NORTH AMERICA’S PREMIER INDEPENDENT CLASSICAL MUSIC DISTRIBUTOR www.allegromediagroup.com discovery

AVAILABLE NOW! AVAILABLE NOW! AVAILABLE JUNE 9 CHALLENGE CLASSICS 72650 (4xSACD) EVIL PENGUIN 17 13700 AUDAX ISABELLE VAN KEULEN & HANNES MINNAAR PIETER WISPELWEY JOHANNES PRAMSOHLER BEETHOVEN: COMPLETE SONATAS FOR PIANO AND VIOLIN ROCOCO PLAYS CORELLI, TELEMANN & MORE “This highly recommended set sheds a different light The notion of “play” is the linking characteristic A tribute to Arcangelo Corelli, this CD takes the on and gives a new insight to Ludwig van Beethoven’s between the three pieces on this recording. listener on a journey across baroque Europe, following oeuvre for piano and violin.” — SA-CD.net Playing with style, through means of travesty and Johannes’ own path. “Not a disc for the timorous … illegality. Playing with double entendres, disguises a recital of ceaseless striving for the essence of the and betrayals. A playfulness that takes pleasure baroque ideal.” — MusicWeb-International in the foiling of conventions.

AVAILABLE MAY 12 AVAILABLE MAY 12 AVAILABLEAVAILABLE JUNEMAY 1212 LAWO CLASSICS 1071 LAWO CLASSICS 1074 LAWO PHAEDRA 92085 OSLO PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA BAROKKANERNE 5 BEAUFORT BRUSSELS WOODWIND QUINTET MOZART: CONCERTO FOR FLUTE, HARP AND ORCHESTRA TOTALLY TELEMANN JONGEN: ON THE WINGS OF WINDS In 1778 Mozart spent half a year in Paris. Mozart Telemann was highly regarded by his contemporaries, Joseph Jongen is, and remains, a dyed in the arrived in March, accompanied by his mother, Anna and remains fashionable because of his refreshingly wool late romanticist: honest, open and passionate. Maria. Both works on this album were composed in imaginative and varied compositions. This CD is filled However, his rich and subtle orchestral colors Paris in 1778, during the first weeks after their arrival. to the brim with lush music created by renowned betray both the influence of impressionism and international artists and Norway’s finest early musicians. the organist’s craft. Featuring pianist Hans Ryckelynck.

at the club Downtown, You’re Legendary Now eighty, a look back at the Village Vanguard’s unlikely path By Jed Distler

AVAILABLE APRIL 14 AVAILABLE APRIL 14 AVAILABLE APRIL 14 VLAD RECORDS 9 ALIUD 75 (SACD) ROYAL FLEMISH PHILHARMONIC 9 (2xCD) ROYAL ROYAL FLEMISH PHILHARMONIC TERRA NOVA MARINE BAND OF THE ROYAL NETHERLANDS NAVY BENOIT: DE SCHELDE TOBI: PREMIERE OEUVRE: SIX CLARINET TRIOS, OP. 1 …PLAYS SAMMY NESTICO World premiere recording of a Dutch-language Part of a project about a contemporary of Mozart With characteristic “sound & drive,” this band has oratorio about the Scheldt River, dated 1867. who lived in Antwerp, composer and virtuoso won the hearts of a large public and has substantially As one of the pioneers of the Flemish music scene, clarinetist Henri Joseph Tobi (1741–1809), this is contributed to the development and appreciation of OF THE VILLAGECOURTESY VANGUARD Peter Benoit was a rarity in the predominantly charming music probably intended for playing in the military music in the Netherlands. French-speaking cultural landscape of Belgium. gilded salons of Antwerp’s grand houses. LISTEN: LIFE WITH MUSIC & CULTURE • 57

AD Listeis n0215 Resolution to swing. Wynton Marsalis at New York’s Village Vanguard, November 30, 1993

hanges come and go in Manhattan’s West Village neighborhood, but the basement club occupying 178 Seventh Avenue South since 1935 remains a C stable and revered New York City landmark. It’s been tweaked for upkeep over the years, but never to the point where you wouldn’t recognize it.

