June 2011 | No. 110 Your FREE Guide to the NYC Jazz Scene nycjazzrecord.com Dee Dee Bridgewater RIAM ANG1 01 Keeping The Tradition Y B 2 7- IN MEMO4 BILL19 Cooper-Moore • Orrin Evans • Edition Records • Event Calendar It’s always a fascinating process choosing coverage each month. We’d like to think that in a highly partisan modern world, we actually live up to the credo: “We New York@Night Report, You Decide”. No segment of jazz or improvised music or avant garde or 4 whatever you call it is overlooked, since only as a full quilt can we keep out the cold of commercialism. Interview: Cooper-Moore Sometimes it is more difficult, especially during the bleak winter months, to 6 by Kurt Gottschalk put together a good mixture of feature subjects but we quickly forget about that when June rolls around. It’s an embarrassment of riches, really, this first month of Artist Feature: Orrin Evans summer. Just like everyone pulls out shorts and skirts and sandals and flipflops, 7 by Terrell Holmes the city unleashes concert after concert, festival after festival. This month we have the Vision Fest; a mini-iteration of the Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT); the On The Cover: Dee Dee Bridgewater inaugural Blue Note Jazz Festival taking place at the titular club as well as other 9 by Marcia Hillman city venues; the always-overwhelming Undead Jazz Festival, this year expanded to four days, two boroughs and ten venues and the 4th annual Red Hook Jazz Encore: Lest We Forget: Festival in sight of the Statue of Liberty. These alone could take you through the 10 François Tusques King Oliver entire month without considering the hundreds of shows that happen individually by Clifford Allen by Donald Elfman at clubs and concert halls. Our diverse selection covers much of the above: vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater Megaphone VOXNews (Cover) brings her To Billie With Love project to Town Hall as part of the Blue Note 11 by Donald Harrison, Jr. by Suzanne Lorge Jazz Festival; pianist/multi-instrumentalist Cooper-Moore (Interview) participates in the Vision Festival as well as appearing at The Stone; pianist Orrin Evans (Artist Label Spotlight: Listen Up!: Feature) is at Undead Festival with the group Tarbaby and also leads his Captain 12 Edition Records Stan Killian Black Big Band at Dizzy’s Club; pianist and father of the French avant garde by Tom Conrad & Brad Farberman François Tusques (Encore) is at Vision Festival and University of the Streets and there will be tributes to King Oliver (Lest We Forget) and the recently-departed Festival Report: Freedom in the City Billy Bang (In Memoriam) at the Vision Festival. 13 Do we need to say more? We’ll see you everywhere... 14 In Memoriam: Billy Bang (1947-2011) Laurence Donohue-Greene, Managing Editor Andrey Henkin, Editorial Director CD Reviews: Bill Frisell, Warren Smith, Adam Cruz, Evan Parker, On the cover: Dee Dee Bridgewater (photo by Gary Firstenberg) 16 Claire Daly, Chris Dingman, Craig Taborn, Peter Brötzmann and more In Correction: In last month’s CD reviews, the review of Asiento by Animation Event Calendar incorrectly defined the title in relation to the slave trade, instead of its proper 46 definition as a level of initiation with the Santeria religion. In the obituaries, Billy Bang’s death date was not included; it was Apr. 11th, 2011 Club Directory 53 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 For subscription assistance, send check, cash or money order to the 55 address below or email [email protected]. The New York City Jazz Record www.nycjazzrecord.com Managing Editor: Laurence Donohue-Greene To Contact: Editorial Director & Production: Andrey Henkin The New York City Jazz Record Staff Writers 116 Pinehurst Avenue, Ste. J41 David R. Adler, Clifford Allen, Fred Bouchard, Stuart Broomer, Thomas Conrad, New York, NY 10033 Ken Dryden, Donald Elfman, Sean Fitzell, Graham Flanagan, Kurt Gottschalk, United States Tom Greenland, Laurel Gross, Alex Henderson, Marcia Hillman, Terrell Holmes, Robert Iannapollo, Francis Lo Kee, Martin Longley, Suzanne Lorge, Laurence Donohue-Greene: Wilbur MacKenzie, Gordon Marshall, Marc Medwin, Russ Musto, Joel Roberts, [email protected] John Sharpe, Elliott Simon, Jeff Stockton, Celeste Sunderland, Andrew Vélez, Ken Waxman Andrey Henkin: [email protected] Contributing Writers General Inquiries: [email protected] Duck Baker, Donald Harrison, Jr., George Kanzler, Sean O’Connell, Francie Scanlon Advertising: [email protected] Contributing Photographers Editorial: [email protected] Lena Adasheva, Jim Anness, Gary Firstenberg, Scott Friedlander, Calendar: [email protected] Peter Gannushkin, Alan Nahigian, Susan O’Connor, Howard Pitkow All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission strictly prohibited. All material copyrights property of the authors. THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | June 2011 3 NEW YORK @ NIGHT From the first seconds of their show at Issue Project Having already performed