kerblog

Lebanese trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj is blogging, drawing, crying and joking about current events.

[via Bagatellen]

shin-ding

secretly drooling

Darcy has a new concert for you to download and enjoy.

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I don't know about you, but I can't stop drooling over Kelefa Sanneh. Justin Timberlake's new single is actually as good as Sanneh implies.

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Great solo voice/acoustic guitar performance by Thom Yorke. It's like he's suddenly morphed into a bluesman, or something.

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Steve Coleman interviews Dave Douglas.

But the one thing about these new business models is that listeners and people who love music also have a responsibility to support the artist. It doesn't take a lot. With an artist-run web site, you assume the goodwill of people-that they will buy the CD but not copy it for their friends. I see it at gigs. With a group of college guys, where once I'd sell five CDs, now I just sell one. How you purchase music is a political decision. To perpetuate the music, people have to pay back into the system. It's only happened a few times, but I've been approached by fans asking me to sign a CD-R. They don't understand the humor of that.
(...)
(Coleman) There's a lot of detail you don't see by just looking to the past. Looking back to the '40s and '50s is like seeing the highlights of a basketball game on ESPN versus seeing the entire game. We're not hearing conversations that Charlie Parker was having.

a piece of pie

PopMatters' Will Layman on critical humility and the enduring worth of simple, seemingly outdated things. And the inescapable Lizz Wright.

for the non-believers...

...I know you're out there. Sure, it's "Summertime," but how can you not love/be impressed by/bow down to this?

spider webs of inspiration

Derek Bermel does not post to inspirations very often, but when he does, he truly lives up to the blog's name. This time, he discusses cross-cultural hearing in the context of learning traditional West African music.

yorke coltrane zidane

Radiohead as the evil U2? Sounds plausible.

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Destination: Out's Alice Coltrane post is a revelation. I'd never heard her music before, but the way she brings wild passages together with straight-off-the-soundtrack ones on "My Favorite Things" and the ominous strings surrounding the spluttering saxophone outburst are both really cool.

Everything on Destination: Out is worth listening to.

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Zidane head-butts his way to a glorious, tarnished legacy.

unmasked

Ethan is in the middle and an unidentified fan is getting a CD signed on the left. Photo by Jazzques.

Klinkende Munt Day 3 - 07/07/06, Brussels

Kurt Van Herck Trio
Van Herck is a near-ubiquitous saxophone player, with the Brussels Jazz Orchestra for instance, but he rarely leads his own groups. His last album came out 10 years ago. His new album (which, coincidentally, was waiting for me when I got home) is in trio with guitarist Jacques Pirotton and drummer Mimi Verderame, playing the unrecorded compositions of Karl Van Deun, a barely known guitarist. It's almost the Herbie Nichols Project, on a Belgian scale (and Van Deun is alive and well). The sparsely populated tent wasn't exactly the best environment for this music, what with kids running around, people moving in and out, a basketball tournament outside, etc. Still, what I managed to hear (I got there late) was unexpectedly good, but I'll listen to the CD before discussing it further.

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The Bad Plus
I had high hopes - very high hopes - for this one, which were easily surpassed. If anyone invites a blow-by-blow review, it's TBP, so I apologise in advance for what's to come.

The concert was insane, as in insanely good, but also as in "TBP is crazy!" On the left, you had Ethan Iverson, generally cool as ice behind the piano or dead-panning these incredible spoken introductions that must be at least partly improvised or embellished, because even his bandmates were laughing. The intro to "1980 World Champion" was particularly good, involving Lyle Mays (not Lyle Mays), a ski jumping world champion from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who celebrated his title every day by dancing in the street. On the right, you had Dave King, whose body movements have to be seen to be believed. I guess he has a reputation as a banger, but he's actually more likely to be making a subtle kind of clatter. And then, in the middle you had Reid Anderson, the dapper bassist. What they do as a group is even more impressive live than on record: you can really see how they fit bits of improv into the the manic arrangements' interstices. And, of course, there's the random stuff thrown out apparently just to keep people guessing, such as the brief groovy soul bass solo that served as coda King's "Thrift Store Jewelery," totally unrelated to the modest melody and Latin undertow of the body of the song.

