June 2012 | No. 122 Your FREE Guide to the NYC Jazz Scene nycjazzrecord.com MILES DAVIS THE MAN WITH THE HORN CHARLIE • DARIUS • TERJE • POTLATCH • EVENT WATTS JONES RYPDAL RECORDS CALENDAR There are a few icons in jazz history who can be identified solely by a single name: Sonny, Trane, Ornette, Cecil and, perhaps most famous of all, Miles. The trumpeter (1926-99) was both an innovator and a household name (1959’s Kind of Blue is jazz’ New York@Night answer to Michael Jackson’s Thriller as album to be found in most record 4 collections). Much has been made of Davis’ many groups (who else has a first and second classic quintet?), his skill as a talent scout, even his gruff public persona Interview: Charlie Watts and indefatigable style. But lost in these discussions is an analysis of Miles Davis 6 by Sean O’Connell the musician and what he brought to the trumpet lineage in his nearly 50-year Artist Feature: Darius Jones career. On The Cover this month we speak with a number of Davis’ colleagues and stylistic heirs for their thoughts on Miles’ musical legacy. Tributes to Miles for 7 by Sharon Mizrahi what would have been his 86th birthday are at Smoke from late May through June. On The Cover: Miles Davis In our other features, drummer Charlie Watts (Interview) has spent his own almost-50 years as part of an iconic group (you may have heard of them...the by Terrell Holmes 9 Rolling Stones) but his other love is jazz and he has led big bands and released Encore: Lest We Forget: albums fêting legendary jazz drummers. Watts’ new group, The ABC&D of Boogie Woogie, appears at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing and Iridium Jazz 10 Terje Rypdal Jackie Paris Club in its American debut performances. And while alto saxophonist Darius by Tom Conrad by Andrew Vélez Jones (Artist Feature) has many decades to go before reaching the status of our Megaphone VOXNews other features, his leader debut triptych on AUM Fidelity (2012’s Book of Mæ’bul; 2011’s Big Gurl and 2009’s Man’ish Boy) is a very good start. This month, Jones by Matt Garrison/Fortuna Sung by Katie Bull 11 leads a quartet at Vision Festival and co-leads a quintet at The Jazz Gallery. Label Spotlight: Listen Up!: Filling out our coverage are spotlights on Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal (Encore) in a very rare stateside appearance at Le Poisson Rouge, the late vocalist 12 Potlatch Records Vitaly Golovnev Jackie Paris (Lest We Forget), celebrated at Tribeca Performing Arts Center’s Lost by Ken Waxman & Benjamin Barson Jazz Shrines, and French record label Potlatch, as well as festival reports from Holland and Norway. 13 Festival Report: dOek Festival • Trondheim Enjoy the beginning of summer and we’ll see you out there. CD Reviews: Ravi Coltrane, Stéphane Grappelli, Nate Wooley, Laurence Donohue-Greene, Managing Editor Andrey Henkin, Editorial Director 14 Cyrus Chestnut, Linda Oh, Spectrum Road, Charles Gayle and more On the cover: Miles Davis (photo by Lee Tanner, courtesy of Sony Music) Event Calendar 38 Corrections: In last month’s NY@Night on Randy Weston, the poet who collaborated with Weston was not Sonia Sanchez but Jayne Cortez, In last Club Directory month’s Cameron Brown interview, the pedigree of the Art Blakey DVD was 45 incorrect; it was released on TDK and recorded at the Umbria Jazz Festival in 1976. Miscellany: In Memoriam • Birthdays • On This Day Submit Letters to the Editor by emailing [email protected] 47 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 / 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, Sharon Mizrahi, Russ Musto, Joel Roberts, John Sharpe, Elliott Simon, [email protected] Jeff Stockton, Andrew Vélez, Ken Waxman Andrey Henkin: [email protected] Contributing Writers General Inquiries: [email protected] Duck Baker, Matt Garrison, George Kanzler, Advertising: [email protected] Matthew Kassel, Sean J. O’Connell, Michael Steinman Editorial: [email protected] Contributing Photographers Calendar: [email protected] Scott Friedlander, Peter Gannushkin, Max Keppler, Phillipe Marchin, Anthony Merced, Alan Nahigian, Susan O’Connor, Jan Persson, Lee Tanner, Jack Vartoogian All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission strictly prohibited. All material copyrights property of the authors. THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | June 2012 3 NEW YORK @ NIGHT Jazz musicians often develop uncanny systems of There may be no pianist - no musician, even - who nonverbal communication. But tenor saxophonist should