about 20 pieces in the Room (May 5th), Starlicker sent pounding asymmetric preceding half-hour, Charles Waters introduced rhythms and deft unison passages flooding into the another musical snapshot of New York City, “Veselka”, boomy loft-like space in Gowanus. The trio’s members named for the longstanding East Village restaurant. - cornetist Rob Mazurek, vibraphonist Jason “It’s kind of like that, right?” he offhandedly asked the Adasiewicz, drummer John Herndon (of indie rock audience at University of the Streets on May 11th. band Tortoise) - hail from the heart of Chicago’s vibrant “Julianne Moore’s over here and you’ve got this family underground scene. They seemed shell-shocked and in you get a glimpse of over there and you’ve still got the need of rest by the end of the first tune, “Double junkies and the Ukrainians.” The set’s music varied Demon”, the title track from their new Delmark from New Orleans brass band to sparse, theatrical recording. This was aggressive and unrelenting stuff, themes to hints of R&B and a traditional Ukrainian yet the expansive overtones of the vibes gave the music hymn, with subjects including lunch spots, park a softer quality, even when Adasiewicz beat on his benches, a building fire on West 15th Street and Waters’ instrument like an angry man. By the time they segued beloved Williamsburg Bridge. In all, the cycle to the rubato opening of “Vodou Cinque”, Mazurek comprised 30 movements, written for horn quartet, was working with a mute and suggesting a more Waters said, but with string quartet music and contemplative feel. There was a distinctly lyrical cinematic camera angles in mind. Some were barely 30 component and a precise, well-rehearsed handling of seconds, hardly even vignettes while others stretched themes and transitions underlying “Orange Blossom”, to an epic two minutes or more. Each of the four “Andromeda”, “Triple Hex” and “Skull Cave”. (The players (Matt Bauder [tenor saxophone and clarinet], set was drawn entirely from the 38-minute Double Chris McIntyre [trombone], Nate Wooley [trumpet] Demon, with the tracks played in order.) Starlicker is and Waters on alto sax) performed scored solo pieces. essentially a pared-down version of the quintet from There were boldly discrete sections, but the best Mazurek’s 2009 disc Sound Is, which included two moments still managed to retain everything you need bassists. Here the trio has a more open sound field in from a jazz tune: harmonic richness, development of which to work; the result is raw but still somehow themes and even fleeting solos - not incomplete, just complete. Live, Herndon was the main muscle, his condensed. Like a black and white photograph all the beats combining Elvin Jones-like suppleness with richer for its lack of hue, the miniatures showed the sheer punk energy. - David R. Adler largesse of his compositional ideas. - Kurt Gottschalk r e d P n h a l o d t e o i : r L F e t n t o a c A S d y a b s h o t e o v h a P Starlicker @ Issue Project Room Charles Waters Horn Quartet @ University of the Streets Seattle drummer Paul Kikuchi was among the artists From the small bandstand to the SRO audience, there featured by Steve Peters in a two-week curating stint at was a decidedly multi-culti flair to saxophonist Hafez The Stone (May 6th). Fronting a new quartet, Kikuchi Modirzadeh’s May 12th show at The Jazz Gallery. The had trumpeter Nate Wooley, bassist Reuben Radding single, 45-minute piece presented was dedicated to and bass clarinetist Jason Stein on hand for a fairly Fred Ho, another saxophonist who brings global short set - three separate pieces, each roughly in the musical traditions into jazz models; Ho, who is battling 12-minute range. The music was freely improvised, cancer, was present in the audience. And onstage with full of motion and dynamic flux, with attention paid to the Iranian-American Modirzadeh was Iraqi-American the finer points of tone and timbre. Sound is very much trumpeter Amir ElSaffar and pianist Vijay Iyer, who Kikuchi’s arena, as is clear from his work with the has brought his own Indian heritage into his music. experimental duo Open Graves (hear Flight Patterns Completed by the rhythm section of bassist Ken Filiano [Prefecture, 2010], recorded in an empty water cistern and drummer Royal Hartigan, the band played with Stuart Dempster as guest). Drum heads struck Modirzradeh’s “Post-Chromodality”, a piece which - with assorted objects, ethereal feedback from walkie- at least in parts - might have been called “Post- talkies, amplification on Wooley’s horn, at one point a Harmolodicality”. The near-unison horn lines strongly clothespin on Radding’s bass strings: these elements brought to mind early Ornette Coleman, fleshed out made Kikuchi’s new quartet a thing of sonic intrigue, with luxurious swells of malleted drums, bowed bass with a more thoroughly abstract aesthetic than that of and piano trills, each lending tasteful bits of sonorous the Empty Cage Quartet (another of Kikuchi’s main discordance to the mix.