[42] Vijay Iyer Sextet at The Village Vanguard | #1Summer50Concerts

The wire-rimmed glasses and sweater really make Vijay look like he 

teaches at Harvard....oh wait, what's that? He does teach at Harvard?

WHO: Vijay Iyer, piano; Graham Hayes, cornet/flugelhorn/electronics; Steve Lehman, alto saxophone; Mark Shim, tenor saxophone; Stephan Crump, bass; Jeremy Dutton, drums
WHERE: The Village Vanguard
WHEN: July 19, 2019 at 8:30pm

My 17-year-old brother made an impromptu trip to NYC for a weekend with two very, very clear conditions. The first was that we go on a pizza crawl through lower Manhattan. The second was that I had to take him to the Village Vanguard. But not necessarily in that order.

So I plucked him off his MegaBus (which was an hour late, but frankly who's surprised?) and we moseyed (ran?) on down to The Vanguard. He didn't care what was playing. I, of course, did.

My brother's listening habits are eclectic. He's a bassist, both jazz and classical; on any given day, he'll jump from Kanye to Brahms's German Requiem and back to Vince Staples or Brockhampton. Right now, he's sitting in the corner of my apartment singing both parts to "Maria" from West Side Story in (more or less) the correct octave.

He's got a few albums he goes back to time and time again. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Winterreise. The Beach Boys's Pet Sounds. Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. But the one he goes back to most often is of drug-addled pianist-composer-genius Bill Evans sitting at The Vanguard's Yamaha alongside his trio.

"Alice in Wonderland" is his favorite

We went down the stairs. He smelled the Vanguard smell. We sat down below one of those framed records. And he turned to me and said with a shit-eating grin, "You know who sat there? Bill Evans. Bill Evans sat there.

"Now, who are we seeing tonight?"

"Vijay Iyer."

"Who?"

So I explain. Vijay Iyer. Music cognition PhD candidate turned jazz (and occasionally classical) composer. With his sextet, whose alto saxist is also a PhD-level composer, and whose drummer got picked up straight out of college (he's like 24 now -- feel inadequate yet?).

"But is he as good as Bill Evans?"

What the hell am I supposed to say to that? Like, less heroin? Except even when you strip the drugs out of Bill Evans's charts, they're still totally different from Vijay Iyer's? Because they're both geniuses?

I decided on the most concise way to say just that: "Shut up and listen."

And so he did.

The quartet did the same thing that the Uri Caine Trio did back in concert #2 -- they basically played for an hour straight, blurring the transitions between charts so you didn't realize you were in a different realm until you were already there. I often found myself bopping my head to the beat, except that Vijay Iyer's style is marked by sudden slight changes in beat pattern, so I'd end up on the offbeats or something ridiculous like that.

I don't know what any of the charts are called (the Sextet was *too cool* to announce) but I can tell you that they were all amazing. The upbeat songs let the rhythm section show off their technical prowess -- Stephan Crump's bass playing and mouth movements were each something to behold, and Jeremy Dutton imparted the most expression one can into an unpitched instrument. The downbeat songs let the horn players show off their ability to fill the the spaces above the sparse, but aurally complex chord structure. And regardless, Vijay Iyer was there with his exquisitely-voiced comping and wildly virtuosic solos.

And speaking of space and solos, the most fascinating thing was how the soloists used empty space. Steve Lehman's alto solos tried to fit the most notes into the smallest space: exhausting, but impressive. Graham Haynes used an echo/looping effect on his cornet solos, basically playing a few notes and waiting for the loop to fade before playing a few more: intellectual, but minimal. Mark Shim trod the line, his solos gaining momentum like a loose car down a steep hill before hitting a brick wall of silence.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Vijay Iyer concert without the obligatory politically-charged rant that he improvises over the final chords of his set. The theme is always the same: the struggle is Far From Over (coincidentally, the name of the Sextet's most recent album). According to my friend, Iyer actually mentioned Trump by name in his Tuesday set, essentially echoing the message that YG & Nipsey Hussle so eloquently purvey in the popular song linked below. This particular evening, there was an elderly couple in the front row that particularly jived with what Vijay had to say. #woke

My brother and I both left the Vanguard happy into one of the hottest nights of the summer; we made the wise, wise decision to traipse around the Village and the Lower East Side in pursuit of pizza. Two slices and a whole pie later, we patted our sweaty bellies. It had been a good night.

John's of Bleecker Street, the favorite pie of the night

[28] Ethan Iverson and Mark Turner at The Village Vanguard | #1Summer50Concerts #JazzWeek

I'm not allowed to use the picture of them together, because it's under copyright. Boo.

WHO: Ethan Iverson, piano; Mark Turner, tenor saxophone
WHAT: jazz standards, mostly
WHERE: The Village Vanguard
WHEN: June 27, 2019 at 10:30pm

I, like many musicians, love music. I profess my love often. I talk about albums, concerts, everything. Hell, I'm going to 50 f*cking concerts this summer -- that's something that only someone who loved music would do. Will I still love music after 50 concerts? Stay tuned to find out!

I tell people that I love music because I'm not a good enough performer to sound like I love the music. When Hilary Hahn pulls out the Bach violin suites for the umpteenth time, her affect, her expression, her energy conveys her love to the audience in lieu of speech.

