September 2012 | No. 125 Your FREE Guide to the NYC Jazz Scene nycjazzrecord.com B O B B Y M C F E R R RIAM HIL2L I X 01 -2 IN MEMO 2 N STILL UNPREDICTABLE 93 LOL 1CO JERRY • DAN • RAHN • INNER • EVENT GRANELLI TEPFER BURTON CIRCLE CALENDAR As you read this intro, you’re probably unconsciously humming “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. Well, stop! Just as Louis Armstrong is hardly just “What a Wonderful 4 New York@Night World”, the career of vocalist Bobby McFerrin (On The Cover) encompasses far more than that 1988 hit song. His career as a virtuoso vocalist began in the early Interview: Jerry Granelli ‘80s and, besides his many albums as a leader, includes work with Pharoah 6 by Ken Waxman Sanders, Chick Corea, Weather Report, Jack DeJohnette, Dizzy Gillespie and Wynton Marsalis. McFerrin performs this month to kick off Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Artist Feature: Dan Tepfer 25th Anniversary Celebration. 7 by Ken Dryden In sadder news, we take two pages to remember the life of saxophonist Lol Coxhill, who passed away Jul. 9th at age 79. We have a number of remembrances On The Cover: Bobby McFerrin from his friends and colleagues, all who describe a rare musical spirit. 9 by Alex Henderson Drummer Jerry Granelli (Interview) may have gotten his start back in the ‘60s with pianist Vince Guaraldi (he played on A Charlie Brown Christmas) but he has Encore: Lest We Forget: moved into much deeper territory in the decades since, releasing numerous 10 Rahn Burton Wilbur Ware albums as a leader and solo performer. Granelli plays solo and with a trio at by Matthew Miller by Donald Elfman I-Beam this month. Pianist Dan Tepfer (Artist Feature) recently released an album of variations on the famed Goldberg Variations, an ambitious project for this Megaphone VOXNews 30-year-old but just another stop in what is shaping up to be an impressive jazz 11 by Mario Pavone by Katie Bull career. Tepfer plays those Goldberg Variations variations at Greenwich House Music School this month as well as takes part in a Bud Powell tribute at Birdland. Label Spotlight: Listen Up!: We also have features on Rahn Burton (Encore), performing at Cleopatra’s 12 Inner Circle Douglas Detrick Needle, bassist Wilbur Ware (Lest We Forget), fêted at Merkin Hall this month by by Alex Henderson & Adam O’Farrill an allstar lineup, a Megaphone from bassist/composer Mario Pavone (appearing with various groups at Cornelia Street Café), saxist Greg Osby’s imprint Inner Circle (Label Spotlight, with a roster festival at Cornelia Street Café) and Festival Report: Heineken Jazzaldia • Newport • Jazz Em Agosto 13 ShapeShifter Lab plus Festival Reports from Spain, Portugal and Rhode Island. Don’t Worry, Be Happy...aw, shoot. In Memorian: Lol Coxhill (1932-2012) 14 Laurence Donohue-Greene, Managing Editor Andrey Henkin, Editorial Director 16 CD Reviews: On the cover: Bobby McFerrin (© Carol Friedman) Corrections: We are now able to provide the death date of drummer Gerryck King. He died Sep. 11th, 2011. Also regarding In Memoriam, pianist Fritz Pauer’s death age Event Calendar was inflated. He was 68, not 78. In last month’s Encore, we incorrectly implied that 42 Music and Art High School in Harlem was a local school rather than a city-wide elite high school. And finally, the photo from the Vision Festival report was taken by Alan 49 Club Directory Nahigian. Submit Letters to the Editor by emailing [email protected] US Subscription rates: 12 issues, $30 (International: 12 issues, $40) Miscellany: In Memoriam • Birthdays • On This Day 51 For subscription assistance, send check, cash or money order to the address below or email [email protected]. The New York City Jazz Record www.nycjazzrecord.com / twitter: @nycjazzrecord Managing Editor: Laurence Donohue-Greene To Contact: Editorial Director & Production Manager: Andrey Henkin The New York City Jazz Record Staff Writers 116 Pinehurst Avenue, Ste. J41 David R. Adler, Clifford Allen, Fred Bouchard, Stuart Broomer, Katie Bull, New York, NY 10033 Tom Conrad, Ken Dryden, Donald Elfman, Sean Fitzell, Graham Flanagan, United States Kurt Gottschalk, Tom Greenland, Laurel Gross, Alex Henderson, Marcia Hillman, Terrell Holmes, Robert Iannapollo, Francis Lo Kee, Martin Longley, Wilbur MacKenzie, Laurence Donohue-Greene: Marc Medwin, Matthew Miller, Sharon Mizrahi, Russ Musto, Sean O’Connell, Joel Roberts, [email protected] John Sharpe, Elliott Simon, Jeff Stockton, Andrew Vélez, Ken Waxman Andrey Henkin: [email protected] Contributing Writers General Inquiries: [email protected] George Kanzler, Matthew Kassel, Mario Pavone, Sam Spokony Advertising: [email protected] Contributing Photographers Editorial: [email protected] Geoffrey Creighton, Eckhart Derschmidt, Gary Firstenberg, Scott Friedlander, Calendar: [email protected] Carol Friedman, Peter Gannushkin, Phillippe Marchin, Alan Nahigian, Nuno Martins, John Rogers, Jack Vartoogian, Lolo Vasco