feBrUARY 2019—ISSUe 202 YOUr FREE GUide TO THE NYC JAZZ SCENE NYCJAZZRECORD.COM BILLY HART ENCHANCING wallace joe christopher eddie roney fiedler hollyday costa Managing Editor: Laurence Donohue-Greene Editorial Director & Production Manager: Andrey Henkin To Contact: The New York City Jazz Record 66 Mt. Airy Road East feBrUARY 2019—ISSUe 202 Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520 United States Phone/Fax: 212-568-9628 new york@niGht 4 Laurence Donohue-Greene: interview : wallace roney 6 by anders griffen [email protected] Andrey Henkin: artist featUre : joe fiedler 7 by steven loewy [email protected] General Inquiries: on the cover : Billy hart 8 by jim motavalli [email protected] Advertising: encore : christopher hollyday 10 by robert bush [email protected] Calendar: lest we forGet : eddie costa 10 by mark keresman [email protected] VOXNews: LAbel spotliGht : astral spirits 11 by george grella [email protected] VOXNEWS by suzanne lorge US Subscription rates: 12 issues, $40 11 Canada Subscription rates: 12 issues, $45 International Subscription rates: 12 issues, $50 For subscription assistance, send check, cash or oBitUaries 12 by andrey henkin money order to the address above or email [email protected] FESTIVAL REPORT 13 Staff Writers Duck Baker, Stuart Broomer, Robert Bush, Kevin Canfield, CD reviews 14 Marco Cangiano, Thomas Conrad, Ken Dryden, Donald Elfman, Phil Freeman, Kurt Gottschalk, Miscellany Tom Greenland, George Grella, 31 Anders Griffen, Tyran Grillo, Alex Henderson, Robert Iannapollo, event calendar Matthew Kassel, Mark Keresman, 32 Marilyn Lester, Suzanne Lorge, Marc Medwin, Jim Motavalli, Russ Musto, John Pietaro, Joel Roberts, John Sharpe, Elliott Simon, Andrew Vélez, Scott Yanow Contributing Writers Brian Charette, Steven Loewy, As unpredictable as the flow of a jazz improvisation is the path that musicians ‘take’ (the verb Francesco Martinelli, Annie Murnighan, implies agency, which is sometimes not the case) during the course of a career. Drummer Billy Anna Steegmann Hart (On The Cover) started out modestly in the bands of Shirley Horn and Jimmy Smith yet, Contributing Photographers as results of both talent and longevity, is now in the pantheon of the masters, due in no small George Council, Enid Farber, part to his work as a leader. Both sides of Hart are on display this month at Village Vanguard, Peter Gannushkin, Charline Messa, Birdland and Jazz Standard. Trumpeter Wallace Roney (Interview) has been yoked to the Alan Nahigian, Robert I. Sutherland-Cohen, spirit of mentor Miles Davis since almost the beginning of his career but it was the latter’s Adrien H. Tillmann emphasis on letting a band become its own entity that was perhaps the lasting lesson learned. Roney is at Blue Note for three Mondays. Trombonist Joe Fiedler (Artist Feature) had done it Fact-checker all but yet there was still more, namely a new album mixing his jazz pedigree and ‘day job’ as Nate Dorward Musical Director of Sesame Street. Fiedler debuts his tribute to the classic music of the children’s television show at Dizzy’s Club. And while alto saxophonist Christopher Hollyday (Encore), who has recently released his first album in decades after falling out of the jazz scene after a luminous start as a teenager, is back playing, vibraphonist/pianist Eddie Costa (Lest nycjazzrecord.com We Forget) died tragically at the height of his fame, his promise only somewhat fulfilled. On The Cover: Billy Hart (Adrien H. Tillmann - www.aht1985.com) Corrections: In last month’s CD Reviews, we inaccurately made the claim that the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band was “France’s banner band”. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission strictly prohibited. All material copyrights property of the authors. 2 FEBRUARY 2019 | THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD HYPNOTIC BRASS RON CARTER’S CHRISTIAN SCOTT ENSEMBLE BLUE NOTE WINTER RESIDENCY! ATUNDE ADJUAH JANUARY 31 - FEBRUARY 3 FEB 4, 9 - 10 • MAR 26 - 27 FEBRUARY 5 - 8 ERIC HARLAND’S THUNDERCAT DAVID SANBORN VOYAGER FEBRUARY 12 - 17 FEBRUARY 19 - 24 FEBRUARY 26 - 27 SPECIAL SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH $39.50 INCLUDES BRUNCH, MUSIC & COCKTAIL @bluenotenyc l3l WEST 3RD STREET NEW YORK CITY • 2l2.475.8592 • WWW.BLUENOTEJAZZ.COM TWO SHOWS NIGHTLY 8PM & l0:30PM • FRIDAY & SATURDAY LATE NIGHTS: l2:30AM TELECHARGE.COM WWW.BLUENOTEJAZZ.COM TERMS, CONDITIONS AND RESTRICTIONS APPLY new york @ niGht Stone residencies, held at New School’s Glass Box In a most basic sense, musicians have to address Theater, usually have a featured artist present different melody, harmony, rhythm, form and dynamics, projects each night, giving fans chances to hear them in individually, of course, but combined in a whole for diverse interpersonal contexts. For the second night sure. For a drummer and a drummer-leader at that like (Jan. 9th) of his five-day run, pianist Craig Taborn Francisco Mela, some of these elements are under his