August 2011 | No. 112 Your FREE Guide to the NYC Jazz Scene nycjazzrecord.com Mike Stern The Singing Guitar Billy Martin • JD Allen • SoLyd Records • Event Calendar Part of what has kept jazz vital over the past several decades despite its commercial decline is the constant influx of new talent and ideas. Jazz is one of the last renewable resources the country and the world has left. Each graduating class of New York@Night musicians, each child who attends an outdoor festival (what’s cuter than a toddler 4 gyrating to “Giant Steps”?), each parent who plays an album for their progeny is Interview: Billy Martin another bulwark against the prematurely-declared demise of jazz. And each generation molds the music to their own image, making it far more than just a 6 by Anders Griffen dusty museum piece. Artist Feature: JD Allen Our features this month are just three examples of dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals who have contributed a swatch to the ever-expanding quilt of jazz. by Martin Longley 7 Guitarist Mike Stern (On The Cover) has fused the innovations of his heroes Miles On The Cover: Mike Stern Davis and Jimi Hendrix. He plays at his home away from home 55Bar several by Laurel Gross times this month. Drummer Billy Martin (Interview) is best known as one-third of 9 Medeski Martin and Wood, themselves a fusion of many styles, but has also Encore: Lest We Forget: worked with many different artists and advanced the language of modern 10 percussion. He will be at the Whitney Museum four times this month as part of Dickie Landry Ray Bryant different groups, including MMW. And JD Allen (Artist Feature) has been making by Clifford Allen by Ken Waxman more and more of a reputation for himself over the past several years, continuing Megaphone VOXNews the saxophone tradition in both his own groups and as a sideman. Among his by Sabir Mateen by Suzanne Lorge appearances this month, Allen leads his trio at Village Vanguard for a week. 11 There’s also features on longtime Philip Glass saxophonist Dickie Landry Label Spotlight: Listen Up!: (Encore); the recently departed pianist Ray Bryant (Lest We Forget); avant garde Russian imprint SoLyd (Label Spotlight) and festival reports from Canada, 12 Tom Zlabinger SoLyd Records Denmark and Poland. by Ken Waxman & Jonah Parzen-Johnson There’s lot of talk of reducing our carbon footprint. That’s fine but how about increasing your jazz footprint at the same time? 13 Festival Report: Suoni Per Il Popolo • Copenhagen • Krakow We sure will... CD Reviews: Rufus Reid, Art Blakey, Brian Charette, Ellery Eskelin, Laurence Donohue-Greene, Managing Editor Andrey Henkin, Editorial Director 14 Marc Copland, Giacomo Gates, Cyro Baptista, Chick Corea, and more On the cover: Mike Stern (photo by Clay Patrick McBride) 32 Event Calendar 37 Club Directory Miscellany: In Memoriam • Birthdays • On This Day Submit Letters to the Editor by emailing [email protected] 39 US Subscription rates: 12 issues, $30 (International: 12 issues, $40) 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 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, Tom Conrad, Ken Dryden, New York, NY 10033 Donald Elfman, Sean Fitzell, Graham Flanagan, Kurt Gottschalk, Tom Greenland, United States Laurel Gross, Alex Henderson, Marcia Hillman, Terrell Holmes, Robert Iannapollo, Francis Lo Kee, Martin Longley, Suzanne Lorge, Wilbur MacKenzie, Marc Medwin, Laurence Donohue-Greene: Russ Musto, Joel Roberts, John Sharpe, Elliott Simon, Jeff Stockton, Andrew Vélez, Ken Waxman [email protected] Andrey Henkin: [email protected] Contributing Writers Mathieu Bélanger, Anders Griffen, George Kanzler, General Inquiries: [email protected] Gordon Marshall, Sabir Mateen, Matthew Miller, Sean O’Connell, Seth Watter Advertising: [email protected] Contributing Photographers Editorial: [email protected] Jim Anness, crushboone, Scott Friedlander, Peter Gannushkin, Calendar: [email protected] Herb Greenslade, Clay Patrick McBride, Piotr Siatkowski, Jack Vartoogian All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission strictly prohibited. All material copyrights property of the authors. THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | August 2011 3 NEW YORK @ NIGHT To this point, guitarist Rez Abbasi has focused Trumpeter Brian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra overwhelmingly on original material and although his was founded way back in 2006 to play music from way work could be said to sit within the modernist back in the ‘20s-30s for a vaudeville show in mainstream of jazz, he’s spent little time in public Massachusetts. Carpenter may not at the time have playing standard tunes. That changed when he expected the project to carry on for five years, but here appeared in a trio