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BUDDY RICH @100: A BRILLIANT DRUMMER, A CONTENTIOUS LEGACY

ANTONIOSANCHEZLOUIS HAYESStories from his classic dates withHorace, Dexter, McCoy & more

PETE ESCOVEDO’S REVEALING NEW MEMOIR

INSIDE THE BAD HOMBRE ’S IMMIGRANT SONGS

+ MATT WILSON | MARK GUILIANA | RUDY ROYSTON

BONUS!

2017 HOLIDAY

GIFT GUIDE

2 J A Z Z T I M E S • N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 7

AT JAZZT IMES.COM

Cover image by Justin Bettman. Table of Contents image by Marek Lazarski.

NOVEMBER 2017VOLUME 47 | NUMBER 9

28 ANTONIO SANCHEZOn his bold new album, Bad Hombre, the Mexican-Americandrummer channels his fury over Donald Trump’s immigration policy into powerhouse rhythmic improvisations fused with electronica. By Geoffrey Himes

34 BUDDY RICH @100During his lifetime he was widely regarded as the greatestdrummer in the world and a talk-show-ready raconteur. But Rich’s legacy, tainted by those legendary tapes, is far more complex and contested. By Andrew Gilbert

40 LOUIS HAYESOn the occasion of Serenade for Horace, his fine new BlueNote tribute to the hard-bop architect who kick-started hiscareer, the brilliantly swinging drummer looks back on hisclassic sessions. By Aidan Levy

outsideMP3spromotions - jazz MP3sJazzTimes Spins & Riffs, a podcast hosted by JT publisher Lee Mergner, plus free tracks from Dennis Day, Carl Filipiak, Marilyn Scott, Joe Smith and the Spicy Pickles and other artists

EXCLUSIVE CONTENTarticles - columnsSponsored interviews with Blue Note at Sea artists Leslie Odom Jr., Chick Corea and Ben Williams; image galleries from the Detroit, Chicago and Monterey festivals, and from the Fred Taylor Scholarship benefit concert at Berklee; Ashley Kahn reviews the Oslo Jazz Festival; plus giveaways, polls, news, reviews and much more

6 JT Notes Editor Evan Haga introduces this drum-themed issue

8 OPENING CHORUS8 Hearsay Pete Escovedo, Jazz re:freshed in

NYC, Detroit Jazz Festival, Matt Wilson, jazz-poetry roundup, the photography of Jean-Pierre Leloir, Monterey Jazz Festival, news and farewells

22 Before & After Mark Guiliana26 Overdue Ovation Mike Clark

48 SOUND ADVICE48 AudioFiles Brent Butterworth on Band-

camp, the artist-friendly and audiophile-worthy online music platform

50 Chops Terri Lyne Carrington, Dave Kingand Jeff “Tain” Watts on the plight ofdrummer-composers

52 Gearhead The latest musical instruments, accessories and educational resources

54 REVIEWS54 CD Reviews61 VOX

63 Jazz Directory64 Artist’s Choice Rudy Royston picks tracks

showcasing creative cymbal work

inside

2017 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE! page 46

←

Herbie Hancock, on opening night of this year’s Detroit Jazz Festival; for coverage, see p. 12

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“IT’S ONE OF THOSE ANCIENT ARGUMENTS, LIKE A BLACK GUY CAN’T BE A QUARTERBACK OR A WOMAN CAN’T FLY A PLANE,”

Jeff “Tain” Watts tells Shaun Brady in this month’s Chops piece. He’s refer-

ring to those worthless stereotypes about how drummers can’t be effective

composers or songwriters—an extension of a larger trope that views

drummers as timekeeping musical furniture, necessary but nonintellec-

tual. This is, of course, a gross untruth across genres. (Take Charlie Watts

out of the Stones and tell me what’s left.) But in jazz, where drummers

have constituted a large chunk of the most important writers, conceptual-

ists, mentors, bandleaders and soloists, it’s especially preposterous, and I’m

reminded of that fact every fall as I edit this drum-focused issue.

In the cover story, Geoffrey Himes talks to Antonio Sanchez about

his boldly experimental and political new album, Bad Hombre (CAM

Jazz). Fusing his affinity for electronica with the improvisational scoring

method he refined during his work on the film Birdman, Sanchez takes a

rhythm-first approach to protest, pushing back against President Trump’s

immigration stance. Guided by our Aidan Levy in this installment of

Bright Moments, Louis Hayes remembers the sessions behind his most

historic LPs, in the process detailing the development of hard bop and

soul-jazz. Andrew Gilbert, in a fantastic piece split between reportage and

critical rumination, considers the legacy of Buddy Rich on the occasion of

his centennial. The subtext here is huge, bringing up questions about how

the drummer’s role has evolved in jazz and the jazz musician’s function

has devolved in pop culture.

The Before & After listening session with Mark Guiliana, conducted by

Ashley Kahn in Belgium, features thoughtful consideration of everything

from progressive acoustic jazz and fusion to dub and electronica. (In a

fascinating way, it works as an unpacking of Guiliana’s own singularly

inclusive music.) Mike Clark, in a revealing Overdue Ovation profile by

Ted Panken, explains how his association with the Headhunters has been

both a blessing and a curse for this versatile but bop-centered musician.

Through an Artist’s Choice column detailing the melodic, harmonic and

textural dimensions of great cymbal playing, Rudy Royston proves how

completely a drummer can influence an ensemble’s sound.

And there’s more for Stateside readers. This issue also includes our an-

nual Jazz Education Guide—which, with in-depth features on Geri Allen

and Mick Goodrick and a terrific survey of traditional-jazz instruction in

New Orleans, shouldn’t be passed over by our non-musician subscribers.

(If you’re reading in Canada or international territories, look for those

features online.) Enjoy the issue. JT


daughter, the percussionist Sheila E., who be-

came a pop-culture icon through her work with

Prince. Escovedo spoke with JT about the book,

touching upon several significant turning points

in his extraordinary life. JOHN MURPH

JAZZTIMES: ONE OF THE BOOK’S OVER-ARCHING THEMES IS YOUR SENSE OF RESIL-IENCE. AT WHAT POINT DID YOU REALIZE YOU HAD STAYING POWER AS A MUSICIAN?That’s always been a tough question for me.

When I was a kid, I didn’t know what I was going

to do. Even when I started playing music, I had

no idea that I would get to this point in my pro-

fessional life. So it’s always hard to pinpoint when

things really started happening.

TALK ABOUT HOW YOU LEARNED AFRO- CUBAN RHYTHMS FROM TITO PUENTE, MONGO SANTAMARÍA AND WILLIE BOBO.I met Tito, Mongo and Willie at such an early

age because my brother Coke and I so wanted

to learn how to play music, whether it was

Latin, funk, jazz or R&B. Coke and I sort of

mixed all that stuff up.

But we really needed to learn the correct

Afro-Cuban rhythms. So Coke and I made it a

point that, whenever Tito and Mongo’s bands

came to Oakland, we’d go hear them play

Inside

22

26 Overdue OvationMike Clark

8 HearsayPete Escovedo, Jazz re:freshed in NYC, Detroit Jazz Festival, Matt Wilson, jazz-poetry roundup, the photography of Jean-Pierre Leloir, Monterey Jazz Festival, news and farewells

))))Stay in tuneCHORUSOPENING

Before & AfterMark Guiliana

Rhythms of LifeIN HIS NEW MEMOIR, PETE ESCOVEDO REVEALS THE HARDSHIP OF SANTANA, THE JOY OF PRINCE & MORE

MY LIFE IN THE KEY OF E: A MEMOIR, the new self-released

book from famed Latin-jazz percussion-

ist Pete Escovedo, is a case study in sheer

determination. Through much of his life,

he overcame multiple personal and profes-

sional challenges and setbacks: growing up

in a dysfunctional home, which eventually

led to him and his younger brother, per-

cussionist Coke Escovedo, being placed

temporarily at the St. Vincent’s Home for

Boys; surviving poverty as a teenager and

young adult; mapping out a career as a

musician on the bustling Bay Area music

scene; getting coolly fired from Santana;

witnessing the rise and collapse of the

promising Latin-fusion band Azteca and

later his nightclubs; and enduring the

passings of such lifelong friends as percus-

sion great Willie Bobo, pianist Ed Kelly

and, most significant, Coke.

Through it all, Escovedo has proven

victorious. Now 82, he’s considered a

living legend in the pantheon of Latin

percussionists, and he’s the patriarch of a

distinguished American musical family

that includes his sons, musicians Juan and

Peter Michael, and of course his eldest

@Home with Pete Escovedo

JULI

E G

ON

ZÁLE

Z


HearsayCHORUSOPENING

THE LONDON-BASED ORGANIZATION JAZZ RE:FRESHEDBRINGS ITS STYLISH, SIGNIFICANT VISION TO NEW YORK

British Invasion

L ike so many hip things, it would

have been easy to write off as a

product of the ambiance: Everyone

at the second of Jazz re:freshed’s

two New York shows this August was

altogether too cool-looking—they were

dancing too freely and Instagramming

too often, glowing under Lower East Side

venue Nublu’s slick LED lighting. They

couldn’t possibly be true students of the

music, discerning listeners looking for

genuine artistry. Or could they?

