WHO: Roscoe Mitchell, composer and saxophone; Roscoe Mitchell Orchestra WHAT: New compositions and improvisations by Roscoe Mitchell RELEASED: September 2017 LABEL: Wide Hive
When I crave free jazz, I'm usually in one of two situations. More often than not, I listen to free jazz when I'm walking around NYC -- the aural chaos of the music befits the visual chaos of the city. However, I also find that I love to listen to free jazz when I'm cooking or washing dishes. Cooking isn't so cerebral for me; it leaves my brain free to ponder anything and everything. Raise your hand if you've ever had a mid-meatloaf existential crisis. Or is that just me?
So, I try to put on some music that requires me to pay attention. Today, it was this phenomenal free jazz-classical-fusion (kind of?) album.
Roscoe Mitchell founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago a little more than 50 years ago. AEC was among the pioneering ensembles of this high-entropy kind of free jazz, a little less predictable than their predecessors and a little more similar to avant-garde classicists of the day like Stockhausen (💗) and Berio.
Mitchell is mainly known for his small-ensemble improvised compostions, but in this album he extends a few of his earlier compositions to a full orchestra. The way he uses the orchestral timbre is interesting -- the proud opening of "Home Screen" reminds me vaguely of a totally unrelated piece, Silvestre Revueltas's Ocho por Radio.
I find that the full orchestra gives me more to consider, more to pay attention to. Infinitely many different sounds can come out of any one instrument; infinity times a twenty-person orchestra, now that's living. Mitchell's use of the orchestra keeps your focus darting from one instrument to the next. He almost treats every instrument as a melody and an accompaniment at once. Of course, Mitchell also programs some of his signature small-ensemble improvisations, providing some contrast adding that disorder that free-jazz aficionados crave.
I'm going to keep it short today because I'm quite tired and I'm not done cleaning out my refrigerator, but I'm just going to say that this was a great album for washing dishes and chopping onions. Give it a listen and tell me what else it's good for!
"Who had this crazy idea to invent school all of a sudden? Charlemagne!"
I forgot how rough it is to go from doing absolutely nothing to absolutely everything. One day, I'm sitting on the recliner in my room at home watching Netflix, the next day I'm sprawled on my apartment couch after having carried twenty pounds of groceries back from my four classes and three rehearsals. But hey, such is the story of academic vacations.
Anyway, considering that many of you will be dealing with the same thing in the coming weeks, here are five albums that will help you through your first week back on the job (or any rough week, for that matter), whether you're a student or not.
If you ever wanted your classical music with a side of indie (or vice versa): Love I Obey (Rosemary Standley & Helstroffer's Band)
To give you some context, this is the album I listened for comfort when I was stuck on the D train for almost two hours this summer. Rosemary Standley makes her career with indie band Moriarty. Bruno Helstroffer is a blues guitarist who plays early music as a day job. Together, they dreamed up this album of bluesy takes on British Renaissance airs. Standley's voice is (truly, in a non-cliché way) unlike any other singer I've ever heard, throaty and warm with a distinctive twang to the diction. And Helstroffer is just an incredible musician in all respects -- his solo debut is also among my favorite albums ever.
For a really, really good version of a piece you might know: Bach: Motets (Collegium Vocale Gent, cond. Philippe Herreweghe)
This recording is just squeaky clean. Most of the motets are only one singer to a part on this album; the intimate accuracy gives me chills every time. The cast includes Vox Luminis soprano Zsuzsi Tóth; superstar French countertenor Damien Guillon; Bach specialist bass Peter Kooij; and a smattering of other big names in the European early music scene. When I want Bach, this album is my first stop (this version of Jesu, meine Freude is also my go-to tipsy soundtrack, something I can safely say now that I'm 21 😉).
For an album that will replace your dinner party jazz playlist: Jazz på svenska(Jan Johansson, piano; Georg Riedel, bass)
I usually spring for new jazz over old jazz, but this album is a classic (just ask the quarter of a million people who have bought copies). Sparse and smooth, Jan Johansson takes Swedish folk tunes and adapts them for a low-key duo of piano and bass. He treats the original folk tunes with such respect -- from his adaptations, I know exactly how the original was meant to sound. There's a good reason why it's the best-selling Swedish jazz album of all time, and still maintains a degree of relevance more than 55 years after its release.