They played a lot of new, unrecorded songs. Ethan's concert-opening "Mint" continually seemed to have two things going on at once, and juxtaposed a dozen more, starting with some great abstract piano blues. Reid is an awesome composer, whose pieces tend to have a rock song feel to them. The first encore, "Physical Cities," was the biggest and best of them: it switched between ascending piano arpeggios over a hard-driving riff and a stabbing hip hop groove. The downshift from the stomping latter to the low-lying former was particularly delicious. And then, out of nowhere, came this unison morse code staccato section, with lots of dramatic rests. Imagine the rhythm of a Tim Berne composition, played on one note. It might have lasted 90 seconds, but what was so thrilling about it was that I truly had no idea how long it would go on, or what would come next (which happened to be a massive beat based on the morse code).

"Casa Particular," another unrecorded tune, surprised - shocked, even - by staying in one engrossingly low-key place throughout: King pushed forward relentlessly, but on brushes and very quietly (I was reminded of Jorge Rossy on the version of "Exit Music (For A Film)" on Mehldau's Art of the Trio: vol. 4), while the piano drifted and dreamt prettily. "1980 World Champion," like "1972 Bronze Medallist" before it, set up big, simple chords and then sprinkled them with dissonance. Here, though, it was done over a fast 2-beat that, when King picked up a tambourine and Ethan played some blues, lent the song a fervent gospel feel.



Of course, TBP is loved and hated for their covers (even though I generally find their originals more rewarding). Their versions of Interpol's "Narc" and Bacharach's "This Guy's In Love With You" had some common ground: sweeping crescendos leading to a big chorus, for example. The Bacharach was the more sarcastic one: a subdued 12/8 led to faux cocktail piano; sleigh bells comically accented a break. Ornette Coleman's "Song X" (I don't have that album, must get it) started with the melody played in trio unison three times, with yawning chasms of silence in between. This led to fast Ornette-ish swing, open and rambunctious, and the most traditionally-configured piano solo + rhythm section passage of the concert. What happened next was, therefore, totally unexpected. Reid subverted the song twice: first by playing a slow and relatively melodic solo, then, as he stuck ultra-quietly and minimally to a couple of high-register notes, King rubbed a whining, blinking toy on his floor tom. Deploying near-silence against a somewhat talkative crowd was bold and brilliant. Well, it all seemed subsersive to me, and on a tune by the nec plus ultra in jazz subversiveness, no less!

Finally, the second encore (concerts in the tent usually struggle to get one encore, so it's a tribute to TBP that they could easily have gotten a third, if the organisers hadn't wrapped it up) was "Chariots Of Fire," as requested by an audience member. Some people don't like this cover, but I think the superposition of the theme, played at varying tempos, and an unrelated funky bass line really works. Also, the way it opens up into a scrambling free section reminds me of my all-time favourite TBP cover, Blondie's "Heart Of Glass" on These Are The Vistas. Here, Ethan started the song standing stock-still, staring unblinkingly out into space and playing a few notes with his hand behind his back. Those theatrical touches are fantastic and really help them communicate with the audience. Both times Ethan named the band members, they'd play fragments of a theme music: silly, but great fun.

Afterwards, we had a jazzblogger tripartite summit (not quite Yalta, but almost?) with Ethan and Jazzques at the Archiduc, laughing and discussing everything from Brad Mehldau to hip hop to blogging to TBP itself to writing/reading about music to the virtues and advantages of the siesta and many other things I'm forgetting. Reid and sound man/engineer/designer Michael (I think) joined us later. Excellent times. One interesting thing I hadn't really realised was the extent to which Ethan is a jazz kid. Do The Math hints at that, but I'd always assumed he started out from a classical and contemporary music background, but not at all. On a personal note, there was absolutely none of the awkwardness you usually get around visiting musicians, who are, essentially, people you've never met before. Maybe it's Ethan's sense of midwest hospitality or something.