Jazz was born as party music, though

it’s had a conflicted relationship with that

aspect of its identity—try too hard to

appeal to those seeking good times and

you’re artistically disingenuous; act too

precious and you risk sounding clinical.

For better or for worse, the jazz that earns

the vaunted “crossover” moniker tends to

lean toward the former. Audiences unfa-

miliar with jazz often prefer something to

grab onto, whether it’s Robert Glasper’s

pop collaborators or Kamasi Washing-

ton’s barreling, festival-ready grooves.

That’s the tightrope Adam Moses

and Justin McKenzie set out to walk

because nobody was really teaching Afro-

Cuban music then. The only way we were

going to learn that stuff was to go and watch.

We watched; we listened; we recorded it in

our brains, in terms of how those rhythms

should be played correctly. Later on, we were

there with them asking questions.

DISCUSS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH ED KELLY, WHO CONVINCED YOU TO SWITCH FROM SAXOPHONE TO PERCUSSION. That was a big change in my life because

I don’t know how far I would have gone

playing the saxophone. I was a slow learner.

I couldn’t really grasp that instrument fast

enough. I still have my alto saxophone, with

a lot of cobwebs on it. [laughs] I pull it out

sometimes. Then my wife [Juanita] starts

shouting at me to keep quiet. [laughs]

Ed and I were in high school together. He

was also a really great football player. I tried

out for the team, but I was so small that there

was no way I could have played football.

But we became friends. Then he told me

he played piano and was putting a little

jazz group together to play at after-school

functions. I was still fooling around with the

saxophone. I thought maybe I could learn

from joining these guys, that it might entice

me to study the saxophone more.

When I approached him, he told me that

he had already hired a sax player, but he was

looking for someone to play Latin percussion.

He was listening to a lot of Bud Powell at that

time. So I said, “Yeah, man. I can do that. I

would love to.” I had a makeshift bongo set,

made out of a couple of coffee cans, and I only

had one actual conga. But I joined the group.

Ed was such a dear friend and such a great

musician. Even in high school he was playing

his butt off. He was destined to become a great

pianist. We had a long, dear friendship. We

were like brothers. It was a huge loss for me

personally when he passed away [in 2005].

TALK ABOUT THE NATURE OF AZTECA, THE GROUP YOU CO-LED WITH YOUR YOUNGER BROTHER, COKE. IN BOTH OF ITS EDITIONS IT HAD A LOT OF HEAVYWEIGHT TALENT, INCLUDING PAUL JACKSON, LENNY WHITE, MEL MARTIN, TOM HARRELL AND EDDIE HENDERSON. It’s such a shame that that band could not stay

together. Everybody in that band contributed

so much to the music. Everyone would bring

in charts; everyone had ideas. That in a sense

was what Coke wanted. He didn’t want it so

that it was just him as the bandleader. He

wanted it to be a co-op band. We even had

a little board of directors that would govern

the orchestra; we had meetings to talk over

certain things. Azteca was basically his idea.

YOU ALSO WRITE ABOUT THE EMO-TIONAL TOLL OF CONSTANTLY TOURING WITH SANTANA WHEN YOU WANTED TO SPEND TIME WITH YOUR FAMILY. That was a really difficult time, because I

didn’t know how intense and long those tours

would be. Santana traveled constantly; the

band members were hardly ever home. That

kind of schedule started to eventually get

to me, because my kids were younger and I

would start missing them and my wife.

At one point, when we were in Germany,

my wife got sick and had to go to the hospital. I

felt so bad because I wasn’t there. Then I would

miss holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christ-

mas. I missed some of my kids’ graduations.

All of that stuff started to really get to me.

SPEAKING OF THE EXHAUSTION OF TOURING, HOW DID YOU PREPARE SHEILA FOR LIFE ON THE ROAD? EVEN BEFORE PRINCE SHE TOURED WITH GEORGE DUKE, HERBIE HANCOCK, MARVIN GAYE AND LIONEL RICHIE. I warned her. [laughs] But she had been

around the corner a few times with me. She

learned how to handle herself on the road. I

remember when she went on the road with

George Duke; he told me, “I will watch over

her like an uncle. I will make sure that she

won’t get involved with the wrong people.”

I was a little worried for her. But my wife

reminded me that Sheila knew how to take

care of herself and knew what to do and

what not to do.

BECAUSE OF SHEILA’S CLOSE FRIENDSHIP WITH PRINCE, WHICH BEGAN IN THE LATE ’70S, HE WAS A FREQUENT VISI-TOR TO YOUR HOUSE. SHARE SOME OF YOUR FONDEST MEMORIES OF WATCH-ING PRINCE BLOSSOM AS A MUSICIAN.

When we first met, he had come to one

of the Santana band rehearsals. Tom Coster

was the keyboard player. Tom is the one

who brought him in, because Prince was

taking keyboard lessons from him. At first

Prince seemed like a lost soul, because of

the way he was dressed. He always wore

those really big overcoats. If you looked at

him then, you’d swear he was homeless.

But Prince and I hit it off right away.

I’d invite him over to the house. He met

Sheila. We always had the piano set up in

the house, and he and Sheila would jam

together. I just noticed right away that he

was going to be something special. It was a

lot of fun being around Prince. JT

J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M 11

when they launched the weekly Jazz

re:freshed jam session in 2003—creat-

ing an atmosphere that might foster

both new jazz artists and new jazz fans,

far removed from the clichés about

plush clubs and impenetrable music the

genre is still shrouded in today (see: La

La Land). The London concert series

has since blossomed into a record label,

festival and international partnerships

like the one that brought the organiza-

tion to New York, with local-gone-

global festival Afropunk. Its growth is

rooted in an Internet-age awareness of

jazz, one unafraid of acknowledging

the music’s wide web of influences and

products. In the organization’s U.K.

hometown, that means house music,

ska and grime, as well as the R&B and

hip-hop conventions that have long

been incorporated into the contempo-

rary American jazz vernacular.

Native Dancer, the group who opened

the concert, offered groove-oriented

R&B/jazz at its highest level. Somewhere

between Glasper and Hiatus Kaiyote, the

group found their own niche—all the

synths and hip-swiveling with a touch

more bebop, courtesy of tenor saxophon-

ist Josh Arcoleo, who traded melodic

duties with Swedish vocalist Frida Mar-

iama Touray. The quintet played with

enough purpose to tap into the soul-jazz

tradition instead of the smooth one,

experimenting with time signatures and

improvisation that pushed at the edges of

what can be, in the wrong hands, a rote

exercise in beat construction.

After a brief DJ set, drummer Moses

Boyd brought his quintet to the stage for

some sprawling jams, grounded by his

own masterful drumming. He’s another

artist who sits comfortably between the

worlds of capital-J jazz and pop music,BUN

NY

BREA

D/J

RF/C

ND

having endeared himself early to BBC

tastemaker Gilles Peterson and eventu-

ally working with everyone from rapper

Little Simz to Kanye and Drake sample-

ee Sampha. What initially came off a bit

scattered grew into heady, rock-inflected

improvisations that somehow felt more

cohesive the faster Boyd played (and his

playing was practically superhuman).

Finally, saxophonist Shabaka Hutch-

ings joined Boyd and his virtuosic tuba

player, Theon Cross, for a trio set. He’d

played at Afropunk with his usual tour-

ing group, the spiritual-jazz acolytes the

Ancestors, but this set was something

different. The stripped-down sound

revealed all three artists’ fiery side, as

they played almost continuously for

the better part of an hour. The result

felt like some jazz/Balkan/New Orleans

brass-band mash-up, with house music

at the core. The dancing didn’t stop as

the band took detours through dance-

hall breaks, screaming solos and even

an ever-so-brief interpolation of grime

artist Skepta’s “Shutdown.” In the small

space, Hutchings’ reedy tone contrasted

perfectly with the round thumping of

the tuba—Boyd backed happy oom-pahs

and the set’s almost thrash-inducing

climaxes with equal ease. It was the ideal

end to a night that showed a few of the

many ways U.K. artists are pushing at

the edges of jazz (which is basically what

jazz is about).

Even when you’re trying to reinvent

the wheel, though, some things remain

constant. “If you want to talk and chat

with your friends, do it out in the

street,” Moses told the audience before

everything got started, a savvier (and

more charmingly British) version of the

preliminary chiding you’ll hear at classic

jazz venues like the Village Vanguard

and the Blue Note. It was proof jazz fans

new and old can agree on one thing: The

music always comes first.

NATALIE WEINER

“IF YOU WANT TO TALK AND CHAT

WITH YOUR FRIENDS, DO IT OUT

IN THE STREET,” DRUMMER MOSES BOYD TOLD THE AUDIENCE.