setting with bassist Johannes they were (Jul. 15th) for a semi-regular engagement at Weidenmueller and drummer Adam Cruz at Bar Next Barbès and with an album to promote no less. They Door (Jul. 2nd). Revisiting the bop and postbop canon opened with fanfare of harmonica through megaphone might have been unexpected, but it was perfectly and bowed tenor banjo, which quickly gave way to an logical - Abbasi’s fluid, rhythmically buoyant lines eruption of brass and reeds and Tiny Parham’s 1929 have always shown a rootedness in swing, even when “Mojo Strut”. With a nine-piece band that included he’s drawing on South Asian musics in the company of Rob Garcia, Curtis Hasselbring, Brandon Seabrook and Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Dan Weiss and Mazz Swift - all of whom appear on the record - as well others. The trio led off with a brisk “What Is This Thing as Marty Ehrlich subbing for Matt Bauder, there was Called Love” and Abbasi chewed up the changes with plenty of versatility crammed onto the stage. The set laid-back precision, forming long strings of ideas with list, nicely introduced by Carpenter with city and year the benefit of a deep, resonant electric guitar sound. of origin, was comprised largely of obscurities but No bold-stroke arrangements here: “Alone Together”, included a take on “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You?” “Solar” and Joe Henderson’s angular blues “Isotope” with wonderfully lazy vocals by Swift. They by and found the group sticking to simple solo rotations and large kept the faith, if with outré moments: a quick trading of eights and fours. If there was hesitancy at conduction here, an unlikely solo there. A round robin times during the first of three sets, it was due to the of single-chorus fills was faithfully and passionately newness of the lineup and the casual nature of the gig. delivered, Seabrook wasn’t entirely revisionist but But for a warmup, this was strong and searching music. retrofitted nevertheless. The out moments didn’t seem Abbasi ventured some backwards effects on his intro anachronistic within Barbès’ confined classiness. to Alec Wilder’s ballad “Moon and Sand” and Cruz Instead, it was as if the band had been caught on some found just the right vibe for the tiny room, keeping the crazy speakeasy night, less disciplined than what volume low without sacrificing intensity. might usually have been captured on cylinder or - David R. Adler celluloid. - Kurt Gottschalk P h o t o b s y s e S n c n o t A t F m r i i J e d y l b a n o t d o e h r P Rez Abbasi Trio @ Bar Next Door Ghost Train Orchestra @ Barbès It’s impressive in itself that bassist John Hébert could Saxophonist Matana Roberts is only halfway through gather pianist Fred Hersch, altoist Tim Berne, cornetist her ambitious Coin Coin project and already it’s more Taylor Ho Bynum and drummer Ches Smith under one than can easily be gathered and put in a single basket. roof for a Charles Mingus tribute at The Stone (Jul. At The Jazz Gallery (Jul. 9th) she presented Chapter 2nd). This was Hersch’s debut at the club, his first-ever Six of her musical family history, Papa Joe, based on the gig with Berne and a golden opportunity to hear the words and compositions of her great grandfather. pianist grapple with the legacy of his mentor Jaki Roberts has a way of using musical styles that seem Byard, a key Mingus sideman. Berne, for his part, was vaguely period, something like what Rahsaan Roland no slouch in the implicit role of Eric Dolphy (perhaps Kirk did at times, which work well to advance her also Jackie McLean or Charles McPherson). But it was story settings. Such deft craftsmanship is more Hébert’s achievement that stood out: his way of apparent on Coin Coin Chapter One: Les Gens de Coleur featuring these unique voices from across the aesthetic Lebres, released in May on Constellation Records and spectrum of jazz while still capturing the swinging to a lesser degree in Papa Joe. Brief “hallelujah” integrity of Mingus’ ingenious works. There was a interludes were interspersed throughout, along with suite-like structure to the set and a good deal of reading recitations that seemed two parts poem to one part involved, as the band made its way through Hébert’s sermon, eventually rousing into a gospel. She stripped arrangements of “Sue’s Changes”, “What Love”, it down to bass and her tambourine, with audience and “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love” and “Remember band [Shoko Nagai (piano), Thomson Kneeland (bass), Rockefeller at Attica”. Melodies sang out beautifully, Daniel Levin (cello) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums)] as did Hersch’s richly voiced chords, although there repeating the “hallelujah” while she raised the rafters.