You enter the Village Vanguard as you did speakers who defined the club’s first twenty politics. MC Eli Siegel moved when it first opened in April 1935, by walking years, along in great part with its owner, the show along, kept hecklers fifteen steps down what might be described as Max Gordon. In his 1980 memoir Live at the at bay, and tried to maintain a cross between a staircase and a chute. Then Village Vanguard, Gordon described how he order over the chaos. A few you find yourself in room shaped like a piece essentially fell into the nightclub business. years later, Max auditioned an of pie. A small stage lives at the widest end. Born in Vilna, Lithuania in 1903, Gordon untried teenage actress/singer The room gets narrower as you move back. As grew up in Portland, Oregon, and graduated named Judy Holliday, along with you get close to the back, you’ll find the bar on with a literature major from Reed College. fellow aspirants Adolph Green, one side. Tables and chairs occupy the center He moved to New York City in 1926, not sure Betty Comden, John Frank and floor. The room officially seats one hundred of what to do, but attracted to Greenwich Alvin Hammer, who had been twenty three people. Sightlines are good, Village’s Bohemian atmosphere and nightlife. collaborating on “skits and songs except for the tables near big pillars. He got to know all kinds of neighborhood of satire and social significance.” Most importantly, the sound is good. You characters and personalities, including a Max liked what he heard, and hear everything clearly from each corner of friend who suggested that if she and Max hired them on the spot. They the room, whether it’s the big band presiding opened a place together, her poet friends named themselves The Revuers, on Monday nights, a typical hard bop quintet would help attract a following. and worked the Vanguard nearly every night. came to one of Leadbelly’s shows. A few years would return off and on for another decade, reads like a who’s who of stand-up comedy’s or the more unusual guitar–viola–drums The Village Fair lasted only three months, Sometimes a young music student named earlier, she and her brother tried to get in the and, in fact, served as best man at Max and formative years, from longtime regular Phil lineup of Bill Frisell’s Beautiful Dreamers. And but Gordon’s following grew. Losing no Leonard Bernstein helped out at the piano. Vanguard, but were too young to legally enter Lorraine’s wedding. Leeds, (who became better known as a film the musicians can usually hear each other, momentum, he had designs on the Village Word got around, and a rave review by Dick a bar. She told the Wall Street Journal’s Will Lorraine Gordon elaborated on the and television character actor), Wally Cox and which is important because of the intensely Vanguard in February 1934. But to get a Mason in the New York Post put both the Friedwald that the first words she ever heard eclectic bill of fare characterizing the club’s Jack Gilford to several memorable early sixties interactive nature of jazz. In a 2003 interview cabaret license, Gordon had to meet certain Revuers and the Vanguard on the New York runs with Lenny Bruce. One still can see Nat with Thomas Conrad, recording engineer Jim requirements. He found a former basement nightclub map. From then on, the Vanguard’s Hentoff’s 1963 interview with the controversial Anderson described the room as “big and speakeasy called The Golden Triangle, “closed programming agenda came into focus. IN THE FORTIES AND FIFTIES, THE VANGUARD WAS MORE comedian; Bruce appears high and disheveled quiet and fairly dead. When you put the mikes for alterations.” The place offered exactly what Although regular Monday-night jam SUPPER-CLUB FORMAL IN ITS PRESENTATION, WITH WHITE as he randomly pounds upon the Vanguard’s up, you forget that you are in this cave in the he needed: “two johns, two exits, two hundred sessions offered a broad range of jazz luminar- TABLECLOTHS, WAITERS IN TUXEDOS AND FOOD SERVED. baby grand. Bruce’s mentor, Professor Irwin middle of New York. It’s sort of like a womb feet away from a church or synagogue or ies, it was folk singers, blues artists and Corey, the “World’s Foremost Authority,” that you enter.” school, and with rent under $100 a month.” entertainers who dominated the Vanguard honed his unique absurdist brand of social “With minimal amplification in there, By April 1935 the new Village Vanguard at 178 bandstand during the 1940s. Fellow Village uttered by Max Gordon, her future husband, early years in her 2005 memoir, Alive at the commentary at the Vanguard, where he shared when you play very, very quietly, it has Seventh Avenue South was open for business, denizen and future film director Nicholas Ray were “Get rid of those kids!” Another early Village Vanguard. She remembered calypso a bill with Pearl Bailey in the early forties. presence throughout the entire room,” says and still is. recommended teaming up Josh White and Vanguard performer, Burl Ives, recommended acts who made good use of the little wooden In several respects, the Vanguard was a pianist Fred Hersch, a longtime regular on In the club’s early, pre-liquor-license days, Leadbelly for an act. White’s urbane and suave Richard Dyer-Bennet, the noted tenor who dance floor, like Enid Mosier and the Trinidad training ground for Max Gordon to break in the club’s roster. “There’s a certain kind of clientele ordered glasses, ice and soda and singing and playing style and Leadbelly’s rug- sang ancient Scottish, Irish and English Steel Band, and the Haitian actress and singer new talent before booking them into the Blue stillness, a kind of hush, that you don’t get brought in their own booze. Each evening’s ged, elemental projection couldn’t have been ballads to his own lute accompaniment. Josephine Premice, who later appeared on Angel, the high-end supper club he opened anywhere else.” agenda was fairly loose, and mainly focused more different, yet somehow they meshed. Dyer-Bennet opened in 1942 and stayed at Broadway in Jamaica with Lena Horne and in with Herbert Jacoby in 1943 on New York’s The sound was more than adequate for on poets, who’d read out loud and argue An avid young jazz fan and aspiring artist the Vanguard for the next three years, playing the 1976 revue Bubbling Brown Sugar. The list then-fashionable Upper East Side. The club