←

Shabaka Hutchings in New York in August

Q&A: Gilles Peterson

More images of Jazz re:freshed in NYC



MA

REK

LAZA

RSKI

EVEN TRUNCATED BY BAD WEATHER, THE MOTOR CITY’S ANNUAL FREE FESTIVAL STANDS AS ONE OF THE WORLD’S BEST JAZZ EVENTS

Made in Detroit

It says something about the curatorial

sharpness and magnitude of the 2017

Detroit Jazz Festival when sets includ-

ing the Vijay Iyer Sextet, Karriem

Riggins with Esperanza Spalding, a tribute

to Elvin Jones featuring Dave Liebman,

and Wayne Shorter plus strings can be

cancelled and a serious fan still feels sated.

Unfortunately that point was proven

on Labor Day, when a no-nonsense

storm swept in and washed out the

second half of the schedule—including

Shorter’s third and final set of his 2017

artist-in-residence obligations, a per-

formance of his recent work “Emanon”

with the fest’s superb house orchestra. It

was a damn shame, to be sure, but to get

too upset, given the absolute tragedy the

weather has wrought elsewhere in past

weeks, would be in bad taste. And things

had gone so well up to that point.

In the annals of American jazz fêtes,

Detroit, most likely due to its relative

youth, isn’t mentioned as frequently or

discussed with as much reverence as

events like Newport, Monterey or New

Orleans. But you could make a very

convincing argument that it is the best

jazz festival in the United States, without

too much effort. Its lineup is stacked with

a versatile spread of the highest-profile

artists, who are given healthy hour-and-

15-minute sets. Held in and around the

amphitheaters of downtown’s Hart Plaza,

it’s deftly organized and easily navigable.

It hosts an attentive and Midwestern-

warm crowd. It’s a long haul that covers

Labor Day weekend in total, with three

full days of music plus an opening-night

concert and late-night jam sessions at a

nearby hotel. And the ace in the hole: It’s

completely admission-free (with pricey

purchase options available for VIP seating

and other amenities).

Detroit rightfully touts its designation

as the “world’s largest free jazz festival,”

a reality made possible through many,

many corporate sponsors in addition to

philanthropy. Still, the caliber of these

admission-less bookings can be bewil-

dering, especially if you’ve ever spoken

off-the-record to a major jazz concert or

festival producer. Take the fest’s opening

night, for instance: A double bill featur-

ing the Wayne Shorter Quartet and

Herbie Hancock’s working group does

not come cheap.

Especially in the case of Shorter’s band,

it’s also a pretty courageous presenta-

tion. Last year’s opening-night headliner,

George Benson, worked his quiet-storm

singles to crowd-pleasing peaks. Shorter’s

longtime quartet, featuring pianist Danilo

Pérez, bassist John Patitucci and drum-

mer Brian Blade, is many things: a major

event on the jazz calendar of your local

symphony hall; on the short list of jazz’s

finest bands of the past quarter-century;

a peerless vehicle for one of the music’s

great composers; an embodiment of jazz’s

ideals of risk and invention, in which

failure can often be more interesting than

success. What it is not, generally, is fod-

der for a free Friday-night concert on a

holiday weekend.

Not that the crowd, mostly respectful

and mindful, treated it as such. A healthy

sense of patience and a willingness to

be perplexed are usually rewarded with

Shorter’s quartet. But here the joys felt

familiar. Blade—an entertaining focal

point when everything else leaves you

slipping off the cliff—provided a mercu-

rial rhythmic bedrock as only he can;

remarkably, he never seems to intimate

straight time, but his work has so much

more dimension and purpose than a lot

of what passes for textural drumming

in the avant-garde. Blade often formed

an axis with Pérez, who used dynamics

and chordal density to meet the drum-

mer’s intensity and spur Shorter from • Wayne Shorter, John Patitucci, Danilo Pérez and Brian Blade (from left) on Sept. 1


TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON · ESPERANZA SPALDING · RAVI COLTRANE

DARRELL GRANT · BILL FRISELL · LISA FISCHER · REGINA CARTER

LUCIANA SOUZA · DAVE KING TRIO · JULIAN LAGE TRIO

BEN ALLISON & THINK FREE · CHARLES TOLLIVER & NEW MUSIC INC.

DAVID SANCHEZ · GEORGE COLLIGAN · SCOTT AMENDOLA TRIO

MILES ELECTRIC BAND · CHARLES GAYLE · ETHAN IVERSON

ALLAN HARRIS & RICHIE COLE CELEBRATE EDDIE JEFFERSON

KURT ELLING SWINGS JON HENDRICKS · JAZZ BY FIVE

BOBBY TORRES “BREAKIN’ AWAY”— REMEMBERING AL JARREAU

MARCUS ROBERTS TRIO · RUSSELL MALONE

ABDULLAH IBRAHIM EKAYA & HUGH MASEKELA · CHARNETT MOFFETT

PORTLAND JAZZ MASTER ART ABRAMS · TIGRAN HAMASYAN

RACHEL FLOWERS · AMINA FIGAROVA · DR. LONNIE SMITH

and many others!

PDX JAZZ

PORTLAND, OR | FEBRUARY 15–25, 2018

FESTIVAL2018

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brief, searching melodic fragments toward

more complete statements. In addition to

a couple of those orgiastic moments that

give this group its reputation—you know,

when the collective improvisation has built

steadily and maxes out as the saxophonist

intones like a machine gun—we received

plainly spoken themes. Strong, deceptively

simple, memorable lines like “Orbits” and

“Lotus” were important landmarks in

making your way through the constantly

changing terrain.

Herbie Hancock, on acoustic piano

and keyboards, with bassist James Genus,

drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and Terrace

Martin on alto saxophone and keys, hewed

closer to Shorter’s artistically brazen model

than to Hancock’s own hits-stuffed tours of

recent years. (No “Rockit,” mercifully.) Long

acoustic piano solos of postbop ilk existed

in music that is etched into our collective

memory as fusion. Themes cropped up and

dissipated and returned out of nowhere.

There was at times an elasticity, an audacity

present with regard to form and atmosphere

that evoked Hancock’s role in Miles’ Second

Great Quintet. Still, people cheered: It

was electric and loud and honored staple

repertoire like “Chameleon,” “Actual Proof”

and, teased as if making a cameo, “But-

terfly.” Martin, the wildcard, blew confi-

dently, with an emphasis on short bursts of

rhythmic phrasing, and on 1978’s “Come

Running to Me,” he formed a robot-voiced

harmony tandem with Hancock, both men

on vocoder. It was a clever display of how

aesthetics in pop music are recycled, of how

old can easily be new again.

The remainder of the festival put forth

an excellent survey of jazz’s modern

mainstream. Detroit’s programming can

skew adventurous without ever dipping

into the avant-garde proper, but it doesn’t

seem to overtly play the crossover game

either. One particular set might have

appeared as a pop concession on paper

but displayed such sharp improvisational

acumen that it came to present a gold

standard for matching hip-hop with jazz.

Drummer and producer Karriem Riggins,

a hometown hero whose credits include

Kanye West, collaborated with rapper

Common, keyboardist Robert Glasper and

others in a sort of unofficial celebration of

the late beat-making lodestar J Dilla, and

of an especially inspired epoch in hip-hop

history that occurred around the turn of

the century.

This was a smart, seamless jazz/hip-hop


styles in a remarkably interdependent balance. Panamonk, with

Danilo Pérez, bassist Jared Henderson and drummer Terri Lyne

Carrington, found a similarly engaging symmetry, with more

of contemporary postbop’s everything-at-once approach. Also

in the way of unimpeachable acoustic jazz was trumpeter Sean

Jones’ quintet, whose set-closing burn through Woody Shaw’s

“OPEC” crossed the threshold of visceral intensity into some-

thing like musical violence. (There’s a reason it’s called “killing.”)

Nearing the festival’s premature end on Monday was Detroit-

raised hero Johnny O’Neal, whose trio set reiterated his singular

place on the jazz landscape: part-limitless well of jazz, pop and

R&B repertoire; part-piano slayer; part-stately jazz crooner; all

charisma. Another Detroit success story, violinist Regina Carter,

played from her recent tribute project, Ella: Accentuate the Positive,

traversing swing, second-line, blues, a bit of free-improv and more,

and allowing a comfortable band including the underrated guitar-

ist Marvin Sewell to stretch out.

One of the most brilliant musicians to come out of Detroit (or

any city, for that matter) was sadly, conspicuously absent: pianist,

composer and educator Geri Allen, whose passing in late June,

at age 60, overcast the weekend. (I’d expect some official tributiz-

ing at next year’s event.) Wayne Shorter’s Sunday-night set, his

final appearance due to Monday’s cancellation, was originally

scheduled to be a quintet performance with Allen, second pia-

nist Leo Genovese, bassist Esperanza Spalding and Carrington,

but it went on as planned as a quartet gig.

