Wasn’t it the immortal Charles Dickens who described the decade of the French Revolution as being “the best of times — and the worst of times?” Truer words have never been spoken– especially when it comes to American politics in their current form. But the American art form known as jazz continues to thrive despite serious challenges. It was not difficult to find ten albums to praise — rather, it was difficult to narrow the worthy subjects down to just ten. Here are my favorites:
WADADA LEO SMITH – Solo: Reflections and Meditations on Monk (Tum Records)
The idea of a solo trumpet offering might seem daunting – but after taking in Smith’s stunning a cappella version of ‘Round Midnight – all potential objections seem silly, in retrospect. Mr. Smith turns out to be an astonishing interpreter of the Monk canon.
JOSHUA WHITE – 13 Short Stories (Fresh Sound New Talent)
White has been picking up high-profile gigs with the likes of Rudresh Mahanthappa and Eric Revis, alongside his duties as a member of bassist Mark Dresser’s Septet. This quartet featuring Josh Jonson on alto saxophone, Dean Hulett on bass and Jonathan Pinson on drums might just catapult the pianist into the next level.
GARY PEACOCK — Tangents (ECM)
Peacock has been enjoying a personal renaissance lately, and his trio featuring Marc Copland on piano and Joey Baron on drums, deliver a hauntingly beautiful statement that continues to linger in the ear. Special shout-out to Baron’s ride cymbal – one of the most joyous sounds in modern music.
RUDRESH MAHANTHAPPA – Agrima (Self Released)
Mahanthappa achieves a remarkably orchestral palette with this session, featuring Rez Abbasi’s guitar and the drum/ table multiplicity of Dan Weiss. Certainly one of the most consistently exciting discs to emerge in the past year.
CHRIS POTTER – Dreamer is the Dream (ECM)
This might be the finest disc Potter has ever been involved with. Much of the success can be attributed to the wonderful chemistry achieved by David Virelles on piano, Joe Martin on bass, and Marcus Gilmore on drums. The title track finds Potter morphing seamlessly between bass clarinet and tenor and sounding superb on both.
REZ ABBASI ¬ Unfiltered Universe (Whirlwind Recordings)
This might be the year of Rez Abbasi. He’s been creating beautiful and profound statements for quite some time, but this feels special. Featuring a group of like-minded cohorts including Rudresh Mahanthappa on saxophone, Vijay Iyer on piano, Dan Weiss on drums, Elizabeth Mikhael on cello and Johannes Weidenmueller on bass, Unfilerted Universe soars from a compositional and instrumental perspective.
NICOLE MITCHELL — Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds (FPE)
Nicole Mitchell’s music is always evolving from year to year and moment to moment. She swoops, flutters and growls multiphonically on this collection of futuristic themes with an expanded ensemble featuring Tomeka Reid’s cello, Tatsu Aoki’s bass and the vocals of Avery R. Young among others.
MATTHEW SHIPP TRIO — Piano Song (Thirsty Ear)
There is talk that this might be Shipp’s swan song recording, which would be a sad farewell, for sure. But what a way to go. Shipp’s trio with Michael Bisio on bass and the remarkable Newman Taylor Baker on drums make this an essential pick up.
RICH HALLEY / CARSON HALLEY – The Wild (Pine Eagle)
This bracing tenor saxophone and drum duet between veteran improviser Rich Halley and his son Carson constitutes a smoking document full of give and take. Released in the 50th anniversary of Coltrane’s Interstellar Space, the document actually compares quite well.
MARIO PAVONE – Vertical (Clean Feed)
Pavone’s music is also experiencing a renaissance of sorts, and his latest offering on Clean Feed with Dave Ballou on trumpet, Tony Malaby and Oscar Noriega on reeds and Peter McEachern on trombone is the kind of stuff that will sustain the listener on multiple levels.
The most important part of my daily routine, from a staying alive perspective, takes place on my two-hour, five mile walk through the local neighborhoods in San Diego.
Aside from the cardiovascular benefit, the real reason I love the walk is the opportunity to take in a couple of hours of uninterrupted music. I try to keep a balance between stuff I love, stuff that’s part of my musical DNA, and newer releases, which arrive constantly.
The Stuff I Love
There is always John Coltrane on the iPod. For many moons, it was Crescent and One Up, One Down. The former for its melancholic agitation, and the latter for the unhinged and ecstatic experience of ‘Trane laying it down in front of a large (and noisy) nightclub crowd. The blue Impulse ’63 collection Coltrane also spent many hours leaking into my brain, as did First Meditations for Quartet, which has resonated for me since my early twenties. But for the last few months, the dominant forces in my headphones have belonged to Stellar Regions, and Cosmic Music. Many folks can’t go there, but when you do, the rewards are almost indescribably beautiful. I’m not sure if those two discs will ever come off my iPod, and although I’m looking forward to reacquainting myself with the volcanic Sun Ship, (the 1965 session that documented the final moments of the “classic quartet”) I still get the chills every time Stellar Regions (1967) and Cosmic Music (1966-68) come up.