the poets, comedians, folk singers and public into the night about poetry, philosophy and from Newark, New Jersey, Lorraine Stein, IMAGES JACK VARTOOGIAN/GETTY three shows a night, six nights a week. He of comedians who held forth at the Vanguard thrived for twenty years before closing in 1964.

58 • SPRING 2015 LISTEN: LIFE WITH MUSIC & CULTURE • 59 Milestones. The Joshua LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD Redman Trio plays the Vanguard on October 28, 2014 (right); Tony Williams plays ESSENTIALS drums in 1965; and Miles 5 Davis performs circa 1959. Sonny Rollins: A Night at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note), recorded November 3, 1957. With just bass and drums behind him, the tenor saxophonist found the perfect canvas for his deceptively complex solos to flourish with a kind of controlled freedom that looked forward and back at the same time. “Perhaps the most important thing about the Blue Angel, in retrospect, was the utter absence of racism on or off its little stage,” wrote Ms. Gordon. “Blue Angel audiences Wynton Marsalis Septet: Live at the Village were always mixed audiences. New York Vanguard (Columbia Jazz), recorded 1991/4. nightlife, particularly in the upper echelons, Mixing celebrated standards, catchy originals and was still shockingly segregated.” Max’s book- ambitious extended works, this seven-disc set ing policies were just as colorblind as they thoroughly vindicates Marsalis’ reputation as a were downtown. He brought the Irwin Corey/ summational force in jazz and as a bandleader who Pearl Bailey bill uptown, as well as Eartha Kitt, nurtures and showcases worthy emerging talent. Harry Belafonte, Johnny Mathis, the Weavers and Mort Sahl. Conversely, Barbra Streisand triumphed at the Blue Angel, but a Vanguard gig eluded her until her special 2009 one- night-only appearance. Art Pepper: The Complete Village Vanguard Yet while the Blue Angel flourished, the Sessions (Contemporary), recorded July 28– Village Vanguard more than held its own and 30, 1977. When the overwhelmingly talented and remained Max’s favorite. In the forties and immensely troubled alto saxophonist returned to fifties, Ms. Gordon recalled, the Vanguard was full time music making, the suave mastery of old more supper-club formal in its presentation, gave way to raw-nerve, death-cheating virtuosity with white tablecloths, waiters in tuxedos and in every chorus, galvanized by a supportive yet food served. But in May 1957, Max decided to combative rhythm section. “refresh the whole entertainment setup” and focus on modern jazz. At first he interspersed leading musicians of the day with verbal performers who had jazz followings, like Paul Motian/Bill Frisell/Joe Lovano: You Mort Sahl, Irwin Corey and, later, Lenny Took the Words Right Out of My Heart Bruce. Jack Keruoac, hot on the heels of his (Winter & Winter), recorded June 1995. successful novel On the Road, took to the This intuitive, thoughtful, fluid and consistently Vanguard stage, reading out loud to musical inventive trio effortlessly interacts, yet knows accompaniment. Soon after, purely musical what to leave unsaid. programming followed. Double bills were the rule rather then the exception. Bill Evans’ seminal 1961 trio performances retain their legend, but it’s sometimes forgotten that Evans shared the Bill Evans: The Complete Village Vanguard bill with the popular jazz vocal trio Lambert, Recordings 1961 (Riverside), recorded June Hendricks and Ross. One hears about John 25, 1961. The pianist, along with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, created a Coltrane’s uncompromisingly far-reaching quiet revolution, elevating the archetypal jazz trio 1966 Vanguard stint with his quintet post-A to an equal partnership. Their most finely honed Love Supreme, but only a few remember the interplay is gorgeously captured in recordings bill’s other “act,” an earlier tenor saxophone made during the trio’s last performance together, pioneer in his own right, Coleman Hawkins. ten days before LaFaro’s untimely death in a Despite the club’s single headliner policy, road accident. musicians invariably share the spotlight with