In many ways, it wasn’t dramatically different from the

attack and vernacular heard in Shorter’s working group on

Friday. Carrington, a perceptive and sensitive accompanist,

burrowed deep into the interior of this ensemble, making her

kit a melodic, harmonic and textural tool in a way that put

you in mind of Blade. At one point a drum-and-bass pattern

emerged, as if putting into relief the truly improvisational

drumming that marked most of the performance. As a bass-

ist Spalding seemed especially malleable and responsive to

Shorter’s action, his searching scraps of melody or unexpected

shouts, which can shock you into focus when he’s playing

soprano. One of the most illuminating stretches here was a game

of cat-and-mouse Shorter played with Genovese; another was a

series of Spalding’s ascending vocal lines, which Shorter filigreed

with odd-angled harmonies. (And another still, this one

more sheer fun: Genovese’s piano rhapsody accompanied by

fireworks down the river.) Compositions were tackled, among

them Allen’s “Feed the Fire” and Shorter’s “Endangered Spe-

cies,” but as in Friday’s quartet performance they quickly swept

past you and through you, submerged into the collective inde-

pendence of the playing. Also evocative of the opening concert:

a kind, relatively quiet and homed-in crowd, out for a night of

free music in the city but receptive to an artistic challenge.

EVAN HAGA

fusion that proved how generations of musicians have now been

raised on both idioms, without subscribing to any politics of separa-

tion. Riggins, Glasper and bassist Burniss Earl Travis II opened with

Hancock’s “Butterfly” before seguing into Common’s repertoire,

providing soulful approximations of DJ culture with room for fluid

improvising. (You could recognize Glasper’s touch, infused with gos-

pel and Herbie and Mulgrew Miller, a mile away.) Common kept the

program clean and purposefully conscious, with highlights including

“Letter to the Free,” his contribution to Ava DuVernay’s documentary

13th, on the historical mass incarceration of African-Americans.

At one point during the set, a long-form freestyle pointed up the

seriousness of the improvisational art behind emceeing, and earned a

standing ovation. It was the only single “solo” I witnessed garner that

reaction all weekend.

Other standout sets stayed within the crop of current festival-

circuit favorites while still extending a hand toward pop, rock and

world-music fans. The supergroup Hudson, with drummer Jack

DeJohnette, guitarist John Scofield, keyboardist John Medeski and

bassist Larry Grenadier, covered Hendrix and Dylan while also

delving into a groovy, wandering brand of psychedelic experimen-

talism that brought to mind Scofield’s work with MMW. Cuban

singer Daymé Arocena, filling up her hour-plus with crowd-work

and freight-train Afro-Cuban rhythm, was no doubt a welcome

discovery for many. The chameleonic Dee Dee Bridgewater as-

sumed the guise of a soul singer for a set culled from her new

album, Memphis … Yes, I’m Ready.

What little I caught of Kamasi Washington was powerful but

very familiar from other festival spots of his I’ve absorbed. Pati-

tucci’s Electric Guitar Quartet, featuring guitarists Steve Cardenas

and Adam Rogers and drummer Blade, presented a terrific idea

for a band and executed on it. Here was a guitar band, playing jazz

but also stretching out into blues and fusion, with an aesthetic of

control—solos showcasing deep harmonic knowledge, even with

R&B language; an absolute sense of taste and democracy as to how

one sound or line should intermingle with another; and Blade’s

ability to support each soloist with a tailor-made temperament and

pattern. The leader, especially on his six-string electric bass, offered

his own guitar-like delights during the solo sections.

The Donny McCaslin Group carried its music from David

Bowie’s Blackstar toward big exultant ensemble moments, climax-

ing in the way post-rock bands tend to with each composition.

McCaslin was a highlight of a special homage to Michael Brecker,

featuring fellow saxophonists Joe Lovano and Rick Margitza, plus

Patitucci, Blade and Gil Goldstein’s impressively cogent charts

for the house orchestra. (Goldstein, who also played piano and

accordion, understands that just because you have an orchestra

doesn’t mean you have to fill every nook and cranny of a program

with it. This is a profound lesson lost on many writer-arrangers.)

Later that night, Lovano stunned as a balladeer on “Monk’s Mood,”

alongside pianist Chucho Valdés in a Latin-jazz unit that held those


DETROIT, MOST LIKELY DUE TO ITS RELATIVE YOUTH, ISN’T MENTIONED AS FREQUENTLY OR DISCUSSED WITH AS MUCH REVERENCE AS EVENTS LIKE NEWPORT, MONTEREY OR NEW ORLEANS. BUT YOU COULD MAKE A VERY

CONVINCING ARGUMENT THAT IT IS THE BEST JAZZ FESTIVAL IN THE U.S., WITHOUT TOO MUCH EFFORT.


DRUMMER MATT WILSON AND SOME VERY SPECIAL GUESTS REIMAGINE THE WORK OF POET CARL SANDBURG

On his first album as a lead-

er, 1996’s As Wave Follows

Wave, Matt Wilson and

his collaborators Dewey

Redman (saxophone) and Cecil McBee

(bass) chant poet Carl Sandburg’s

titular ode to evanescence and renewal.

At the time, it seemed like a hat-tip to

a fellow Illinoisan by a brilliant young

drummer-composer who brought a

singular curiosity to free-jazz situa-

tions. But with his latest release, Honey

and Salt: Music Inspired by the Poetry of

Carl Sandburg (Palmetto), Wilson has

clearly found a soul mate in the three-

time Pulitzer Prize winner, who died in

1967 at age 89.

Growing up on the same Knox

County prairielands that provided

Sandburg with so much of his inspira-

tion, Wilson had a closer connec-

tion to the poet than most members

of his generation. More than their

shared Scandinavian heritage, Wilson

knew that he was distantly related to

Sandburg (his great-great aunt mar-

ried Sandburg’s first cousin): “a family

connection, by marriage, that makes

[the project] a little more personal,”

says Wilson, 53. “But I think I got into

Sandburg more when I did this term

paper in college and discovered he

liked jazz, which made a connection to

my world. Also, when you leave home

you often get a new sense of pride in

your roots. I started revisiting him

when I moved to Brooklyn. I wrote

‘Wave Follows Wave’ after I bought

a book of Sandburg’s poetry on 7th

Street in Brooklyn.”

You could view Honey and Salt as

one of a recent spate of ambitious re-

leases featuring jazz settings for poetry.

But really it’s a quintessential Wilson

production, with the same loose and

limber, everything-and-the-kitchen-

sink sensibility that has energized

many of his previous albums. Divided

into three chapters with a gorgeous

epilogue, the album is built on the con-

versational rhythm tandem of Wilson

and Martin Wind (on acoustic bass

guitar), and the Mutt-and-Jeff matchup

“Read Them the Way You Think”

of Ron Miles’ elegant, cool cornet

and Jeff Lederer’s earthy bass clarinet,

slashing alto sax, fervid tenor sax and

brightly piping clarinet.

The revelatory wildcard is guitarist

and vocalist Dawn Thompson, whose

sweet, guileless delivery of the open-

ing piece, the crunching blues “Soup,”

introduces the tensions that animate the

project. The verse describes a famous

man’s quotidian lunch with almost

surreal repetitive detail, a portrait of

“a frozen moment when everyone sees

what is on the end of every fork,” to

quote Sandburg’s misanthropic anti-

thesis, William S. Burroughs. Along

with Thompson’s vocals, the album

includes several instrumental tracks JOH

N A

BBO

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Feature: Matt Wilson’s tribute to his late wife


JASM

INE

KWO

NG

and pieces recited by musicians Wilson

recruited. His casting choices, including

Carla Bley on the unaccompanied con-

cluding benediction, “To Know Silence

Perfectly,” repeatedly hit pay dirt.

Except for Lederer’s deliberate recita-

tion of “Prairie Barn,” Wilson says the

readings followed the recording of the

music. The results are better than any-

thing that could have been planned, like

Wilson’s antic setting for the playfully

absurdist verse “We Must Be Polite,” de-

livered with poker-faced aplomb by John

Scofield. “When I sent it to John it came

back in a completely different way than

we expected, like he was reading to his

grandchildren. It ended up being more

powerful than if it was over the top. I just

said, ‘Read them the way you think.’”

In many ways, Honey and Salt is a

work in progress. For concerts Wilson

has been recruiting musicians, friends

and even music critics to recite Sand-

burg’s poems with the band; it’s yet

another way Wilson has found to invite

people into his musical world. His affin-

ity for Sandburg as an artist echoes his

ongoing campaign to coax jazz musi-

cians into seeking new ways to connect

with audiences.

Sandburg belonged to an age when

writers of all stripes enjoyed visibility

and influence far beyond anything pos-

sible in today’s image-dominated popu-

lar culture, and the remarkably prolific

scribe took his role as a man of letters

seriously. He was the first poet to ad-

dress Congress, and his Pulitzer Prize-

winning biography of Abraham Lincoln

is still praised for its vivid prose (if not

its historical grounding). But he thrived

in the age of mass electronic media too.