Jammin' The Blues

I'd wanted to see this for the longest time, finally YouTube makes it possible.



The greatest music video of all time. So many great shots, from the very first one of Lester's hat with smoke swirling around it to the last one of Jo Jones's grin.

Klinkende Munt 2006 Day 2 - 06/07/2006, Brussels

I skipped day 1 to watch France qualify for the World Cup final. Priorities.

Acoustic Ladyland
The band name initially faithfully represented its music: modern post-bop jazz covers of Hendrix tunes. To be honest, it was a little boring. Between their first and second albums, they morphed into an instrumental rock-almost-punk band. Last Chance Disco is really good and fun. Now, it would seem that they've morphed fully into a punk band. The ingredients remain similar (Pete Wareham's rough-hewn tenor saxophone wailing and declaiming of simple, punchy riffs, Tom Cawley's finely-textured keyboards, Tom Herbert's pared-down electric bass and Seb Rocheford's drumming, either everything-at-once punk or beats with more room to breathe), but there's more singing by Wareham, more decibels and more wall-of-sound-ness, especially on the new songs that will be on their upcoming album (or maybe I just haven't listened to Last Chance Disco loud enough).

I tend to prefer their songs that are less dense and have more rhythm, so I was a bit disappointed there weren't more of them. At those times, Cawley's crucial contributions became clear. At the band's loudest, the sound system struggled with the volume: the saxophone was often a bit lost in the mass and the keyboards weren't very clear.

Afterwards, I discussed MySpace (a recurring theme, it would turn out) with Tom H. and the Hnita's Peter Anthonissen. Teun showed up and informed me that Jef had signed with Universal Music (Belgium).

Clotaire K
The highlight of this concert was when a guy came on stage wearing a skull mask, Freddy Krueger claws, a black t-shirt and shiny suit era pants and danced around, mock-attacking the other band members. Apart from that, it was semi-convincing 10 year old IAM with a dash of North African influences. It didn't help that the front man kept on berating the crowd, even though little of what they were doing deserved wild enthusiasm. At one point, the DJ would scratch for 5 seconds, then stop, and applause would be demanded. Over and over...

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Soweto Kinch
I was eagerly awaiting this one, as I'd never seen Kinch live and really like Conversations With The Unseen. I'll get the disappointing parts out of the way first. One, the repertoire was mostly taken from the two year old album, but in virtually identical arrangements. While "Snake Hips"'s pot-pourri is still pleasant to hear, I expected far more deviation from the record. Two, it was more traditional than I expected. So there were a lot of solos that failed to really matter. Kinch is unabashedly a bop-derived alto player, which isn't a problem - it actually highlights and enhances the newer hip hop elements he brings in - but while he's got plenty of technique, too often I didn't feel like I was getting more than that. Now for the good stuff.

Kinch is a super-charismatic stage presence: funny, spontaneous, outgoing, charming. He's a good rapper and an excellent lyricist. "Jazz Planet" has a cheesy concept (what if jazz was the dominant music?), but the words and flow make it work: "What if jazz could solve world wars/And swinging on 2 and 4 was a government law," a bit about boy bands scuffling for work and lip-synching being a dying artform practiced only at summer camps in Dartmoor (Dartmouth?), DJs sitting back at concerts and muttering about jazz musicians stealing all the gigs, etc. "Adrian" started out as a fairly traditional bop ballad, but in the middle, Kinch rapped mesmerisingly, at a slow tempo and with just the bass as accompaniment, about the song's hapless, tragic hero. Before going off stage, Kinch requested six words from the audience for a freestyle. They were: North Korea, peace, cables, fever, hip hop and bebop. Kinch linked them all together impressively and imaginatively, with each key word preceded by 3-4 lines that allowed it to arrive naturally and climactically.

