trane were doing. They were playing a whole lot of notes.
Jazz is about versatility. You’re supposed to derive stuff from all sorts of sources. I hear some players today who are so conservative they could be on Reagan’s staff. The music isn’t really progressing right now because people are afraid to cross a few lines.
MARTY EHRLICH
Coltrane seemed to be one of those artists who, besides his incredible popularity and meaning to those who listened to jazz and paid attention to black culture in general, was someone who commanded the attention of many people who don’t listen to jazz. A couple of things made it happen. It’s interesting because he wasn’t a commercial artist in the sense of someone reaching across boundaries today; he was very serious and at times played very difficult music. A lot of that had to do with the times. His music certainly reflected the energy of the ’60s. I’ve found an interesting parallel between him and Bela Bartok: within their respective cultures they represented a few of the same things. People who didn’t listen to contemporary music often listened to Bartok. So here are these two artists who communicated beyond the style they played in. Both were very innovative, expanding the language of their idiom, but at the same time used traditional and folk materials in their music. Radical conservatives, really. They both had visceral emotions with involved processes, so they grabbed you intellectually and emotionally in a way that doesn’t often happen. A Love Supreme was a gold record. It’s very hard to think of a record of that intensity being a gold record in this day and age. People wanted a bit more seriousness at that time. To me he was an example of what a committed artist could be.
He was very consistent. I like all his stuff. At the end of his life, around the time of Expression, you can hear new areas of time, along with some very beautiful harmonic motion. Consistent definitely, maybe a bit obsessive. We hear his long solos, and we’re more used to shorter ones these days.
Everyone has to play out of their own psychology. I’ve never known Trane to play anything funny or tongue in cheek, like Sonny Rollins would. What we learned from him is how hard he worked to find what he had to do. Even though he was a part of the mainstream in a way that Ornette and Cecil never were, he still had to find his own way, which isn’t easy. Everything he played sounded like he had lived through it, like he had felt it first.
It’s Newk’s birthday – number 81. Today it was announced that he’s part of the next Kennedy Center Honors. Next week, the second edition of his Road Shows disc will be released. It contains a chunk of last year’s 80th birthday show at the Beacon, the one that had him connecting with Ornette Coleman. You can hear it right now on NPR. I wrote a DownBeat piece on that night and the following days. But to celebrate Rollins’ current birthday, I dug into an personal archive that found musicians speaking on Coltrane. It was for a mid-80s piece published in Musician magazine. Here’s Newk talking about his pal:
John came into the “Tenor Madness” session by accident; he just happened to be at the date. He had his horn and someone suggested it. In those days, guys just kind of hung out together. I first met him in Miles Davis’ band. He had a big reputation preceding him around New York. The idea of two tenors tangling was a media hype – it always is. It goes back to the big band horn battles. But it was overdone; John and I were close personal friends, and the music was paramount. Saxophone battles and all that didn’t add up to much. We were into developing ideas and finding applications for them.
I first heard him in a band with Kenny Clarke. I remember very well. John and Kenny – it was fantastic. And I recall thinking that John was a puzzle. I could never figure out how he arrived at, or how he came up with, what he played. It was one of the things that made him unique. I never got a better fix on it through the years. Like any genius, it’s hard to get a handle on how they come up with their ideas.
His influence was pervasive. It’s inevitable to have influences. Any guy who’s that much into music is bound to be listening heavily to someone before them…like I did with Coleman Hawkins. The individuality will come out if it’s there. It depends whether the player can transcend the influence. To play what we call modern music, you’d have to have some antecedents.
A musician like Trane shouldn’t be judged in terms of his “early” or “late” work; there was value in all of it. I liked it all. It was all Trane. The best band was with McCoy and Elvin. He went through a lot of musicians to get that band together. He’d compare notes with others, talk about different players. I liked a piece called “I’ll Wait And Pray,” and of course I felt very happy about “Like Sonny.” A Love Supreme was important because it came at a time when the group was crystalizing its extended works. It had certain spiritual implications, ideas Trane was interested in. I heard it said he was a “political” saxophonist, but it would be impossible to know what was in his mind at the time, politics or no. If anything, his playing was making a statement about religious ideas. But there’s no question the ’60s were full of turmoil. If you wanted to take some of his music and say, “Well, this shows he was angry,” I guess you could. But they called me that, too. How much of it was really true is open for debate. Did he consciously say, “I want to be a political player”? Can’t say for sure. To me he was just a musician playing. But remember, every black musician is automatically political. You can’t help being political if you’re black in the United States; it’s a fait accompli.
Lockjaw Davis recommended John to play tenor. He had been playing alto beforehand. When he went to soprano, I wasn’t surprised. Steve Lacy was the only one who was doing it at the time. John had that sound on tenor, though. You could tell it was him instantly. When you were around him you felt like you were with a genius. A genius and a serious, energetic player. He had a sense of humor, but he was serious. His humor wasn’t about cracking jokes. He was more droll, or wry. Almost like a minister, a minister of music.
Ted Panken has a couple wonderful interviews with Sonny.