“[He was] a semi-regular fixture on

television back in the day, appearing on

What’s My Line? and on this Gene Kelly

special where he wrote a poem for Kelly

that Nelson Riddle set to music,” Wil-

son says. “Marilyn Monroe loved him!”

In much the same way that Wilson’s

music feels both timeless and utterly

contemporary, Sandburg’s plainspoken

verse captures universal truths that

fit today’s headlines with dismaying

accuracy. Christian McBride’s knowing

recitation of “Anywhere and Every-

where People” unspools like an X-ray

of our reality-television age (“There

are people so eager to be seen/They

nearly always manage to be seen”).

Indeed, it’s striking and sometimes

depressing just how prescient Sand-

burg could be. With its martial, gung-

ho music, Wilson’s most direct setting

is for “Choose,” a short verse from

Chicago Poems, published in 1916

while a generation of European men

lost their lives in the trenches of World

War I. ANDREW GILBERT

THE SINGLE clenched fist lifted

and ready,

Or the open asking hand held out

and waiting.

Choose:

For we meet by one or the other.

POETRY JAMSFOUR MORE FINE RECENT ALBUMS MATCHING JAZZ WITH VERSE

NICOLE MITCHELL AND HAKI MADHUBUTILiberation Narratives (Black Earth)

With a string-dominated ensemble featuring cellist Tomeka Reid, the flutist, composer and Afrofuturist explorer Nicole Mitchell creates an extraordinarily rich array of settings for Chicago’s Haki Madhubuti (formerly Don L. Lee) to recite his politically charged verse.

JANE IRA BLOOMWild Lines: Improvising Emily Dickinson (Outline)

A wondrous two-disc set with twinned tracks featuring gorgeous instrumentals on the first and wry, spare recitation of Dickinson’s work by actress Deborah Rush on the second, Wild Lines unleashes the lavish lyricism of Bloom’s quartet with pianist Dawn Clement, bassist Mark Helias

and drummer Bobby Previte. ERIC MINGUS/DAVID AMRAM/LARRY SIMON/GROOVE BACTERIALangston Hughes: The Dream Keeper (Mode Avant)

Serendipitous ties abound on this project, which brings together pianist David Amram, who helped create jazz-poetry performance in the 1950s, with Charles Mingus’ son Eric Mingus, who recites the poetry of Langston Hughes, a frequent collaborator to jazz musicians. Directed by

guitarist Larry Simon, the settings range from solo piano to dectet, underlining Hughes’ powerful, unblinking vision of America and abiding affection for the soul and resilience of his people.

BENJAMIN BOONE/PHILIP LEVINEThe Poetry of Jazz (Phrase)

A singular collaboration between the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Levine and Fresno saxophonist-composer Benjamin Boone, this album features the jazz-loving U.S. Poet Laureate delivering his verse with rhythmic panache in the studio, essentially blowing with the musicians

(including such special guests as Greg Osby, Tom Harrell and Chris Potter, who were recorded later). A.G.

←

Poetic Justice: Mitchell with Madhubuti

Feature: Kurt Elling, Laurence Hobgood and Roy Nathanson on blending jazz and poetry

RTZ alto & soprano saxophoneILL o

VI ILL S bassAL FO R drums

VINCENT HERRING alto saxophoneCYRUS CHESTNUT pianoYASUSHI NAKAMURA bassCARL ALLEN drums

with special guestsNICOLAS BEARDE vocalsRUSSELL MALONE guitarSTEVE TURRE tromboneBRAD MASON trumpetSAM DILLON tenor saxophone

HAROLD MABERN pianoERIC ALEXANDER tenor saxophoneNAT REEVES bassJIMMY COBB drums

with special guestsFREDDIE HENDRIX trumpetCYRO BAPTISTA percussion

PETER BERNSTEIN guitarBRAD MEHLDAU pianoCHRISTIAN McBRIDE bassGREGORY HUTCHINSON drums

BOBBY WATSON alto saxophoneSTEPHEN SCOTT pianoCURTIS LUNDY bassLEWIS NASH drums

PETER BERNSTEIN

Signs LIVE!GREGORY

HUTCHINSONCHRISTIAN

McBRIDEBRAD

MEHLDAUPETER

BERNSTEIN

BOBBY WATSON

Made in AmericaSTEPHEN SCOTT CURTIS LUNDY LEWIS NASH

JOHNNY O’NEAL piano & vocalsBEN RUBENS bassITAY MORCHI drums

with special guestsROY HARGROVE trumpetGRANT STEWART tenor saxophone

STEVE DAVIS tromboneSTEVE WILSON saxophones & fl uteJIMMY GREENE tenor saxophoneLARRY WILLIS pianoPETER WASHINGTON bassLEWIS NASH drums

featurin JAV ESTEVE HEADS

www.SmokeSessionsRecords.comwww.Facebook.com/smokesessionsrecords© 2017 Smoke Sessions Records



Billie Holiday at the Mars Club, Paris; Nov. 20, 1958

John Coltrane at the Olympia Theatre, Paris; Nov. 18, 1961 Quincy Jones and Sarah Vaughan at Jones’ Paris home; July 27, 1958

THERE WAS A LEARNING CURVE TO HIGH-DEFINITION TELEVISION when it became ubiquitous a little more than a decade ago. It seemed beautiful but also startling—so vivid and unfiltered and rich in detail it raised concerns as to when realism becomes too real. Paging through Jazz Images (Elemental), a gorgeously printed new collection of photos by the French lensman Jean-Pierre Leloir, can induce a similar feeling, though one that is shot through with joy: John Coltrane, chuckling uncharacteris-tically in 1961; Quincy Jones and Sarah Vaughan, laughing and playing records at the former’s Paris pad in 1958; Billie Holiday, eight months before her death in the summer of 1959, somehow appearing at once radiant and exhausted. The immediacy of these images, and of Leloir’s documentation of Miles, Ornette, Ellington, Armstrong, Ella, Sonny Rollins and many others, achieves what only the best photography can: the displacement of the viewer into a scene and among company that can be visited only in dreams. With context and back-story offered by Quincy Jones, Michel Legrand, Martial Solal and writer-historian Ashley Kahn, Jazz Images exists alongside essential tomes by Leonard, Wolff, Claxton and Gottlieb. EVAN HAGA

T H E J A Z Z P H O T O G R A P H Y O F J E A N - P I E R R E L E LO I RMIDNIGHT IN PARIS


Abbey Lincoln at the ORTF Studios, Paris; Jan. 18, 1964

Dexter Gordon at Jean-Pierre Leloir’s home in Avenue des Ternes, Paris; March 30, 1963

Chet Baker at his hotel room in Paris, June 1963

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Buy a copy of Jean-Pierre Leloir’s Jazz Images



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THE MONTEREY JAZZ FESTIVAL MARKS 60 YEARS WITH PIANISTIC SPLENDOR, CENTENNIAL TRIBUTES AND A STELLAR COMMISSIONED WORK

Story of Some Grooves

When everything’s clicking at the Monterey Jazz

Festival, the weekend feels like far more than

a densely packed series of performances. By

both serendipity and design, Monterey creates

a free-flowing dialogue between musicians and eras, so that

a tune played in one venue can reverberate across the fair-

grounds. Monterey celebrated its milestone 60th season Sept.

15-17, and the cross-generational talk between various stages

and venues grew richer as the weekend progressed, climax-

ing with Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea’s transporting and

deeply playful piano duo in the Main Arena.

But that’s getting way ahead of ourselves. Matt Wilson

figured the best way to start a weekend-long party was by

inviting his comrades to sit in with his band performing

tunes inspired by Carl Sandburg’s poetry. It took two players

to replace Honey and Salt guitarist/vocalist Dawn Thomp-

son, with ace guitarist Bruce Forman and Seattle-based

pianist/keyboardist Dawn Clement (covering the vocals with

aplomb) joining cornetist Ron Miles and reed expert Jeff Le-

derer for a rip-snorting set. As rowdy, raucous and trenchant

as a New York Post headline, the music attained a Wilson-ian

apotheosis of screwball sublimity when Peter Erskine and Jeff

Clayton recited Sandburg’s advice for encountering gorillas

and elephants in “We Must Be Polite.”

In the Main Arena the centennial tribute to Dizzy Gillespie,

a presiding spirit at Monterey from 1958’s inaugural festival

through his last appearance in 1990, was underwhelming

despite the always-vivifying participation of conguero Pedrito

Martinez and the trumpet pyrotechnics of Roy Hargrove and

Sean Jones. Kenny Barron, whose trio anchored the tribute,

made “Con Alma” into a deliberate but sensuously flowing

dance—it was the first time he’d played it solo, he said. The

performance evoked Diz with far more, well, soul, than the

blazing horns.