More or less enjoying a similar place of distinction is the Joni Mitchell live masterpiece Shadows & Light, with Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Don Alias, Michael Brecker and Lyle Mays. I love Joni, and I love these versions of the tunes, most of which are culled from Hejira and Mingus. Also, the monstrous 1982 session from the Keith Jarrett Standards Trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, Standards Volume II. Standards Volume I, this album and Changeless were all recorded in one afternoon – possibly the most productive afternoon in jazz history. If you’ve never heard Jarrett and company caress tunes like “Never Let Me Go,” and “Moon and Sand,” you owe yourself the experience. I’ve never heard a bass recorded with such loving detail.
What About New Music?
This is actually what keeps me going. In the past few months I’ve been enthralled by new discs from the Mark Dresser Seven and the Matthew Shipp Trio (both of which I reviewed for the New York City Jazz Record.) I have also been impressed by two new albums on the ECM label, Ralph Towner’s My Foolish Heart, and John Abercrombie’s Up and Coming. Both discs are incredibly beautiful, but Towner’s solo album is hands down, the finest record I’ve heard in years. It’s that good. What’s strange to me is that I’ve never been a huge Towner fan, and I’m not particularly attracted to solo guitar albums, but My Foolish Heart is a definitive statement and it sings with a distinctive clarity.
New albums from the CleanFeed label are always joyful. I’ve been mesmerized by a live disc from Evan Parker, Daunik Lazro, and Joe McPhee called Seven Pieces Live at Willisau. Three saxophones plus McPhee’s pocket trumpet, and not an ounce of fat. I also spent considerable time with the duet album from drum veteran Whit Dickey and trumpet phenomenon Kirk Knuffke, Fierce Silence which permeates beauty and invention.
Nicole Mitchell is the Next Adventure…
To wrap this up, I’ll share a little anecdote. I’ve actually been fascinated by the flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell for many years. When she moved to California from Chicago five years ago to teach at UC Irvine, I was ecstatic, and being able to see her perform live has been a constant source of joy and amazement for me.
For the last couple of years, every time I’d see her play, I would encourage her to send me whatever her latest record happened to be, because I was pretty sure I’d love it and would go out of my way to review it.
Two weeks ago, Nicole sent me a wonderful Christmas package that included 16 of her albums. I get a lot of albums in the mail, but this feels special. So I am embarking on a long-term journey to really absorb her music. I’m doing it five discs at a time, so the iPod is basically heavily loaded to favor her vision.
And the music is incredible! Awakening is a quartet featuring Jeff Parker, Harrison Bankhead and Avreeayl Ra. One of the side benefits of this plethora of Mitchell releases are the opportunities to really get familiar with these players, who all have long histories with the flutist. Bankhead is also featured on the Indigo Trio with the superlative Hamid Drake on Anaya, a 2009 session on Rogue Art. Mitchell’s art ranges from that sparse trio (which sounds anything but sparse) to an orchestral session on Delmark called Hope, Future and Destiny. Mitchell’s range is astonishing, and her mastery of multiphonics is brilliant.
The failure to recognize genius has a long-term price tag .
I’ve been a committed jazz fan for more than thirty years, and the most important truth I’ve gleaned from a dogged immersion in this music is an appreciation for the power of Black Genius. Any intelligent discussion of jazz involves, number one, an acknowledgement that this art form is the creation of the African-American community.
All of its innovators have been black – that should not be an argumentative presumption. This is not to diminish the contributions of the many terrific white musicians who have come to the music – it’s a crucial fallacy to believe that giving black musicians their due somehow lowers the value of white players.
The fact that all of the iconic innovators in this music have been black can easily be demonstrated by a cursory examination of the most obvious examples. For instance, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor, Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, George Lewis. These are just a few of the giants of improvised music – a few examples of those whose merit cannot be seriously argued by any rational scholar.
They all share one thing in common – they don’t have a white counterpart. I find joy in this fact, but even if I didn’t – it remains a fact. In America, we seem to have missed the boat, and lost a huge cultural opportunity for advancement by being stuck in a mode that refused to acknowledge the immensity of Black Genius.
Let me be perfectly clear about this: there have been many, many white contributors to this music who have been innovators — however, in the “Mount Rushmore” of iconic innovators that I imagine, those figures are black.
I thought long and hard about this : there are compelling cases to be made for Lennie Tristano, and Steve Lacy, for example, certainly innovators in the larger scope, but they wouldn’t be carved into my mountainside.