*swoon*
If you want to hear the best music written for the best instrument you've never heard of: Marais: Pièces favorites (François Joubert-Caillet, viol; L'Achéron)
Marin Marais wrote hours and hours of music for the viol (an earlier predecessor of the modern double bass that looks kind of like a cello -- if you're curious, watch Tous les Matins du Monde starring Gérard Dépardieu). It's all great, but some movements are simply transcendent. François Joubert-Caillet is the single viol player who has most consistently impressed me; here, he's selected a representative sample of Marais's most outstanding works and compiled them onto one phenomenal album. His continuo team is outstanding (continuo is a group of instruments that together comprise accompaniment for baroque music -- usually a melodic instrument and an instrument that plays chords e.g. a second viol and a harpsichord) and help to cement this album among the most satisfying Marais albums on the market today. And if you really like it, you can listen to his most recent album, a six-hour recording of one of Marais's complete books for viol.
I've sung Heinavanker's praises before, but I'm truly hooked on their album. It's the perfect album for a low-key, relaxing evening -- tonight, I put it on while waiting for my focaccia dough to rise. I'd say I listen at least twice a month, if not more. Cannot recommend highly enough. Cook to it. Meditate to it. Sleep to it. Work to it. Seriously.
WHO: Davóne Tines, bass-baritone; Zack Winokur, director; vocal/dance/ instrumental ensembles WHAT: MICHAEL SCHACHTER The Black Clown WHERE: Gerald W. Lynch Theater @ John Jay College WHEN: July 24, 2019 at 7:30pm
As I'm sure you've gathered, I've been in NYC all summer, but I haven't really made time for many "New York" things. No Governor's Island. No museums. You know.
Most lamentably, I haven't really made much time at all for Broadway shows. I do love musical theater, even if my métier is primarily classical. But they're expensive. And they're always at the same time as classical concerts. And they require going down to the ninth circle of hell: Times Square.
The Black Clown wasn't *exactly* a Broadway show. But it was the closest I was going to get within my price range (MMF gives out student tickets for $20). And I have to say, I enjoyed it tremendously.
The concept basically chopped up Langston Hughes's poem The Black Clown into bite-sized chunks -- two to three lines at most -- and used each to base a movement (scene?) of the staging. The music showed MMF's initiative in breaking out of the strictly classical world: the pit orchestra was more of a big band, the ensemble singers evoking a gospel feel.
And at the center of it all was Davóne Tines, one of the most versatile opera singers I've ever seen. Sure, Renée Fleming has her Broadway album. Joyce DiDonato did her jazz-baroque mashup. But Davóne Tines is making his name with these cutting-edge crossover projects, not riding on his pre-established reputation so he can do something "weird."
PC: Richard Termine
Tines, clad in a black and white pleated zoot suit (this time with a shirt), was the perfect choice as a centerpiece for this project, but his phenomenal performance still rested in the second-place slot. The ensemble of singers, dancers, and actors took what was already a musically and socially meaningful production and made it dazzling. The ensemble was at once a gospel choir equal to some of the best on earth; a West Side Story-level dance troupe; and the catalysts for every emotion Tines displayed from the stage (and there were many). Tenor Brandon Michael Nase deserves special mention for striking a balance between minute, detail-oriented musicality and a soaring, piercing tone.
Each movement was fabulous in isolation; the scenes took all forms, from upbeat-swing big band charts to wrenching ballads and even a couple instances of authentic 1920s banjo jazz. The music Michael Schachter composed was stylistically appropriate, if not so adventurous; the highlights were his arrangements of various spiritual tunes, including a tear-jerking rendition of "Motherless Child." The piece as a whole read more as a song cycle rather than a through-composed work; there was very little functionally connecting each movement to the next. I did not find that particularly bothersome, but I think that a super-sudden transition from jubilant celebration to dour, prayer-like solemnity is a little bit hard on the audience as a whole.
PC: Richard Termine
I couldn't say this in my previous review of him, but I'm just going to sum up with one final thought: Davóne Tines is worth seeking out. He's a voice of the future. He's only going to get more popular. I'm not sure where The Black Clown is headed next, or if there are even plans to do it again soon. But no matter what, you can never go wrong with Davóne Tines.