Friday night concluded in the fairground’s most intimate

venue, now called the Pacific Jazz Café, with a 90th birthday

salute to Stan Getz by tenor saxophonist Joel Frahm. Making

his Monterey debut, he played tunes from the 1974 album

Captain Marvel in sequence. It’s easy and often tempting to dis

tribute gigs when they feature an accomplished, well-traveled

musician who fully merits a set performing his own music.

But Frahm and his superlative band with Erskine, bassist Scott

Colley and Billy Childs on Rhodes (more please!) was utterly

compelling from beginning to end, referencing the classic

source material while bringing fervent intelligence and muscu-

lar drive to some of Chick Corea’s greatest tunes.

After the Colombian band Monsieur Periné woke up

the fairgrounds with a celebratory set, a joyous wave of soul

washed over the fairgrounds on Saturday afternoon. The rising

Bay Area R&B combo Con Brio kept the sun-kissed Garden

Stage audience on their feet with frontman Ziek McCarter’s

imploring vocals, and Dee Dee Bridgewater delivered a Mem-

phis soul tour de force distilling the various secular and sacred

currents that flowed out of River City in the 1950s, ’60s and

’70s. Flutist Ali Ryerson made a point of playing Corea’s “Win-

dows” and Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage,” the latter on liquid-

toned alto flute that captured the tune’s aquatic spirit.

Opening Saturday evening’s Main Arena action, the

•(above) Chick Corea, during a duo set with Herbie Hancock; John Clayton premieres his “Stories of a Groove: Conception, Evolution, Celebration”


FarewellsWalter Becker, co-founder, co-songwriter, guitarist and bassist of the era-defining, jazz-savvy rock band Steely Dan, died Sept. 3. The news was announced on his official website. Becker, 67, lived in Maui, Hawaii, and had missed Steely Dan performances in July.

With his partner in Steely Dan, Donald Fagen, in the 1970s, Becker bridged the gap between jazz-fusion and popular music in ways that earned a rare confluence of critical and commercial success. Harmonic knowledge gleaned from postbop met the stuff of pop hooks, and Becker and Fagen made a habit

of employing only the sharpest jazz and studio players to record their music, continuing that practice into their more recent years of consistent and successful touring. As a guitarist Becker was enormously effective, and influential. In a time of much loud and limited blues-based language in rock guitar, Becker was a kind of pop ambassador for the flourishing fusion school of the day. Bluesy string bends, quick-fire phrasing and a tastefully dirty tone gave his playing visceral impact, but his solos addressed the chord changes and the narrative of the tune in the style of a jazz musician.

• In September JazzTimes and Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) announced the creation of Jazz Congress, a conference dedicated to bringing together members of the international jazz community in an effort to expand the audience for jazz. The event will be held at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City on Jan. 11-12, and will complement Winter Jazzfest and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) conference, both taking place during and after Jazz Congress. The two-day event is supported in part by a grant to JALC provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. JazzTimes, in conjunction with the Jazz Forward Coalition, had produced the Jazz Connect Conference for the last five years, most recently at New York’s Saint Peter’s Church; keynote speakers have included Christian McBride and Dee Dee Bridgewater.

• In August, the Jazz Education Network (JEN) named Sharon Burch as its managing director. Burch is the first fulltime employee hired by the organization, created in 2009 in the aftermath of the folding of the International Association for Jazz Education. She had served on the organization’s board of directors as secretary and as chairperson of the JEN Education Committee. In addition to her role as an education consultant with Jazz at Lincoln Center since 2013, Burch is the author of six Freddie the Frog storybooks that aim to teach musical concepts to children. JEN produces an annual conference for jazz education that will be held Jan. 3-6 in Dallas, Texas.

•A scholarship at Berklee School of Music has been created in the name and honor of longtime Boston concert producer Fred Taylor. On Sept. 12, a benefit concert featuring Kurt Elling, Danilo Pérez, Terri Lyne Carrington, Catherine Russell, Kat Edmonson, John Patitucci and Grace Kelly was held at Berklee Performance Center. Kelly organized the concert and, along with trumpeterBo Winiker, initially proposed the scholarship to Berklee.

News from JazzTimes.com

premiere of John Clayton’s “Stories of a Groove: Concep-

tion, Evolution, Celebration” was the festival’s centerpiece.

Having seen just about every commissioned work since

Monterey’s artistic director, Tim Jackson, reinstated the

program in 1994, “Stories of a Groove” surpassed all expec-

tations. The bassist offered a brief emotional roadmap to the

eight-movement piece, making it clear he was responding

to the divisive political climate. A sense of anger and dismay

came through clearly on “Tidal Wave” and “Slow Burn

Baby Burn,” but what was most striking about the piece was

the way he effectively melded the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz

Orchestra and the Gerald Clayton Trio.

With the orchestra’s Tamir Hendelman, on keyboards,

playing unison lines with Gerald’s piano, and several drum

duets between Jeff Hamilton and Obed Calvaire, the two

ensembles worked as one, roaring and whispering into a

spiritually charged duet for Gerald and his uncle, alto saxo-

phonist Jeff Clayton.

As beautifully conceived and executed as it was, “Stories

of a Groove” was my second favorite set of the festival. The

most revelatory act I caught was the second of three sets

by pianist Joanne Brackeen with bassist Ugonna Okegwo

and drummer Rudy Royston. After years of listening to her

albums, the first time hearing Brackeen live, and with such a

responsive ensemble, felt like transitioning from black-and-

white Kansas to the Technicolor Land of Oz.

Common, the weekend’s most surprising booking,

brought righteous electricity to the Main Arena on Sunday

afternoon. Politically charged but not partisan, sexy but not

vulgar, he freestyled with rhythmic force, and employed the

full textural palette of his stellar band that included rising

flute star and vocalist Elena Pinderhughes. Seated in a row

near the stage, Herbie Hancock had his arms in the air with

everyone else as Common rallied the crowd (and name-

checked the pianist as a sage).

Drummer Scott Amendola and organist Wil Blades

delivered their wicked funk in the Night Club, while next

door in Dizzy’s Den, saxophonist Tia Fuller led a formi-

dable band with trumpeter Ingrid Jensen (the fiery duo

announced they’ll be serving as the festival’s artists-in-

residence next year). Mandolinist Chris Thile and Brad

Mehldau’s singular jazz-grass collaboration worked better

on instrumentals (like Mehldau’s bucolic “Tallahassee Junc-

tion” and a woozy but sharp “Love for Sale”) than on Thile’s

vocal features.

The weekend ended with an almost overwhelming flood

of pianistic pleasure. After half a dazzling set of Chano

Domínguez’s trio, during which they transformed the

relaxed, finger-snapping groove of “Freddie Freeloader”

into a metrical steeplechase, it was back out to the Arena

for Hancock and Corea, who were positioned facing each

other from across the vast expanse of two Faziolis. Eyes

locked, they dissected Cole Porter’s “Easy to Love” and

turned “Cantaloupe Island” into a grooving fantasia. Chal-

lenging and playing for each other, they both looked a good

decade younger than their ages, and they sounded as fresh

as anyone who preceded them. ANDREW GILBERT

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Elling and Kelly at Berklee


Before & AfterOPENINGCHORUS

For audiences, a jazz festival “artist-in-residence” gig offers a

special chance to hear a leading musician stretch out in various

contexts, over the course of a few days. One set will usually

show off the player’s more traditional, straight-ahead side; the

next might demonstrate a more challenging, newer aspect; and then,

perhaps, there will be a collaboration with younger local players.

For the fortunate musician—such as drummer Mark Guiliana,

at this past summer’s Jazz Middelheim festival near Antwerp, Bel-

gium—it is also an opportunity to put the brakes on a busy touring

schedule, stay in one place for a long weekend and bring over the

family (as Guiliana did with his wife, the singer Gretchen Parlato,

and their young son, Marley). Guiliana, 37, was nearing the end of

a busy season, during which he played the summer festivals as the

leader of his own groups and as a member of saxophonist Donny

McCaslin’s band, and put the final touches on the new album from

his acoustic Jazz Quartet, Jersey (reviewed on p. 57).

Jazz Middelheim extended to Guiliana his first invitation to be

an artist-in-residence, an experience he found to be “particularly

special, because throughout the year I get to play with a wide variety

of my projects but very rarely one right after the other. It’s been fun

to put them next to each other and really enjoy the similarities and

the differences between them.”

Jazz Middelheim ran for four days in early August, and Guiliana

performed with his Jazz Quartet, his electronica-fusion group Beat

Music, and a rehearsed partnership with three stellar jazz players

from the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp. He also agreed to do his

first Before & After on a beautiful, cool Sunday afternoon at the fes-

tival’s Club Stage, with more than 30 Belgian jazz fans in attendance.

1. McCoy Tyner“Moment’s Notice” (Supertrios, Milestone). Tyner, piano; Ron Carter,

bass; Tony Williams, drums. Recorded in 1977.

