Protected: Quartet and Sextet Samples
Published: September 21, 2011
Blues and Roots
Published: April 3, 2011
My latest piece, on the bassist and composer Omer Avital, is up at Tablet. Take a look here.
Jazz Standards
Published: January 27, 2011
My piece on Anat Cohen and Israeli jazz musicians in New York is up at Tablet.
Dr. Martin Luther King on Jazz
Published: January 17, 2011
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
from the program booklet of the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival
Humanity and the Importance of Jazz
God has brought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create – and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.
Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music.
Modern Jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.
It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of “racial identity” as a problem for a multi-racial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.
Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down. And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these.
Vision Fugitive, Le Poisson Rouge
Published: January 4, 2011
Looking forward to playing with JD Allen and Lawrence ‘Butch’ Morris’s group at Le Poisson Rouge Friday night. Press release below:
Sonny Rollins BBC Profile from 1968 with Paul Jeffrey
Published: November 12, 2010
Gig Tonight
Published: October 22, 2010
From the New York Times, 10.22.10:
The Ben Waltzer Quintet (Friday and Saturday) The pianist Ben Waltzer favors both lyricism and exploration in his music, and he works with musicians well equipped to split the difference; his quintet includes the trumpeter Duane Eubanks, the tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry, the bassist Dwayne Burno and the drummers Eric McPherson (10/22), Otis Brown III (10/23). At 9 and 10:30 p.m., Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, West Village , (212) 989-9319, corneliastreetcafe.com; $10 cover, with a one-drink minimum
Photo by David Goldstein
Sonny Rollins Plays the Truth
Published: September 10, 2010
Sonny Rollins on “Oleo” with NHOP and Alan Dawson:
12 by Max
Published: August 13, 2010
Drummer Nasheet Waits picks 12 pieces by Max Roach, his mentor, and discusses their significance. Pretty interesting. He discusses one of my favorites, “Garvey’s Ghost,” from “Percussion Bitter Suite”(1961):
This is one of my favorite cuts of music of all time. It’s another example of how the title really speaks to what’s happening in the music. This references Marcus Garvey, the great Pan-Africanist in the States during the late ’10s and 20s, who died in England in 1940, mistreated, and his organization decentralized by the same tactics used against the Black Panthers some years later. The piece references that history, talking about self-determination, but then it also has a haunting, ghostly quality; the melody is so powerful, as is the fact that Abbey doesn’t sing any words.
…He always plays something and then leaves some space, and then plays something else and leaves some space. He calls, he answers, he answers, and then he leaves some space. He always used to say that there’s always room. Get to your shit quick, make a statement, and in making that statement, the things that you don’t play are just as important as the things you do. That always seemed to be a theme for him, and he utilized it in every component of his career. Always some space for others.