Having attended their concert, I can tell you with utmost certainty that Mark Turner and Ethan Iverson love music.

Iverson and Turner both approach jazz from different perspectives. Iverson's compositions are on the cusp of classical and modern, as evidenced from The Bad Plus's big Rite of Spring project from 2014. He still regularly performs classical music -- I just found out that he'll be playing Schubert's Winterreise alongside British tenor Mark Padmore next May. Turner, on the other hand, is a little more heavy-handed on the modernism. He's not exactly a mogul of free jazz, but he's done some things that my grandparents may refuse to recognize as jazz (Ornette Coleman IS REAL JAZZ GRANDMA).

So they met in the middle. Back to basics: blues and standards.

As you may recall, last time I saw standards, I was duly unimpressed -- I've just resigned myself to the fact that Renee Rosnes won't be inviting me to any of her garden parties in the future. Oh well. But there's a difference, I have found, between playing standards and playing standards like you mean it.

In any innovation, there's a degree of respect that has to be present. Iverson and Turner's innovative takes on Coltrane and Strayhorn and Just Friends were full of not only a love for the music, but also showed so much respect for the original composers. They didn't recompose or deconstruct any of the original framework, they simply infused it with a rollicking, Iverson-Turner flair. Think of it like a partially-possessed human -- when you hear Giant Steps for the millionth time, do you want to hear Coltrane, or do you want to hear the performer? Well, with Turner and Iverson, we heard both.

They didn't actually do Giant Steps. The whole set was far too laid-back for that. Iverson played a composition of his, something about duels and arguments, in celebration of the Democratic debate that was happening the same night -- even that felt like a debate between two people who had smoked a little too much pot. Not complaining, though. My brain was pretty fried by that point, and some easy listening was exactly what I needed.

This was the perfect everyman's concert. Two jazz icons, charismatic from the stage, playing to a weekday 10:30pm audience of about 12 people, playing fun, enjoyable music that doesn't require too much thinking. Were Turner's solos still perfectly thought-out? Of course. Were Iverson's 12-bar blues progressions still spot-on? Yes. But it wasn't finicky. It was simple, clean, and to the point. If you want to know what I mean, listen to their album from last year, Temporary Kings.

[10] Renee Rosnes Quartet at The Village Vanguard | #1Summer50Concerts

WHO: Renee Rosnes Quartet
WHERE: The Village Vanguard
WHEN: June 5, 2019, 8:30pm

We're one-fifth of the way there guys! Woohoo!

I get a certain satisfaction out of jazz that I simply don't find in classical music. Don't get me wrong, classical music is still my bread and butter, but like, bread and butter doesn't have a whole lot of vitamins and minerals. And I get those vitamins and minerals from jazz.

I love spontaneity. I love music that turns out different every time. I love music that has no "right" way.

So, when judging jazz players, I cherish spontaneity over all else. I want to see them looking at their group-mates, taking cues, and going with the flow.

Renee Rosnes did not deliver.

Rosnes is best known as a composer, but for some reason this set was primarily (if not all -- she didn't announce every piece) arrangements of swing-era hits. It seemed like a safe play, really too safe for a venue like the Vanguard, where modern jazz attracts the biggest audiences. There was nothing "out there," nothing of particular note; just canned arrangements of Fats Waller and contemporaries.

Note: the New Masada Quartet sold out soon after it went on sale. Renee Rosnes didn't even come close.

In a small group setting, each member is personally responsible for keeping the music moving forward -- if one member starts to hesitate, the whole group stalls. It felt like Rosnes was placing the burden of moving the music forward on her bassist (Peter Washington -- he had a terrified expression on his face the entire time, and you could tell which charts he did and didn't know) and her drummer (Carl Allen -- he was on top his music, and his riffs were well-played, if not necessarily the most creative). That got a little bit better towards the end, I will concede.

So you may have noticed that I've only mentioned three of the four quartet members so far, and that's because I wanted to save the best for last. Rosnes's quartet, instead of employing a more conventional saxophone or trumpet, rounds out the quartet with a vibraphone player -- one of few non-vibraphonist-led ensembles that I know of that does this.

Vibes player Steve Nelson wholly upstaged the headliner. His solos were passionate without being cerebral -- you could tell that Nelson was flying by intuition rather than thinking his riffs through, and I would have it no other way. When the rest of the group was ambling along in what seemed like an endless loop of the same eight-bar chord progression, played the same way for the umpteenth time, Nelson's imaginative soloing provided something memorable above a sea of meh. And you could hear him singing (grunting?) along, which was totally endearing.

The thing is, I don't think Renee Rosnes is bad. In the wake of this gig, I listened to a couple of her albums; they were exactly what you would expect if a classically trained pianist wrote jazz, but not in the bad way. She's won Juno awards (think Grammy, but Canadian) for her compositions, and I totally see why. It seemed to me like she was sort of nonchalantly dialing it in for just another set at the Vanguard, and that she didn't really care that much, which in my opinion is kind of unfair to the audience. That said, she did have another show to play that night.

If you want to see Renee Rosnes, perhaps see her under a different leader -- she's playing with the Ron Carter Quartet at Blue Note in a few weeks (July 9-14). If you really want to see Renee Rosnes as headliner, make sure you know what's on the set: arrangements or originals. If it's originals, go; if it's arrangements, skip it.