BEFORE: I don’t know the recording, but it sounds to me like

slightly later period Tony Williams. The first thing to hit me was

the left-foot hi-hat—the really consistent left foot. What makes me

think it’s later Tony is that the cymbals are a little brighter and the

drums are lower; he was playing a bigger set-up. His vocabulary is

unmistakable in many ways, and that intensity! Not many people

would play with this fire in a piano trio. The single stroke roll at the

end of the head was pure Tony. Is this late ’70s or something?

AFTER: I have so many feelings about Tony. For me, he was the one

who kicked open the door to jazz. The first time I heard him playing

with Miles’ quintet really got me excited. I didn’t know what it was

and I didn’t understand it at the time, but it made my body feel a

certain way. I knew I had to chase that sound and learn more about

it. For me, in many ways it started with him.

2. Weather Report“Two Lines” (Procession, Columbia). Wayne Shorter, tenor saxo-

phone; Joe Zawinul, keyboards; Victor Bailey, bass; Omar Hakim,

drums; José Rossy, percussion. Released in 1983.

BEFORE: I don’t know the recording, but my guess would be

Weather Report. With Jaco. No, post-Jaco. Victor Bailey? The

drummer, hmm. This era is difficult. The sound of the drums is less

nuanced but still … Omar Hakim? 1983?

AFTER: The thing about Omar is he can play so well in a more

popular-music setting, where he’s just playing parts with no room to

MARK GUILIANASEARCHING FOR A SPECIAL FEELING By Ashley Kahn

←

Guiliana listens hard at Jazz Middelheim in Belgium

BRU

NO

BO

LLA

ERT

Profile: Mark Guiliana


improvise and maybe he’s hitting harder. But then in this situation

there’s incredible touch and listening going on. He’s such an incred-

ible musician. Yeah, the sound of the drums in that era—you can tell

he’s playing these big drums and they’re pretty muted and tuned low.

That was definitely a cue as to when this might have been.

One of the reasons I wanted to play this is that apparently the

drum parts on this track were programmed by Joe Zawinul, for

Omar to follow.

Cool. Very cool. I love it especially when the [rhythmic] ideas are

coming from a non-drummer, because quite often they’ll come up

with ideas that I couldn’t because they’re not intuitive with the way

something would work on the instrument. I usually jump at the

opportunity to try to accommodate those parts and emulate what

they’re looking for.

Like when you recorded Blackstar with David Bowie as part of

Donny McCaslin’s band?

For sure. He programmed certain things on the demos that I never

would have come up with because I’m not him, and they didn’t sit

easily on the drums. So it was a welcome challenge to try to bring

that stuff to the kit in an organic way and create the feeling that the

song needed. Sometimes I do this to help get myself out of my own

head—using outside hardware to try to ignite some new ideas.

3. Burning Spear“Black Wa-Da-Da (Invasion)” (Garvey’s Ghost, Island). Delroy

Hinds, Winston Rodney, Rupert Willington, vocals; Bobby Ellis,

trumpet; Vin Gordon, trombone; Herman Marquis, alto saxophone;

Richard Hall, tenor saxophone; Tyrone Downie, Bernard Harvey,

keyboards; Earl “Chinna” Smith, Tony Chin, guitars; Robbie Shake-

speare, bass; Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace, drums.

Recorded in 1975.

BEFORE: I really don’t want to talk over this because I love it. This

music just makes me happy, especially on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

It makes me happy to be alive. I imagine the artist is the producer,

the engineer. It’s a dubbed version of pre-existing material.

It’s definitely that.

It’s difficult, because although that person’s character is all over

it, they’re actually not a part of the performance in regards to the

traditional instrumentation; they are performing the dub and they’re

essentially using the studio as their instrument. So I’m thinking of

those pioneers of reggae dub like Lee Perry, King Tubby, but I can’t

tell which of those scientists this is. Please let me know.

AFTER: I wish I was cool enough to get a nickname like “Horse-

mouth”! Yeah, it’s beautiful. For me this music as a whole is always

a nice, gentle reminder about why I play music in the first place.

Sometimes it’s difficult to remember, because I went to school and I

practiced a lot and I thought a lot and I’ve done all this homework.

Sometimes the thinking can get in the way, and for me this music is

coming from here [points to gut]. There’s a simplicity, but great depth

as well. Thank you for including that. I’m going to get this record.

4. Stuff.“Strata” (Old Dreams New Planets, Sdban Ultra). Andrew Claes,

tenor saxophone; Joris Caluwaerts, keyboards; Dries Laheye,

bass; Lander Gyselinck, drums; Mix Monster Menno, turntables.

Released in 2017.

BEFORE: I really like the feeling—again, it feels very human. … I

feel that from the drums—a very nice feeling and nice touch. I like

how the instrument responds, the way the cymbals speak in the mix.

It’s not hitting so hard, and I think that gives a nice human thing and

a little more air to the performance. I feel like it’s British, but I don’t

know who it is.

Actually, it’s a Belgian group featuring a young drummer who’s a

phenom much covered by the media here—Lander Gyselinck.

He also plays with [French saxophonist] Michel Portal.

AFTER: Very cool. I like the drums playing along with electronics,

too. The feeling is fairly modern; it has that busier double feeling,

with the wide, half-time backbeat that is getting more and more

used I think.

5. Robert Hurst“Monk’s Dream” (Unrehurst, Volume 2, Bebob). Hurst, bass;

Robert Glasper, piano; Chris Dave, drums. Recorded in 2010.

BEFORE: Of course, it’s a beautiful Monk song. It feels very

familiar but I don’t know it. Incredible interaction; incredible open

spirit. I love how the melody is being played a lot. It’s not just “Get

the melody out of the way and start improvising.” The melody feels

really present, and in the moment the drummer is taking some

beautiful liberties and chances and shaping the music. I heard the

applause, so I know it’s live, and that makes sense—that energy has

a very live feeling to it. In some ways it feels like if you heard this

from a distance, you might say, “Oh, it’s Keith Jarrett’s trio playing

a standard.” But the individual decisions are quite modern and

specific to these guys.

AFTER: I stand by my comments. Incredibly interactive and pres-

ent. Robert’s just incredible and Chris is one of the great musical

risk-takers of today in my opinion. I’ve heard him play very little in a

contemporary jazz style, but his personality—it’s less about what he’s

playing and more about where and why his choices set him apart. This

performance embodies what I love about him, which is that fearless-

ness. In this context, there’s less room for the feeling when he’s playing

more beats, but still his phrasing is really unique and progressive.

What Chris is best known for now is bringing that stuttering,

broken-beat effect into jazz, so it was a curveball.

Exactly. A lot of those choices he makes are an emulation of a sound

he’s heard in a different environment, and it’s not coming from the

drummer’s mind. He had to explore his own creativity to discover

how to achieve these things on the drum set. It’s important for people

who look to Chris as an influence to remember that, and not just see

it as some cool drum stuff to play. When you understand where he’s

getting it from, you can understand how to use it better yourself in a

more organic way.


Before & AfterCHORUSOPENING6. Nerve“7even” (Live in Europe, Nerve). Jacob Bergson, keyboards; John

Davis, bass and low-end manipulation; Aaron Nevezie, sound and

real-time effects processing; Jojo Mayer, drums. Recorded in 2014.

BEFORE: [immediately] Jojo Mayer—Nerve. Special props to John

Davis, on bass, who’s really multitalented. He’s the co-owner of a

studio in Brooklyn called the Bunker, where I’ve made my last few

recordings with John engineering.

I know this song. Why do I know it? Because Jojo’s a hero of

mine. He was the first guy I saw emulate electronic music live on an

acoustic drum set. Going out and seeing Jojo playing this stuff live—

and also Zach Danziger, another incredible New York drummer—

gave me the courage to follow that path and explore that territory.

Before I saw either of them I was checking out a lot of electronic

music, but I couldn’t build a bridge between that sound and acoustic

instruments. It was guys like Jojo who provided clear evidence of

how it can be done. I met him years ago and I took one lesson with

him in, maybe, 2004, and I became the guy in the front row of every

show of his for many years. He’s been very generous to me, and that’s

not always the case.

7. Vijay Iyer“Big Brother” (Historicity, ACT). Iyer, piano; Stephan Crump, bass;

Marcus Gilmore, drums. Recorded in 2008-09.

BEFORE: This is particularly challenging because the drummer

didn’t play any cymbals, and that’s quite often helpful in identify-

ing who it might be. So this is an extra curveball. This is also tricky

because the piano player is playing in a way that I don’t recognize,

with such great force and intensity. And the bowing of the bass.

It’s a sound that I really like, but I can’t identify it.

AFTER: When is this one from? So then Marcus was 12? [laughs]

That was tricky because it was tough to hear the specific personality

in such a disciplined part. He’s one of the younger guys that I try

to keep an eye on—really one of my favorite drummers, for sure.