I grew up in the sixties, and I clearly remember that in my primary and secondary education – the notion of Black Genius was reduced to two examples: George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington. Frederick Douglas was mentioned, mostly for his role in the abolitionist movement, with very little emphasis given to his stunning intellectual achievements. That was it. No mention of even obvious historical figures like W.E.B Dubois; and in the sixties, Martin Luther King Jr. was still regarded as an extremely polarizing political figure with none of the adulation common to the present day.
But everyone of us understood (because we were told) that J.S. Bach, Wolfgang Mozart, and Ludwig von Beethoven were absolute musical geniuses. Their work was serious and important and every educated person was expected to accept that premise as common knowledge.
Louis Armstrong was frequently featured on 1960s TV, but only as an “entertainer,” mostly relegated to vocal renditions of pop music or the clichéd warhorse “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In,” a tune so corny that even white folks loved to clap along (usually off-beat.) Once in a great while, Duke Ellington or Miles Davis might make it onto the airwaves – but the idea that these men were geniuses on par with Bach and Beethoven was never advanced or discussed.
Imagine what a different world we might live in today if only we had the wisdom and humility to admit that black people were producing art of the highest degree back in the sixties (or any other decade.) Of course, the mindset to make that realization involves first admitting that we are all humans deserving equal rights, respect and protection under the law. We are, as a country, much to our shame, still a long way from such an understanding, and because of that myopia, America has never really bothered to champion its most stunning, and only indigenous artform.
And of course, that myopic dysfunction has led to the wholesale dismissal of generations of geniuses. What if every American child could whistle Duke’s “Rockin in Rhythm,” or appropriate snatches of Armstrong’s iconic solo on “West End Blues,”? What if Bird’s shocking alto break on “Night in Tunisia,” was part of our cultural lexicon, or if we, as a nation could sing Monk tunes like we can all imitate “Fur Elise,” or the dun-dun-dun daah of Beethoven’s 9th? Would a nation that shared such information debase itself in what passes for the “pop” music of today?
I don’t think so. I truly believe that exposing people to innovations in human achievement represents the opening of a door not easily closed.
But perhaps more importantly, developing an understanding of the above could serve as an important argument for abandoning grotesque notions of white supremacy and the tacit reliance on white privilege that remains an uncomfortable subject that so few are willing to discuss seriously.
I believe that it would become harder to accept the wholesale discrimination, mass incarceration, and economic depravity with which we have shackled our fellow human beings if we could only acknowledge the brilliance and depth of their contribution to the American experience – in all fields, not just music.
I use music as my argument, because music is what I know.
I continue to hope to live in an America that values and celebrates the musical achievements of the African-American community. There is a treasure trove of joyous exploration to be found in this music – it may be an acquired taste, but once acquired, it often becomes a preferred one.
I began this essay with a short (extremely short) list of black musical geniuses. Those were icons – names so obvious as to be beyond serious debate. The true list is immensely more populous.
One could think of the Bebop and Free Jazz movements as the “Manhattan Projects” of American music. In the same way we can all cite Albert Einstein, and Robert Oppenheimer – it’s easy enough to single out Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman.
But the Manhattan Project only succeeded because of the collective work of thousands of brilliant minds – most of who were in the genius category by any standard measure.
Jazz music serves as the living proof that one doesn’t have to imagine what such an intelligent, collective force could accomplish in the pursuit of a nonviolent, nondestructive goal – it’s all right there in front of you – easily available for anyone with the time and inclination to investigate.
There are the instrumental geniuses: people like Clifford Brown and Bud Powell and Wes Montgomery – who have changed the way their instruments are perceived – there are the compositional geniuses – folks like Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman, Mingus and Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith – who changed the way we hear the music itself – closely related are the conceptual geniuses – Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor –who forever broke through the stylistic constraints of what was thought “proper.”
I used to be kind of perplexed or bemused by the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s emblematic motto: “Great Black Music.” The younger me didn’t know if the phrase was meant to exclude me. I no longer feel that way – in part because of an interview that I saw with the great bass player Cecil McBee, on tour with the Leaders, a group that featured trumpeter Lester Bowie and drummer Famoudou Don Moye – both members of the Art Ensemble. McBee postulated that all American music was “Great Black Music” – even country music – even Elvis. All of a sudden it made sense to me – black people are intrinsically woven into the American experience, and they have been influencing or downright creating the music of our culture from the beginning.
“Great Black Music,” isn’t just a slogan fit for banners, emblems and bumper stickers – it’s a truth we should all acknowledge with pride.
Reflections on what being “open-minded” musically really means.
Doodle in Paint, by R.B.
I’m often accused of being a “jazz snob,” a description I tend to accept wholeheartedly without even thinking, let alone feeling injury. To me that’s like being called a “card carrying member of the ACLU,” or someone from the “intelligentsia.” That’s an insult?