be called upon to pay homage to the great Cecil Jimmy Heath, 85, and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath, Taylor, which is what made the “Celebrating Cecil” 76, share a closer and longer bond than most and the concert at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse May 9th so playful onstage code they’ve evolved seems to guide nonintuitively perfect. Vijay Iyer, Amina Claudine every performance by the Heath Brothers Quartet. Myers and Craig Taborn are three of the strongest Kicking off a late set at Birdland with Jimmy’s pianists around and if none of them quite work in the midtempo “Sound for Sore Ears” (May 3rd), they intense multi-linearity of Taylor’s attack, all brought greeted improvised ideas with shouts, dances, double something to a program of solos and duets that also takes or just little shifts of posture that somehow fed included a short and bitingly funny reading by poet into the music itself. During a pause Jimmy referred to Amiri Baraka. Iyer encapsulated Taylor’s particular his cohorts as “young men” and, indeed, rock-solid language, even seeming to quote phrases from the bassist David Wong couldn’t help underlining that this honoree’s early records. Myers worked the extreme was once a three-brother band (Percy, the eldest Heath, ends of the keyboard before finding her way toward a died in 2005). In terms of soloing prominence and prayer in song, which worked into a sort of singing in harmonic game plan, much rested on the shoulders of tongues, bringing to mind Taylor’s own sound poetry. pianist Jeb Patton, a confident master of the bop-and- Taborn played a determinedly gradual progression, beyond milieu handed down by prior pianists with the sticking with an opening quietude for a considerable group such as Wynton Kelly and Stanley Cowell. Even time before moving toward onslaught with a repeating Patton’s more restrained solos delivered a jolt, single-note motif that dramatically punctuated the something to push at the boundaries of the idiom. whirlwind. A panel talk led by George Lewis after the There was unplanned audience participation during concert stressed that Taylor’s music isn’t unstructured “Bluesville”, a greasy Sonny Red shuffle, and some but deeply structured, full of (as Iyer put it) “detail, choice tambourine from Tootie on the closing “Winter complexity, specificity and order.” If there was to be Sleeves”, based on “Autumn Leaves”. Jimmy fashioned something Cecil-esque about the night, it was perhaps a warm and complex soprano saxophone tone on the in the use of the whole of the keyboard, the flight to far first half of “’Round Midnight” and Tootie’s funky left and far right and maybe in a sense that, at least reading of the famous coda was pure individuality. some of the time, all the notes were equal. - David R. Adler - Kurt Gottschalk A n t h o n y n M a i e g r i c h e a d / N H n a a l r l A e m y b S o t t a o g h e P Heath Brothers Quartet @ Birdland Craig Taborn @ Harlem Stage Gatehouse Watching the Undead Music Festival’s night of Trumpeter Amir ElSaffar’s heritage is never far from improvised duets at 92YTribeca (May 12th), it was hard his music. The Middle Eastern origins might be more to miss the element of ritual. 17 players came and went, apparent on his most recent CD (Inana, Pi Recordings) speaking only through their instruments, observing a than they were at The Jazz Gallery May 4th, if nothing well-defined ‘round robin’ protocol. Drummer Amir else by virtue of the instrumentation, but even with a Ziv played solo until saxophonist John Ellis emerged traditional jazz quintet (sax, piano, bass, drums), the to stir up the first duet. Then keyboardist Matt Mottel complex rhythms and long melodic lines didn’t just of Talibam! began to engage Ellis as Ziv walked off. evoke his Iraqi heritage, they embodied it. With the And so it went: electric and acoustic sounds mingling; easy yet outstretched sound of Tony Malaby’s tenor it noisy abstractions offset by controlled virtuosic was open but not unscripted jazz with touches of displays; older and younger players from different middle period Coltrane spirituality - not the volcanic circles, thrust into unfamiliar situations and moving but the oceanic. But ElSaffar’s compositions for the toward a common goal. There were echoes of the ’70s new group were grounded in the musical prayers of loft scene, perhaps most clearly in the alto saxophone/ the maqam, the ancient microtonal ishtarum mode and drum dialogue of Loren Stillman and Mike Pride.