All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission strictly prohibited. All material copyrights property of the authors. THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | September 2012 3 NEW YORK @ NIGHT An eight-week run of free concerts in the Whole Foods There is something about Roulette’s newish Brooklyn café at Union Square was more impressive in its space that inspires grandeur. Maybe not in the most ®programming than for its publicity efforts, but traditional sense of the word but an actual stage under neverthelessJAZZ&SUPPER the Wednesday evening shows CLUBenticed a lovely proscenium arch makes the music played there small cadres of the faithful for sets by Steve Berrios, seem especially impressive. Clarinetist Jeremiah SMOKEJazz & Supper Club 2751 BROADWAY • NEW YORK • NY 10025Cooper-Moore, • 212 864 Bern 6662 Nix, • SteveWWW.SMOKEJAZZ.COM Swell and, on Aug. Cymerman, leading his amplified quartet (Aug. 9th), Wednesday, Sept 5 15th, William Parker’s Summer Songs with Charles was a beneficiary of this effect. While his grouping of Gayle and Marvin “Boogaloo” Smith. And if free jazz like-minded conceptualists - trumpeters Nate Wooley Nat Adderley Jr. Quartet in the supermarket doesn’t make New Yorkers’ and Peter Evans and saxophonist/clarinetist Matt nonplussed heads turn, perhaps nothing would. The Bauder - would feel at home at the city’s more prosaic Friday & Saturday Sept 7, 8 first set Parker’s trio played was standards, though venues, at Roulette the 42-minute piece conceived by through the voice of Gayle’s hard-bitten tenor they Cymerman had greater impact, if only because it was George Coleman Quartet might not have been recognized as such by many in the not constrained by low ceilings, close walls or featuring Harold Mabern room, most of whom were typing on smartphones and inattentive listeners. The Amplified Quartet is just sipping lattes. They played an impassioned set that, the natural timbres of brass and woodwinds Wednesday, Sep 12 nonetheless, working through “Lady Bird”, “I’ll transmogrified through various forms of manipulation: Remember April” and other chestnuts and if it might electronic processing; feedback and microphone Chris Bergson & Band have been a bit cacophonous for the environs, it was placement; amplifier settings. Except for Cymerman still a far cry from By Any Means, the Gayle/Parker presenting melodic fragments in a relatively Friday & Saturday Sept 14, 15 trio with drummer Rashied Ali - not just for Smith’s straightforward manner, all the players trafficked in Renee Rosnes Quartet lighter touch but the relative restraint the other two extended techniques and Bauder also integrated Steve Nelson (v) • Peter Washington (b) • Lewis Nash (d) musicians displayed. Any such bets were off for their separate electronics. Heard on CD the sounds would second set, though. Gayle let the young Buffalo have been unidentifiable (a factory during an air raid Wednesday, Sept 19 saxophonist James Brandon Lewis open and on the or small unmanned drones killing even smaller insects) small stage area listened intently before picking up his but in person became logically impressive as Ken Fowser Sextet horn and laying an appreciative squall over the mix. concentrated gestures fed into the whorled whole. And it was this, not the fractured standards, that got Most fascinating, however, was a 10-minute acoustic Friday & Saturday Sept 21, 22 the room’s attention: gazes of disbelief to be sure but encore, more staccato and unadorned, a fanfare that Wallace Roney Quintet generally topping off smiles. - Kurt Gottschalk seemed to come from a different group. - Andrey Henkin Ben Solomon (t s) • Victor Gould (p) • Darryl Johns (b) • Kush Aberdey (d) Wednesday, Sept 26 Pepper Adams Festival: P e t e r Alexis Cole Quintet G a featuring Eric Alexander n n u s Friday & Saturday Sept 28, 29 h k i n / Mike Le Donne’s 5LIVE D O r Eric Alexander (t s) • Jeremy Pelt (t) • John Webber (b) • e W d n Joe Farnsworth (d) N a l T d O e i W Sundays Sept 2, 16 r F N t t M o c U S Allan Harris Band S y Allan Harris (v & g) • Pascal LeBoeuf (p & k) • I C b . o Leon Boykins (b) • Jake Goldbas (d) N t E o T h Sundays, Sept 9, 30 P William Parker Trio @ Whole Foods Union Square Jeremiah Cymerman Amplified Quartet @ Roulette SaRon Crenshaw George Papageorge (o) • Thomas Hutchings (s) • Kimmo Pohjonen’s appearance at Lincoln Center In today’s ‘modern mainstream’ (Who came up with Richard Lee (t) • Cliff Smith (b) • Damon Due White (d) Out-of-Doors on Aug. 3rd opened in familiar small- this awful term? Is there an ‘antiquated avant garde’? Mondays, Sept 10, 24 world-after-all fashion with a procession by the Actually, yes there is.) players take less from the Chinese Chio-Tian Folk Drums and Arts Group before compositional lessons of their forbears in lieu of Captain Black Big Band the Finnish accordionist and his troupe of wrestlers individual instrumental prowess.