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 GermanRequiem 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
WHO: Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet; Mariel Roberts & Okkyung Lee, cello; Erika Dohi, piano; Gabriel Zucker, synthesizer WHAT: WADADA LEO SMITH Red Autumn Gold; Silence WHERE: The Stone @ The New School WHEN: June 28, 2019 at 8:30pm
So here's the thing.
I loved Wadada Leo Smith's performance. I think that what he did was innovative, and cool, and kept me interested the whole time.
There's only one problem: I don't really know what he did.
I think it was some sort of free jazz. Let me try to describe it. All the musicians were reading off of graphic scores, the kind that don't really specify anything other than direction and approximate time. The keyboard played a lot of single drone notes. The pianist alternated between random, Messiaen-tinged licks and dissonant chords for which she leaned over the top of the piano to damper the strings. The cellists never really played notes so much as effects -- a lot of sliding, a lot of weird in-between harmonics. And Wadada Leo Smith would occasionally come in with a super super loud entrance that would disturb the peace like a comic book character who pops a thought bubble with a pushpin.
Free jazz isn't the right term. It was just kind of....free. I think Wadada's goal was to let the music flow for itself. He sort of vaguely conducted occasionally, but really it was up to the players how the music went. They weren't given too many instructions. They did what they wanted. Wadada nodded in approval.
I mean, I don't have a ton to say about the performance. It was exactly what I needed on a Friday night. It wasn't particularly tough to listen to. Wadada's occasional loud entrances made me jump a little bit, especially considering that the #@%$ing column in the middle of the venue (huge design flaw) kept me from seeing him half the time. The performers all had good imaginations and, even in moments with repeated modules, every note was novel.
If you want to get into new music, this is not where you should start. But if you're interested in exploring a new sound world -- my date and I concluded that it was a sound world rather than a type of music -- then give Wadada a try.
Also, one parting observation: we need more cello jazz in this world. That is all.
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.
Hazama conducting her ensemble, the Danish Radio Big Band
WHO: Choir of Saint Peter's; Miho Hazama, piano
WHAT: MIHO HAZAMA Jazz Mass
WHERE: Saint Peter's Church
WHEN: June 26, 2019 at 6:00pm
Okay guys, real talk: we're over halfway through. I'm starting to feel the burnout. Not from going to concerts, but 50 reviews, it's a lot to write. So tonight, I'm gonna take it easy: get ready for my bullet-point review of Miho Hazama's Jazz Mass.
I loved...
how the whole thing felt relaxing, suave, and not intended to blow the roof off.
how the Sanctus kept switching from 11/8 to 10/8 and then back again -- just as you got into the groove, the choir pulled the rug out from under you
Miho Hazama's piano part. Half the time it was an exact doubling of the choir, but the other half of the time it was soloistic and full of flourish.
the sermon, to be honest. You know I'm not man of religion, but their hearts, minds, and (most importantly) politics were in the right place.
I'm still thinking about...
the tenors who traded four-bar solos. They were very consciously walking the thin line between being creative and offending the pious Wednesday churchgoers.
the Kyrie, which lasted all of one or two minutes -- mostly homophonic, full of cool chords.
the sanctuary at Saint Peter's. Like, what is that shape?
I wish...
they had advertised better! I only heard about it because a friend was singing, and there were maybe ten people there. I was the only one (other than members of the choir) who didn't take communion.
I could hear the piece outside of a service. In the service, it was weird and clunky. Outside the service, it would have been a super cool 15 minutes of music.
WHO: The Bad Plus (Reid Anderson, bass; Orrin Evans, piano; Dave King, drums) WHERE: The Jazz Standard WHEN: June 25, 2019 at 9:30pm
Who decided it was time for Classical Music Geek's #JazzWeek? Well, blame the NYC classical music gods for not scheduling any concerts, and the NYC jazz gods for cramming all the legendary artists into one week. It was sort of just...fate.
I will admit, this was the second time in the last few months that I'd seen The Bad Plus. The first time was in March at the Village Vanguard, and Alton Brown (from Food Network) was sitting behind me. I even bumped behinds with him on the way out of coat check. Thinking about it a little harder, of course Alton Brown likes jazz.
This set was largely the same as the set that I saw them do in March. But you know what? It was equally good the second time. And that's how I define good jazz: it's never the same thing twice, and one time is never "better" than another. They're just different.
