December 2011 | No. 116 Your FREE Guide to the NYC Jazz Scene nycjazzrecord.com bending towards the light a jazz nativity HOLIDAYGIFT GUIDE VINCENT •••••LUKAS BAIKIDA OGUN FESTIVAL EVENT CHANCEY LIGETI CARROLL RECORDS REPORTS CALENDAR The Holiday Season is kind of like a mugger in a dark alley: no one sees it coming and everyone usually ends up disoriented and poorer after the experience is over. 4 New York@Night But it doesn’t have to be all stale fruit cake and transit nightmares. The holidays should be a time of reflection with those you love. And what do you love more Interview: Vincent Chancey than jazz? We can’t think of a single thing...well, maybe your grandmother. But 6 by Anders Griffen bundle her up in some thick scarves and snowproof boots and take her out to see some jazz this month. Artist Feature: Lukas Ligeti As we battle trying to figure out exactly what season it is (Indian Summer? 7 by Gordon Marshall Nuclear Winter? Fall Can Really Hang You Up The Most?) with snowstorms then balmy days, what is not in question is the holiday gift basket of jazz available in On The Cover: A Jazz Nativity our fine metropolis. Celebrating its 26th anniversary is Bending Towards The 9 by Marcia Hillman Light: A Jazz Nativity (On The Cover), a retelling of the biblical story starring jazz musicians like this year’s Three Kings - Houston Person, Maurice Chestnut and Encore: Lest We Forget: Wycliffe Gordon (pictured on our cover) - in a setting good for the whole family. 10 Baikida Carroll Spike Jones Get your tickets now for the Dec. 22nd event at BB King’s Blues Bar. The French by Kurt Gottschalk by Donald Elfman horn may be a staple of Christmas music but it is too a serious jazz instrument, as evidenced by the long and fruitful career of Vincent Chancey (Interview), who Megaphone VOXNews performs with several groups this month throughout the city. Percussionist Lukas 11 by Wadada Leo Smith by Suzanne Lorge Ligeti’s (Artist Feature) famous composer father György never wrote any holiday music but the younger musician still has some time before his slate of December Label Spotlight: Listen Up!: concerts at venues all over town. And while trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith’s 12 Ogun Records Mika Mimura (Megaphone) 70th birthday precedes Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa, double by Ken Waxman & Yoni Kretzmer up on gifts to bring him for his two-day celebration at Roulette this month. In addition to our usual smorgasbord of CD reviews and concerts in our Event Calendar, December brings our annual Holiday Gift Guide, filled with books, Festival Report: Tampere • Festival JAZZUV 13 DVDs, boxed sets and other assorted googahs for your buying pleasure. Happy Holidays from your friends at The New York City Jazz Record. CD Reviews: Christian McBride, Rez Abbasi, Dan Blake, Andy Statman, 14 Roy Haynes, Ted Rosenthal, Bob Gluck, Tony Malaby, Curtis Fuller and more Laurence Donohue-Greene, Managing Editor Andrey Henkin, Editorial Director Special Feature: Holiday Gift Guide On the cover: 2011 Bending Towards The Light: A Jazz Nativity Three Kings. 36 From left to right - Wycliffe Gordon, Maurice Chestnut and Houston Person (photo by Barbara Galati) Event Calendar 38 Corrections: In last month’s CD Reviews, Sabir Mateen actually arrived in New York in the late ‘80s. Also, Allen Lowe has never been an academic or 45 Club Directory had any formal association with any academic institution. 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 47 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 Anders Griffen, George Kanzler, Matthew Kassel, General Inquiries: [email protected] Gordon Marshall, Sharon Mizrahi, Sean J. O’Connell, Wadada Leo Smith Advertising: [email protected] Contributing Photographers Editorial: [email protected] Laurence Donohue-Greene, Scott Friedlander, Barbara Galati, Calendar: [email protected] Maarit Kytöharju, Rahav Segev, Peter Serling, Jack Vartoogian All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission strictly prohibited. All material copyrights property of the authors. THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | December 2011 3 NEW YORK @ NIGHT There was much to digest while watching Darcy George Lewis didn’t shy from his jazz background James Argue’s Secret Society perform “Brooklyn during his Composer Portrait profile at Miller Theatre Babylon”, an hour-long work programmed by BAM’s Nov. 12th. The compositions played by the International Next Wave Festival (Nov. 10th). Danijel Zezelj, standing Contemporary Ensemble employed jazz, hiphop and on a catwalk, painted haunting images in black and African American poetry traditions