The encore was "A Friendly Game Of Basketball," by far the best instrumental piece. After a ricocheting head, trumpeter/singer Abram Wilson took a solo that started to bring the energy level up, Kinch and drummer Troy Miller then proceeded to engage in the most hard-driving uptempo improvising of the night. It was fantastic, but at a level they should have reached after a few songs, not right at the end.

More photos here (wardrobe alert: I have the same blue short-sleeve shirt the bassist is wearing, and might even have worn it yesterday if I didn't need to sow a button back on).

news from the fringe

Is it just me, or is this article incredibly condescending?

None of these 12 [composers], I think, will ever have festivals devoted to them. Their chances of big commissions by major symphony orchestras or opera houses are equally dim. (...)

Posterity does not beckon. There may be no entries in future music encyclopedias. Scholars will not pore over their techniques or the cultural contexts of their lives. Yet these composers are obviously devoted to their work, and to one another's work as well. A lot of them know exactly what they are doing. How high they aspire I don't know. I hope their aspirations are more on the order of personal satisfaction and the collegiality of fellow artists than of fame. (emphasis mine)

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Sean Murphy Ortega, aka Jack Reilly, comments on this thread:

What is it with you liberal freaks? Can't you accept another viewpoint and that it's ok to create a pen name? For openers, try Voltaire then jump to Eric Blair.

Petranich is a journalist's journalist, but you wouldn't have a clue to what real journalism is, you're to busy praising yourselves and the Taj Google.

Such prittle prattle. You'll be reading about yourselves in the next A.C. book.

Always nice to hear from him, even if I have no idea what the A.C. book is or what praising Taj Google means.

letting freedom be downloaded

Destination: Out is "An mp-free jazz blog focusing on rare or out-of-print music." I'm not a big downloader, but the bite-size offerings on offer are appetising.

[via Bagatellen]

cookie jar

More TV On The Radio: Status Ain't Hood and Brooklyn Vegan [via Darcy] on the Propsect Park concert.

Apparently, Return To Cookie Mountain doesn't have a US release date. That's a shame. Belgian readers can buy it at the FNAC for barely more than it costs to download it from iTunes.

Speaking of CD pricing, is it totally passé to consider 15 euros a decent price for a new CD? Especially since download services (apart from emusic) sell albums for 10 euros or when buying directly from the musician. However, I'm aggrieved and puzzled every time I see ECMs that have been in print for over 20 years being sold for 20+ euros...

lining the nest

Rare enough to be mentioned: Sonny Rollins guitarist Bobby Broom gives it up for jazz writers.

Remember when part of experiencing a recording for the first time meant reading the credits and liner notes? That was fun reading and so meaningful to me when I was a kid, trying to understand jazz music. There was so much for me to learn and try to make sense of at that time. In my quest to sort out the order of things in the universe of jazz—the seminal figures, their supporting casts, the various groups of players—in other words, the roots and branches of jazz’s family tree, I looked to the back covers of records as my elementary aid in understanding the music.
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Because of the socio-political ramifications of jazz, it has always needed scholars and other genuine arts supporters to champion its cause and its musicians, and to help elevate these to their rightful place among the great musical and cultural contributions of the world. French jazz enthusiasts, Hugh Panassie’ and Charles Delaunay were serious supporters who spoke for jazz and helped pave the way for writers such as Albert Murray and Amiri Baraka; musician and scholar, Gunther Schuller; and jazz critics, Rudi Blesh, Leonard Feather, Ira Gitler, Nat Hentoff, Dan Morgenstern, and others. More recent jazz thinkers, like Scott DeVeaux (The Birth of Bebop – University of California Press), Doug Ramsey (www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/) and Joe Moore (www.jazzportraits.blogspot.com), continue to keep up with jazz as art, rather than ordering it according to what is marginal and popular, or worse yet, providing misinformation.
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Once upon a time, liner notes were included along with the music as a part of the package—as a way of enhancing the music experience for the listener. They were written by jazz lovers, who intermingled and fraternized with their subjects, and who in varying levels and ways respected, identified with and understood what was special about the jazz musician’s form of expression. Of course, not all liner notes were accurate, informative works of art, but there existed a proper and fundamental understanding of hierarchy, of authority in the relationships between artist, consumer and critic. The means of conveying that understanding, liner notes, is sorely missed by this music lover.