shades of past and present legends. “The first IMAGES , MOSAIC IMAGES/CORBIS BOB ADELMAN/CORBIS ITO/GETTY HIROYUKI

60 • SPRING 2015 LISTEN: LIFE WITH MUSIC & CULTURE • 61 Breezin’. Maxine Sullivan (far left); Max Gordon and guitarist/singer–songwriter George Benson (left); Jason Moran with Tarus Mateen, bass, in 2010 (below left); and (above) Paul Motian with Masabumi Kikuchi, piano; Thomas Morgan and Ben Street, bass; and Loren Stillman on alto saxophone (2010).

time I played at the Vanguard I was nervous,” in an interview with pianist Ethan Iverson, has open ears, she has a practical mind. “I recalls pianist Christian Sands. “I was who caught Ms. Gordon’s discerning ear and encourage everyone who plays here to include performing with the great bassist Christian soon became a Vanguard favorite. Eisenman at least one standard or ballad in every set — I McBride and his quintet Inside Straight. I cites guitarist Bill Frisell as the person “more say, ‘No one’s going out the door humming remembered walking through the crowd, singularly responsible for still making the that original you wrote ten minutes ago.’ ” on the right side, trying not to knock over Vanguard look like it’s cool. He changed the Perhaps the most telling evidence that the drinks on these small tables (it was so dark) landscape of my booking.” Frisell’s frequent Village Vanguard and jazz are as healthy as and onto the small stage, bright lights hitting collaborator, the late drummer, percussionist ever comes from those who reconnect with my face. I sat down at the piano thinking: and composer Paul Motian, also played a the club and the music after many years. ‘Herbie Hancock sat here. Miles Davis played crucial role in the Vanguard’s recent history. Bassist Frank Canino, who first played the right here, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Charles “Paul was the driving force of the place for Vanguard in 1979 with tenor saxophonist Mingus.’ The list went on and on. And about ten years,” said Eisenman. “From 2001 Warne Marsh and pianist Sal Mosca, returned suddenly our first tune started.” to 2011, he was the artist-in-residence who not in 2010 to see Christian McBride’s quintet. Max Gordon ran the club until he died only worked there eight to ten weeks out of the “It was a life-altering experience,” said Frank. in 1989. The following day, Lorraine Gordon year, but also helped me and Lorraine figure “That group, to me, brought back everything assumed ownership and remains in charge, out how to go with the music and who to hire. that I missed in jazz. Swinging to the point along with her daughter Deborah and He was a real part of the human fabric of the of being danceable like the old jazz bands, long-time general manager Jed Eisenman. establishment. It was great to be able to foist virtuoso playing at every position, every solo Under Ms. Gordon’s watch, the club has that level of boldness and genius and cutting from each player was lyrical, told a story steadfastly maintained its integrity and high edge on people under the banner of Paul and found unexpected places to go yet never artistic standards while adapting a program- Motian, because we could get away with it.” strayed too far from the blues. Everyone ming policy that is arguably more open Yet while the music evolves, certain had a great sound; the dynamic range of the and inclusive, though no less selective. “It traditions remain, such as the Vanguard group as a whole was perfect. And there was goes back and forth between [honoring] the Jazz Orchestra, founded in 1966 by the late an overall sense of humor involved with the history of the music and what is going on now Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, still going strong entire performance. I couldn’t believe I was WILLIAM P. GOTTLIE, LOUIE PSIHOYOS/CORBIS, JOHN ROGERS LOUIE GOTTLIE, WILLIAM P. JOHN ROGERS and where it should be going,” said Eisenman on Monday nights. And while Ms. Gordon hearing something this good.”

62 • SPRING 2015 LISTEN: LIFE WITH MUSIC & CULTURE • 63