It would be sacrilegious for me to evaluate each player individually. One of the most incredible things about the ensemble is that, when they are playing together, they are not Reid Anderson, Orrin Evans, and Dave King. They are The Bad Plus, one six-armed three-headed multi-instrumental beast whose heart beats in time to the music.
Though the three were seemingly one in playing, each's compositions had their own signature twinge. Evans's compositions were rife with rhythmic complexity -- his chart "Commitment" (inspired by a Chia pet that Evans once cared for, according to a half-baked comedic interlude by Anderson) started in an intensely rollicking medium three-beat before switching suddenly to a quasi-waltz macabre in seven for a few bars. King's were a little more neo-rock influenced, heavy on the parallel chords and virtuosic drum breaks. "Lean in the Archway" reads as a jazz-rock fusion chart, but the usual four-beat is replaced by an amalgam of sevens, eights, and nines. Anderson's charts were the most balanced of the three, doling out harmonic and locomotive responsibilities evenly, as in the sparse "Kerosene."
The one thing that makes me partial to The Bad Plus over so many other groups is their evident selflessness. So many jazz musicians use music as a medium to show themselves off, to make themselves the center of attention. One could say that, by performing only original compositions, The Bad Plus does this inherently, but I don't agree. Their onstage affect seems to say that the music is chief. They don't engage in over-the-top showmanship; Evans bops his head, Anderson closes his eyes, King sticks his tongue out, but no visual gets in the way of the auditory experience.
Go see them. That's all I'll say. You won't be sorry. Rest assured, if they're back at a jazz club in NYC when I'm around, I will do the same. And the set may be the same for the third time in a row. And it'll still be great.
"You knew you were coming to see jazz, but you didn't know you were coming to see CRAZY JAZZ!!!!!"
And some crazy jazz was exactly what I needed on that night.
For the first two weeks of this project, I was sticking to a very strict regimen: one concert per day, two on Saturdays, a matinee on Sundays so I can grocery shop and meal prep for the week.
I'm glad to say I didn't fully burn out. But last Sunday, I decided that I needed to take a couple of concert-free days. One night I stayed in and did nothing (I mean, I tried to blog, but that didn't work so well). The next night, I went for a stroll with a professor. And Wednesday, I finally went back to the concert scene, but not before a lengthy family dinner.
Just goes to show you that you CAN get tired of things you love. I mean, that shouldn't surprise me, but sometimes I forget.
Anyway, this show was the perfect potpourri to get me back in the swing of things. Not that I expected it to be a potpourri -- I've seen many of Bertault's YouTube videos, starting with the viral one in which she scats along to the solo from Giant Steps ("Pas de Géant" in French -- that's kind of her thing), so I know she knows her way around the classical canon. She's scatted the first variation of Goldberg, she's done Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum from Debussy's Children's Corner suite, all sorts of stuff. So naturally, after a short original song for her introduction, she launched into a "tribute track" to the composers who had influenced her over the years; apparently, her father started her on piano at the ripe old age of three years old.
"Un, deux, un deux trois quatre"
And she launches into Goldberg at...help me here Moranis!
Bertault had obviously done this a million times before. Her pianist, Vitor Gonçalves, looked petrified, but kept his cool to play a musically and technically impressive Bach. She followed with a series of mutations on the first movement of Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, and then a whole song based on Satie's first Gymnopédie.
So at this point we know she does classical well. She goes into a short phase of French standards, including a Serge Gainsbourg song that starts, "I drink regularly to forget my wife's friends." Charming. That one ended up with a stone-cold sober Bertault lying on the floor "drunkenly" babbling on in French about all of her problems, and eventually falling asleep on the ground -- I gather the band was a group of New York ringers, because they seemed bewildered.
Almost as bewildered as when Bertault shooed them offstage after that chart, and invited up a piano professor from the Manhattan School of Music (god help me if I can figure out which one -- Solomon Mikowski rings a bell?) who is apparently a Birdland regular. And they played. Four-hands. A movement of Ravel's Mother Goose suite. He was sightreading. She hadn't practiced. And you know what? It was fantastic. More fun was had in that room in those four minutes than at the entire Renee Rosnes show I had seen the previous week.
Please someone tell me the name of this bassist!