I'm reminded of Wayne Bremser's iTunes versus Preservation article. I took slightly too harsh a swipe at a similar article that no longer seems to be available online.

CD may have thoroughly modified cover art, but it completely killed liner notes. On LPs, you could read them in the store and maybe use them as a purchasing aid. Now, you can't do that anymore. When the liner note writer is talking to effective rather than prospective buyers, the subject matter has to change. Is there really a point to them any more? The added value of liner notes needs to be rethought.

That said, I, too, generally enjoy liner notes. For the longest time, I've been wanting to start a "liner note wisdom" series, but I tend to read them downstairs and the computer is upstairs... Still, old liner notes serve as neat summaries of the state of criticism at the time. The old school musician interview format is often interesting. Then, there's the musician-penned essay, which Brad Mehldau has taken to new, but very interesting, lengths with House On Hill. Ellery Eskelin also writes interesting ones. The Figure Of Speech liners are by Kevin Whitehead, but they're essentially an interview and continue to serve as a useful manifesto for Eskelin's approach. Perhaps integration between CD and website can bring worthwhile new forms.

Totally unrelated: TV On The Radio's Return To Cookie Mountain is totally killer.

flutes #2

From the comments to this post on jazz flute, Lloyd says:

I think it's crazy that someone should call it an 'imperfection' - and a little arrogant too... There are so many different colours from all intruments and the breathy sound is part of the flute's spectrum, as far as I'm concerned. Just as with many others. How can the music world be without it?

I think the "imperfection" was meant in comparaison with classical flute playing. Compared to classical technique, just about every jazz musician is imperfect. Of course, the comparaison is of limited use, and could go both ways.

Check out Lloyd's blog: each post is a photo of a hand-written page in a diary, placed, in Amélie Poulain fashion, in a different location every time.

entering the post-record store era

July is here, and July means cheap CDs by the boatload. As usual, I headed to the Brussels FNAC. I hadn't been there for a while. Since April, in fact, when my work assignement was switched to Charleroi. In those few months, the dire predictions of friend and FNAC jazz guy P came to pass: the section has been moved and slashed and now shares space with the World Music section. The reorganisation hasn't only affected the jazz section: there's less space afforded music, whatever the genre. The halcyon days are definitely over, so get what you want while you still can. I don't even know if P still works there: the section has no desk, so maybe some people got fired. That didn't stop me from getting a boatload of stuff, but there's an unpleasant after-taste.

In (unverified) chronological order, commentary based on first listens:

Miles Davis Sorcerer
David Bowie Low (my first Bowie)
Paul Bley Circles

Chet Baker/Philip Catherine/Jean-Louis Rassinfosse
My first late Baker and early Catherine. Beautiful. Baker's well of prettiness has run dry and much of his technique has disappeared, but his mind is sharp. Attacks and articulations are regularly fluffed, but there are no major disasters, which lends a miraculous quality to everything that goes right. Meaning just about everything else. Knowing only the latter part of Catherine's career, I was surprised by his chops. I wonder if he could (or even want to) play like that today. I wasn't surprised by Jean-Louis Rassinfosse's great technique, since he clearly still has it. I'm thankful he's dumped the stand-up electric bass in favour of an acoustic double bass, though.

Björk Selmasongs
V/A Let Your Yeah Be Yeah: Reggae Chart Hits 1968-1980 (I don't even really like reggae, but this was 3 euros)
Ozark Henry Birthmarks and Sailor Not The Sea

Vandermark 5 Free Jazz Classics Vols. 3 & 4
These are the bonus discs that came with the limited editions of the last two (I think) V5 albums. I don't have those albums, but I did hear them live around the time Vol. 4, a set of Rahsaan Roland Kirk covers, came out, and they were fantastic. the price was right (15 euros for two discs), so I didn't hesitate. I've listened to Six For Rollins and I can't say I was overwhelmed. It's very much a repertory approach (who was it that tagged Vandermark "the Wynton Marsalis of free jazz"?), so you get V5 meat 'n' potatoes, but not a lot of gravy. "John S" struck me as particularly stiff: the head is weighed down by a plodding three-horn arrangement and Vandermark never really catches fire, here or elsewhere on the album. While Rempis's solo breaks the theme into flinty shards over a clever fast walking bass and drums that punctuate rather than flow and Bishop adds some humour towards the end over laid-back swing, it's not enough to counter-balance the initial impression. I hope the Kirk disc will be better.