But in fact, it’s not exactly true. I grew up like anyone else from my generation, choosing what to identify with musically, from what I was exposed to – be it the TV of the Sixties; FM radio of the Seventies, or the music my older siblings played at home.
Early on, music played a huge role in my developing personality, and I went through several phases of obsession with the Beatles, then the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. My brother, being six years older, had a record collection that was a constant source of inspiration, so as soon as he would leave the house, I’d sneak into his room and play his Credence Clearwater Revival, Crosby, Stills and Nash, the Who, and Van Morrison records religiously.
I read about music obsessively, and that research led me to a lifelong fascination with “Black Music,” first blues, then soul. Being raised in the multicultural neighborhood of National City didn’t hurt either, I remember the glee I felt when encountering a tiny record store on my way to school ran by cats who might have been early Rastafarian’s in like 69-70, where to their disbelief, I purchased records by Bloodstone, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder and Albert King.
In high school, a lost neighborhood soul led me to Wes Montgomery and Shuggie Otis. I can proudly say that I was hip to the original “Strawberry Letter 23,” back when it first came out on his debut record in 1971.Six years later, with the Brothers Johnson, it became a huge hit. A guitar teacher lent me his early B.B. King records on the Kent label from the late 50’s early 60’s.
Digging the Allman Brothers made me check out T. Bone Walker and Elmore James, and living in the hood introduced me to James Brown, Earth Wind & Fire, Santana and Tower of Power. My brother’s ongoing interests exposed me to Jackson Browne and Poco and many of the other country-rock groups.
The first three records I ever bought with my allowance money at the age of 11 were James Taylor’s Fire and Rain, Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced?, and the first Santana album. That same year my mom talked my brother and brother-in-law into taking me to see my first live concert: Led Zeppelin at the San Diego Sports Arena. “Whole Lotta Love,” had just hit the charts.
So my point here is that pop music is a huge part of my background. I spent hundreds of hours absorbing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Carole King’s Tapestry, the Allman’s Live at the Fillmore East, Steely Dan’s Katy Lied, and Royal Scam among others.
Getting exposed to jazz was the single most important experience in my life but it didn’t come instantly or easily. I didn’t start out digging Coltrane or Woody Shaw immediately – I needed “gateway drugs” to enter that phase. Since I played guitar, Wes, John McLaughlin and George Benson were especially helpful because I could relate directly to what they were doing.
Seeing Jean-Luc Ponty live in 1977 really turned things around for me, and from then on it was jazz (as I understood it) full time for me. As surely as fusion drew me in, knowing that other musics existed proved irresistible, and eventually I had to know the music of Coltrane, Dolphy, Braxton and the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
And as I was learning that music and what it led to, there were always musics from other disciplines pulling me toward their expressions. I began to develop an appreciation for contemporary classical music – Stravinsky, Bartok, Shostakovich, all the way to Steve Reich, Phillip Glass and many others.
Seeing John McLaughlin with Shakti in 1977 was another game-changer for me, and I began a continuing appreciation for the Hindustani and Carnatic traditions of India, Balinese Gamelan music and I also saw how the blues was the connective tissue between folk music of many cultures.
Somewhere in between I developed a fascination with the music and lyrics of Joni Mitchell, a pursuit that has yielded so many profound insights. Hers not mine. After reading a review in Rolling Stone, I picked up Bob Marley’s Natty Dread in 1976, a full decade ahead of the reggae fad of the mid to late 80’s.
ECM got me interested in the Hilliard Ensemble, a vocal quartet that specializes in music that is hundreds of years old, and I continue to be excited about the unimaginably rich gifts that a real study of African music will expose. Likewise, I’ve been exploring the music of Arnold Schoenberg, Milton Babbit, Elliott Carter and K. Stockhausen.
But jazz is the broadest single genre of music I’ve ever encountered. There is a world of difference between Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker, and another world of difference between Parker and John Coltrane. In fact, there is a world of difference between the Coltrane of 1958, 1961, 1965, and 1967. I still find it amazing and totally disheartening that people who love Bird and Monk have no knowledge or affection for Muhal Richard Abrams and Henry Threadgill. People say that jazz died in ____ (fill in the year), but it only died to the extent that at a certain point you stopped listening to the ever evolving innovators. It’s nice when the Lincoln Center honors Ornette Coleman or Charles Mingus, but seriously, man, isn’t that shit about 40 years tardy? Where are the celebrations of Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell?
Oh well, this is turning into considerably longer of a rant than I’d originally intended.
Getting back to the original point, yeah, call me a jazz snob, and I doubt I’ll have time to correct you, but before you do, make sure that any of the artists I’ve mentioned in passing are ones that you have listened to yourself, carefully. “Open-mindedness” has many different layers and levels.