ECSTATIC enlisted the distinctive musical personalities of control while others have to be ceded to a certain extent trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, cellist Tomeka Reid and to his bandmembers, a trusting bird pushing babies MUSIC drummer Ches Smith to perform, as he put it, “some out of a nest. For the late (even later because the band newish music”. There were charts on the music stands before went long) set at Blue Note (Jan. 7th), Mela FESTIVAL and recognizable time signatures and themes, the latter looked towards composers who had spent their careers cued by Taborn or Finlayson, but the cumulative effect in the pursuit of creativity through balance, spontaneity was not so systematic, straddling that gray line achieved through structure: Paul Motian and Andrew between preplanning and extemporization. Taborn Hill and, even further back, Sonny Rollins and played piano and keyboard, favoring the former, Thelonious Monk. He did so with a quartet drawn rocking and bobbing on his throne when so inspired by from a wide cross-section of the city’s players, all of emergent events. By the third (of four) pieces (no titles whom, like himself, hailed from elsewhere, the Cuban were given), the quartet was well entrenched in the drummer making a point of introducing everyone by proverbial ‘zone’: Reid’s pinched harmonics and origin: countryman tenor saxophonist Hery Paz, sliding attacks were deftly underlined by sparse piano Wisconsinite pianist Ethan Iverson and New Orleanais and light cymbal accents, Smith combined (right hand) bassist John Hébert. It was a shame that some of their drumkit touches with (left hand) xylophone chimes, set time had been stolen away but perhaps that led to Deerhoof & Tigue Taborn launched a montuno that never quite locked the quartet’s remarkably focused playing: five tunes in into a clavé rhythm and Finlayson matched Taborn’s 68 minutes, subtracting Mela’s intersong banter. In “Earth’s most exuberant percussive touch with staccato attacks. The final piece today’s jazz the Hill/Motian school is often segregated art-pop band” ( Time Out New York) Deerhoof meets began with a (Bach) partita-like solo by Reid, soon from the Monk/Rollins camp so it was refreshing to the “high octane” (New York morphing into sliding microtones and legato finger hear modernists like Iverson and Hébert find the Times) percussion trio Tigue patterns echoed by Smith’s wet-finger-across-the- common ground in all of it, Paz frosting the cake with for a performance of Friend drumhead groans, culminating in a 7/4 rhythm muscular lines, Mela behind the kit with a smile that Opportunity, Deerhoof’s impelled by Finlayson’s strident riffs. —Tom Greenland could have reached Bayamo. —Andrey Henkin widely-beloved 2007 album. Sat, Feb 16 G 7:30 pm R O . S N O I S S E R P X Y E Z H Z P A A J R / G O N T E O H F O R C - E D B R N A A F L R D I E N H E T 8 U 1 Irreversible S 0 . 2 I . Entanglements, © R Amina Claudine Tomeka Reid & Ches Smith @ The Stone at the New School Francisco Mela @ Blue Note Myers & Nicole Mitchell For its third edition (Jan. 13th), the Mediterranean One guesses that a lesson instilled in students at the Jazz Festival moved to Drom, an ideal setting for its Brooklyn Conservatory of Music is “playing well with Three generations of Black multicultural ethos. The first act featured two Greek others”. But, after hours (Jan. 13th), in the ninth edition women whose contributions vocalists/multi-instrumentalists, Magda Giannikou of the Inside Out series curated by Aryeh Kobrinsky, to creative music have for- ever altered its pathways — and Mavrothi Kontanis, who repurposed Hellenic the emphasis was on musicians tackling their respective Myers, Mitchell and Camae folksongs into improvisatory vehicles, the former instruments unaccompanied, playing well with Ayewa — join the revolu- accompanying herself on accordion, the latter coaxing themselves, as it were. The Solo Festival was five tionary free jazz collective bluesy microtones from his oud or violin. Catalonian pithy expositions by Anne Rhodes (vocals/electronics), Irreversible Entanglements pianist Lluis Capdevila played a short, equable set of Dan Peck (tuba), Wendy Eisenberg (banjo), Sean Ali for the premiere of a new ariose yet unpredictable tunes, waxing enthusiastic (prepared upright bass) and Chiquita Magic (vocals/ collaborative piece. on the last, “Leaving Spain”. Lebanese pianist Tarek synthesizers). Opening and closing the evening with Thu, Feb 28 Yamani’s trio was a revelation, mixing a loose-but- the vocalists, it was the bookended instrumentalists 7:30 pm tight jazz attitude with Arabic muwashshah form and who together created a theme of palpable physicality. sema’i and dabke rhythms, creating an organic hybrid of It is sometimes easy to close one’s eyes at a concert, March Performances ecstatic proportions. When gaditano saxophonist/ confident that we know how an instrument’s sound is cantaor Antonio Lizana joined the group for two produced.