The combo came back on after that -- I should take this opportunity to mention that the combo she had behind her was AMAZING. Though I'm pretty sure the trio was hired for the occasion, they knew the charts well, looking up and smiling at each other as if they were....having fun? GASP! Gonçalves's solos were the perfect character foils to Bertault's; where her solos were restricted by the technical capabilities of the human voice (even a voice as agile as Bertault's has its limits) his picked up slack, and vice versa. The bassist, whose name I couldn't catch from the stage (I think I might have heard Eduardo? Google produced no results for me) had a smirk on his face that showed he knew EXACTLY what he was doing the whole time. And the drummer, John Hadfield, was equally at home in jazz and bossa styles -- Bertault is a self-professed Brazilian music obsessor -- and his playing had the perfect balance of reliability and pizzazz.
Speaking of Brazilian music, she kicked her combo off AGAIN and brought on guitarist Diego Figueiredo, with whom she did the Carmen Miranda Radio Days bossa classic Tico-Tico no Fubá. Bertault and Figueiredo were doing a show at Birdland the next night -- I seriously considered canceling my plans and going, their rendition was so fantastic.
The moral of the story is, next time Camille Bertault is in NYC, get your butt on out to see her. Whether she's solo with a pianist or guitarist, or with a larger group, she's incredibly fun to watch, not to mention a fabulous singer. Besides which, you basically get three shows for the price of one!
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.
I only decided I was going to this concert about 2 hours before it actually started. And I was almost late because I spent too long looking for the nonexistent lunchbox section at TJ Maxx.
Ah, the joys of adulting.
Admittedly, I didn't know a ton about Uri Caine before showing up to his concert last night. I knew was a pianist, and that he had done a jazz Mahler album that I've been meaning to listen to for years, and that was about it. I don't know why his week-long residency at Mannes didn't get more press -- the audience was maybe half full, only about 30 people. But that didn't stop the trio from taking the audience on an adventure to remember.
After sitting down at their instruments, the players began to noodle around, as is common for the first minute or two of a jazz set. But they kept noodling longer than that until eventually Perowsky began to play in something resembling a steady four-beat, seemingly on the fly. The other two adjusted their fooling around slowly, almost imperceptibly, until eventually the entire trio was synced. It was the kind of thing that leaves the audience with jaws on the ground; I know I was in total awe.
*applause* "Quick, take a photo, my phone is dead!" *band starts to pack up* "What, now?" "Yes!" *fumbling with phone* -- an actual conversation my date and I had yesterday
The word that pops to mind when describing the trio is deft. Their entire set was full of tact and panache, and each player performed to his fullest without detracting from the others. Even at times when the music entered a "free" state similar to the opening of the set, it seemed like the players were aware of each others' improvisations -- perhaps that explains how they always found a common beat after a few seconds, even though Caine's gaze was glued to his hands and Helias never once opened his eyes.
Caine's improvised riffs very much evoked his career as a classical composer; though I didn't know he was classically trained when I saw him, there were a few moments where I turned to my date and mouthed "Debussy? Stravinsky? Messiaen?" and she smiled and nodded in corroboration. A disciple of George Crumb, Caine's claims to fame are his reworkings of classical music: not just Mahler, but Wagner, Schumann, Mozart, and even Bach's Goldberg Variations. One riff in particular from last night's concert evoked a dreaded piano solo from Stravinsky's Petrushka.
Helias's bass lines were creatively realized, if a bit stodgy. He, unlike many jazz bassists, was equally apt with a bow as pizzicato -- his bowed walking bass was refreshing. Perowsky left no timbre unexplored on his kit, from the side of the crash cymbal to the stands of his drums. His wrists alone were something to write home about; when he wanted a crash, but not too loud, he would tense his wrist completely and essentially push the cymbal down with his stick, muffling the sound just enough.
They played for an hour without stopping. The lines between actual charts and improvised filler material were blurry; that being said, the charts ranged from up-tempo rock-with-jazz-chords-sounding romps to the usual swing patterns. The final minute consisted of a series of dominant-tonic progressions -- literally V-I-V-I etc. -- but each time he played it he added more notes until he ended up with cluster-cluster-cluster-cluster. Take that, Mozart.
If you get a chance to see Uri Caine and any cohort of his, you should jump on that opportunity. His music has charisma and charm; it's nouveau-jazz without being inaccessible. And now that I've bought a lunchbox as well, my life is complete -- except for the fact that I forgot to bring it (with my lunch inside) to work today. Sigh.
