10 Best Things About Day One of the Newport Jazz Festival

1. Dave Douglas’s soloing posture

2. Jason Moran’s left hand

3. Rudresh Mahanthappa’s frakking of selected notes during solo with Team DeJohnette

5. Joe Lovano’s arm gestures when explaining something to a pal

6. Dave King’s laff

7. Jack DeJohnette’s foot on the kick drum

8. Unison swoop of Dafnis Prieto’s front line

9. Paul Motian floating above the stage during TBP+BF’s “It Should’ve Happened A Long Time Ago”

10. The standing ovation that the above performance earned from its packed audience. 

+ 1 extra since it was such a swell day: 

11. James Carter’s outfit

SHOWS NOT TO MISS ON SUNDAY

De Drums Are Silenced: RIP The Owl of Cranston

So Long to a fellow Rhode Islander. Kelvin chatted with Paul Motian for this piece.  Steve Futterman recalls Motian’s impact here.

Konitz/Haden/Motian/Mehldau (ECM)

Sometimes the measured approach is the exciting approach. When jazz elders Lee Konitz, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian connected with 40-year-old pianist Brad Mehldau for several sets of clever improv at Manhattan’s Birdland in the winter of 2009, there was no exclamation coming from the bandstand. Their ardor was closer in temperament to the kind you’d find in a chess game. Like the Modern Jazz Quartet, their actions were refined, but their art was gripping.

At least that’s how it sounds on this new disc, which finds the quartet steadily mulling over their options before making deliberate moves that weave in and out of each other’s spheres. A spray of cymbal taps by Motian triggers a rumble from the bottom of Mehldau’s piano. The pulsed thumping of Haden’s bass spurs a flurry of sideways notes from Konitz’s horn. The thematic material of chestnuts like “Solar” and “Oleo” becomes secondary to the extrapolations the unit steers collectively. On “Lullaby of Birdland,” the melody barely gets a mention. Its DNA is harvested by these masters for alternate purposes. Indeed there a few moments here prompting a head-scratch or two: “I thought I knew what tune this is, but now I’m not so sure.” For the most part, that’s a good thing. The music is perpetually morphing, and its creators are calmly in control of its destination.

TONE AUDIO MAGAZINE

One Night Only: The West Village Wobble

Here’s how it should go for jazz heads in the NYC vicinity tonight. Starting at 6:30 pm and allowing for one dash to 27 & and Lex, all the action is in the left hand side of lower Manhattan. Your evening should conclude at 12:30 am.

1. JD Allen @ Le Poisson Rouge. 6:30

Dude celebrates his new disc with an early show.

2. Roy Haynes @ Jazz Standard.  7:30 pm

Dude still brims with invention, trouncing many more youthful drummers when it comes to creativity.

3. Paul Motian @ the Village Vanguard.  9 pm

Dude cracks the code of the Modern Jazz Quartet, nudges Craig Taborn to the foreground.

4. Todd Sickafoose & Mary Halvorson @ Le Poisson Rouge.  10 pm/11:15 pm

Dude behind Search & Restore curates sweet double bill that places the Tiny Resistors next to Ms. Halvorson’s ultra-elastic threesome.

Summer Is Holiday Time…

I, Jukebox

John McNeil/Bill McHenry, Rediscovery (Sunnyside)

Fred Hersch, Whirl (Palmetto)

The Convergence Quartet, Song, Dance (Clean Feed)

Mario Pavone, song for (septet) (New World)

Noah and the Whale, Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down (Interscope)

Getz/Barron, People Time (Sunnyside)

The Meters, Trick Bag (Sundazed)

Bryan and the Haggards, Pretend It’s The End of the World (Hot Cup)

Billy Boy Arnold, “You Better Cut That Out”

Ricky Skaggs, “Don’t Cheat In Our Hometown”

Huey “Piano” Smith, “High Blood Pressure”

Steve Wilson/Bruce Barth, Home (WASJS)