as settings that JAZZ LEGENDS red, using a small roller on a wide and narrow canvas challenged the traditional ways of writing music on PERFORM NIGHTLY 8-11 PM as Argue’s music roared. When Zezelj wasn’t visible, paper. The first half of the program seemed more AT THE his bleak-as-hell urban animation sequences were insistently transgressive. “Northstar Boogaloo” (from projected on a large screen. In time a fictional storyline 1996) was performed by percussionist Steven Schick SETAI FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL emerged: immigrant Lev Bezdomni is contracted to with prerecorded hiphop rhythm tracks and poet build a carousel on top of the 3,000-foot-plus Tower of Quincy Troupe invoking vernacular of the streets. Brooklyn. Apart from some too-obvious symbolism at Schick’s playing was spirited, but the tape spoke its the end, the political message was present without age. “Ikons” (2010) for octet was a study in textures being overbearing. Argue brought out some of his and rhythms, moving with logical consistency through most compelling music to date, with a palette both varied terrains. “Collage” (1995) for Troupe (live this more subtle and expansive than that of his acclaimed time) with an 11-piece ensemble was a jazz suite that debut Infernal Machines. Passages of great delicacy - sat in a lineage alongside Ellington and Mingus poetry piano-clarinet duets, flute chorales, unaccompanied settings. “Artificial Life” (2007) was a structured nylon-string guitar - alternated with moments of improvisation with perimeters given to the players. slashing fury and awesome full-ensemble precision. Peter Evans seized the situation, finding a five-note The staging, too, was beautiful, a counterpoint to phrase and repeating it to exhaustion on pocket ANTONIO CIACCA – DEC. 1-3, 12-17, 24-31 Zezelj’s aesthetic of the grim. Musicians entered from trumpet, but the performance was about group The Bar on Fifth’s Artist in Residence, Antonio Ciacca has delighted various places, cued by a low-brass quartet down on communication. The newest piece on the program was audiences with his soulful gospel-infused playing. the floor. The band wore dull overalls and caps for an “Will to Adorn” from 2011. Bold orchestral sections early 20th-century working-class effect and stood and percussive passages were interspersed with soft, arrayed in a circle with the rhythm section at the center. exquisite refrains in an easy flow of disparate elements. Somehow by disassembling the conventional big band “Artificial Life” was a wonderful setting for improvisers in this way, Argue brought it more together than ever. but this was Lewis’ achievement as a composer. - David R. Adler - Kurt Gottschalk Photograph © 2011 Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos Photograph © 2011 ALBERTO PIBRI – DEC. 4, 11 A rising star in the Italian jazz scene, Alberto Pibri returns to the Bar on Fifth for two nights of solo piano standards. JAIMEO BROWN – DEC 5-10 Photo by Rahav Segev A leading exponent of World Jazz, drummer Jaimeo Brown Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society @ BAM Steven Schick @ Miller Theatre brings his trio to the Setai to present an exciting blend of African rhythms, straight-ahead jazz and R&B. What a feat: combining four motley instruments, It’s hard to know what the multi-faceted multi- without drums, and honing a sound so endlessly and instrumentalist Jamie Saft is really like when he’s precisely rhythmic. Ten years as a working band will alone at home, but a solo set he played at the Sixth do that. The Four Bags returned to Barbès (Nov. 6th), Street Synagogue’s Center for Jewish Arts and Literacy where they made 2006’s Live at Barbès and focused on on Nov. 9th seemed like a peek through the window. material from their new recording Forth. Clarinetist With a bank of electric vintage keyboards, a Wurlitzer, Michael McGinnis emceed the two sets, offering up a Casio and something called a Gem Sprinter running song titles and witticisms. But musically, the spotlight through a rig of stompboxes, Saft played long suites of was on everyone: Brian Drye on trombone, Sean Moran stitched together Sephardic-tinged themes that came on electric guitar and Jacob Garchik (widely known as off like Herbie Hancock living next door to a coven. AYAKO SHIRASAKI – DEC. 18-23 a trombonist) on accordion. Garchik’s opener, “Wayne Heavily distorted bass drones either supplemented or One of Japan’s remarkable jazz talents, Ayako Shirasaki, has Shorter’s Tune With All Different Notes”, put funky undermined the jazzy pianistics and pulsating loops established herself as a rising star in New York City’s scene.