Brad Mehldau House On Hill (this deserves its own post)

Tv On The Radio Return To Cookie Moutain
I loved TOTR from the moment I first heard "Staring At The Sun" on the radio, well before I knew what they looked like. I didn't get their first album, which I now regret. Coincidentally, Bowie makes a wouldn't-know-it-if-it-wasn't-written cameo. On first (and so far, only) listen, I had some trouble until tracks 4 and 5, "Playhouses" and "Wolf Like Me," which I already knew and are the album's most "Staring At The Sun"-like moments: lots of treble fuzz, pleading double-voiced vocals, a scattered beat for "Playhouses," a more danceable one on "Wolf Like Me." After that, it all flowed nicely.
Nate Chinen concert review; Jon Caramanica's Village Voice feature that reminded me to buy this album.

Triosk - "Intensives Leben"

Triosk: Australian piano trio that takes EST's piano trio + electronics/studio processing a whole lot further. On "Intensives Leben," the cymbals clatter, the keyboards shimmer and occasionally distort, the acoustic bass provides a little bit of melody, rhythm and direction. It's pretty cool.

Download "Intensives Leben" or stream it on MySpace. More from Triosk.

world cup update

We used to suck
Now we rock
Explain that
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Informal surveys show
Italian flag most
Popular window-dressing accessory
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Penalty kicks: avoid
When playing Germans or Portuguese
(especially if you are English)
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Seen in stores, t-shirt
France Brazil 3 - 0 July 12 1998
How I wish I could
Have worn it to work today

the herbie debate

Ben Ratliff:

Mr. Hancock, the pianist, came on stage with an acoustic quartet that included the saxophonist Wayne Shorter, the bassist Dave Holland and the drummer Brian Blade. The performance only lasted half an hour, but they played an enormous amount of music.

Howard Mandel

Pianist Herbie Hancock has recorded one perfectly sublime jazz album (Maiden Voyage) and a couple of dozen significant others. He’s composed two simple, irresistibly catchy tunes (“Watermelon Man,” “Chameleon”) that will be jam session favorites as long as there are fake books and garage bands, plus the first mainstream single to feature scratching (“Future Shock”) and the first jazz sample (from “Cantaloupe Island”) featured in a huge crossover hit (“Cantaloop” by U.K. DJs Us3). He helped galvanize Miles Davis’ exploratory ’60s quintet, popularized the Fender Rhodes electric piano and delved deeply into synthesizers while never abandoning the classic grand.

So why are his concerts so dull?
(...)
Two pianos stirred by virtuosi such as Hancock and Rubalcaba can’t possibly sound bad in a concert hall like Carnegie, but they are challenged to sound meaningful.
(...)
Where is Hancock as leader of this gang? Why can’t or won’t he make a statement, rally his troupe to focus its expression, reach out to the listeners, wrap us in the music and take us higher? If jazz doesn’t do that, if it only wants to be admired, it’s ready for burial now.

Has Herbie Hancock lost his edge? Physically fit, active and articulate, maybe he's too comfortable. Chilled. A California Buddhist, multiple Grammy winner and NEA Jazz Master. Fulfilled. Yet ambition, conflict and desire have always lent jazz excitement.

On Rubalcaba, an amusing tidbit from Ratliff:

His solo set on Tuesday night at the Jazz Standard was totally, purely meant for the concert hall. And the concert hall might not have been good enough. A soundproof room, maybe. On the moon.