Every time I hear him or see him I feel like he’s leading the way and

has been for a while now. Vijay, it crossed my mind. Now it makes

sense, but to me it felt more intense than what I imagine coming

from him. It’s pretty rocking—and of course he can go there.

8. Squarepusher“Port Rhombus” (Port Rhombus EP, Warp). Tom Jenkinson, elec-

tronics. Released in 1996.

BEFORE: I don’t know the recording. Whether it’s him or not,

it reminds me of Squarepusher. The nuts and bolts of it, the

beats and the bass, feel like him. But the top part is kind of sen-

timental, which normally isn’t a place he goes to. It’s awkwardly

romantic in some ways.

AFTER: Tom’s as much a hero as Tony Williams is for me. And similar

to the way Tony kicked the door open to his world of improvising and

jazz, Squarepusher did that for me with electronic music. Is this from

’97? In 2000, a friend of mine in college gave me his record Feed Me

Weird Things, which was released in ’96. I couldn’t figure it out; I didn’t

understand it. But it created this feeling in my body that I knew was

special, and I really wanted to learn more about it.

9. David Virelles“Binary” (Antenna, ECM). Los Seres, percussion (“Los Seres is a fiction-

al percussion ensemble, created and programmed by David Virelles”).

Recorded in 2016.

BEFORE: Talk about not thinking when they’re playing, in the best way.

It sounds like it’s a field recording. Folkloric music from a West African

culture would be my guess, with that combination of instruments and

tambours and bells. I can’t guess where that’s from, but it’s mysterious in

the most beautiful way. Random, but it feels like there’s a center as well.

AFTER: Whoa. So is it a Cuban reference? Beautiful. He manipulated

the performances? The bass drum sounded modern when it came in,

and I thought, “Oh, is this a modern treatment of the drum?” But it was

difficult to know. I think one of the good and bad things about the brain

is that it’s always trying to organize, and in this context [it’s] rushing to

organize what’s going on. I felt lost in a really joyful way. Really cool.

10. Mister Barrington“P R G” (II, Double Origin). Oli Rockberger, keyboards; Owen Biddle,

bass; Zach Danziger, drums, drum machine. Released in 2012.

BEFORE: He’s already been mentioned—Zach Danziger, Mister Bar-

rington. I know the music. It’s the kind of thing where I might have even

been in the room when Zach was mixing it. Is it their first album?

The second—a track called “P R G.”

AFTER: Knowing Zach, I’m sure it has some very interesting mean-

ing—he is as funny as he is talented. It’s really difficult to properly give

Zack his due because it’s so diverse and so impactful. He’s inexhaustible

and always in search of the next thing, to the point where maybe people

can’t keep up and maybe that feeds into being underrated. … He has

become a great friend, and I’d like to say on the record that for my 30th

birthday I curated a night of beat music at [New York City’s] Rockwood

Music Hall. I asked Zack to come and do whatever he wanted. That

became his first gig with Mister Barrington, so we joke that I get a cut of

anything the band does.

“I LOVE IT ESPECIALLY WHEN THE [RHYTHMIC] IDEAS ARE COMING FROM A NON-DRUMMER, BECAUSE QUITE OFTEN

THEY’LL COME UP WITH IDEAS THAT I COULDN’T.”


11. Tony Allen“A Night in Tunisia” (A Tribute to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers,

Blue Note). Allen, drums; Rémi Sciuto, alto and soprano saxophones;

Jean-Jacques Elangué, tenor saxophone; Nicolas Giraud, trumpet;

Daniel Zimmerman, trombone; Jean Phi Dary, piano; Mathias Al-

lamane, bass. Released in 2017.

BEFORE: Was he playing here yesterday? I went to the zoo with my

family so unfortunately I didn’t get to see him. But I have seen him in

the past and he’s a master. I heard him in the first bar—Tony Allen.

This is the new Blakey tribute right? “A Night in Tunisia.”

Wow. Just the groove. There aren’t that many guys I can

name in just one or two measures, but he’s the father of a really

important style of music, Afrobeat. With Fela [Kuti], Tony had

this unstoppable, I’d say Elvin-Trane type of connection, or like

Carlton Barrett and Bob Marley, with what was happening inside

the music and with the effect that music then had on the world.

I do remember hearing him talking about trying to dig and dig

and dig to find these Blue Note records from the ’60s and hearing Art

Blakey. And you think, that’s not necessarily an Art Blakey vocabulary,

but there’s as much spirit.

It’s not about press rolls and leaning on the 2 and 4.

No. When Tony plays I get that same feeling in my body as when I hear

dub reggae. It’s a technique to simply say what he wants to say and he

doesn’t say anything else. It’s difficult to put a blanket statement on such

a beautifully detailed genre as Afrobeat, but the grooves he plays, they

don’t always sit in the obvious place. And with his touch, you can hear

the instrument; you hear the wood and all the vibrations. You can hear

the air. I think that’s a beautiful lesson: how the energy doesn’t have to

come solely from the physicality. He’s a great example of that. JT

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CHORUSOPENING Overdue Ovation

It is both a blessing and a curse to drum master Mike Clark that

his fan base remains interested in the contributions he made to

beat language during his mid-1970s tenure with the Headhunt-

ers, the popular funk-jazz unit founded by Herbie Hancock.

Clark’s bespoke grooves on hits like “Actual Proof ” and “God

Make Me Funky” remain hip-hop lingua franca, looped, sampled

and appropriated by high-profile producers and turntablists since

Grandmaster Flash used the latter track in the early ’80s. His fans

include several generations of jazz drummers of all stylistic predis-

positions, who regard “the godfather of linear funk,” to quote one

YouTube clip title, as a model for imparting texture and motivic

variety to groove without sacrificing elemental phatness.

Clark, 71, continues to bring those qualities to funky music, most

notably with a N’awlins-flavored edition of the Headhunters that he

co-leads with percussionist Bill Summers, a ’70s bandmate, featuring

sidemen like saxophonist Donald Harrison and bassist Chris Severin.

But it frustrates Clark that his fans—and bookers—are less cognizant

of another unit, Wolff & Clark Expedition, that he co-leads with

pianist Michael Wolff; their most recent offering is the well-reviewed

2015 album Expedition 2 (Random Act), which includes trumpeter

Wallace Roney and bassist Christian McBride. At the time he was

readying the album, Wolff elaborated on Clark’s “serious strengths”:

his “straight-ahead playing; his special funk stuff; his mixture of all

those beats; the way he turns the time around. I feel a total freedom

rhythmically to do whatever I want to do with him.” Clark also notes

that he’s currently mixing a kinetic organ-trio date with California-

based Delbert Bump, and points out Philadelphia bassist Dylan Tay-

lor’s One in Mind (Blujazz), on which Clark drum-paints to improvisa-

tions by the late guitarist Larry Coryell.

MIKE CLARKTHE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD CALLED FUNKBy Ted Panken

In July, Clark was back in New York after a week teaching at a West

Coast jazz camp, and was looking forward to upcoming swinging

engagements with vibraphonist Mark Sherman and two frequent

partners, pianist George Cables and trumpeter Eddie Henderson. We

sat in the book-filled living/dining room of his flat in Manhattan’s

Washington Heights neighborhood, where he lives with his partner,

June Cross, a documentary filmmaker and journalism professor at Co-

lumbia University, and two mellow cats. After the opening pleasant-

ries, Clark cut to the chase.

“Headhunters sold millions, or close to it, so naturally everybody

knows me from those couple of records and not the jazz records I’ve

made—and I’ve made a lot of them,” Clark says. “I don’t have drum

language that goes with funk or fusion. I’m a bebop and post-bebop

drummer. My heroes are Philly Joe Jones, Max Roach, Roy Haynes,

Elvin Jones and Tony Williams. What made me different is that I

spread their stuff on different parts of the set, using jazz phrasing but

without the swing beat. Max once told me, ‘You’re totally funky, but

I don’t understand what you’re doing.’ I told him, ‘A lot of it is your

stuff—paradiddles and doubles using different limbs.’ When I showed

him, he cracked up: ‘That is my stuff.’”

Clark says he was 4 when his father, a railroad switchman in love

with jazz and drumming, heard the toddler spontaneously execute

a cohesive Gene Krupa tom-tom beat on his kit, took him to a local

boîte and convinced the band to let him sit in on “Sweet Georgia

Brown.” “I was too small to sit down and play, so I stood,” Clark recalls.

“I always could play what I heard. As an adult I played some of Louie

Bellson’s stuff for him. He asked, ‘Did you write this out?’ ‘No, I used to

do this.’ He said, ‘You don’t know how close you are to what I did.’”

Clark’s childhood was peripatetic, as his father took assignments in

Roanoke, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and New Orleans, where, he relates, “I

played a lot.” Paul Ferrara, a drummer with Al Hirt and Louis Prima,

gave him tips, and Clark has a picture of himself at 11, on a gig with

trumpeter Murphy Campo at the Famous Door on Bourbon Street;

the bassist that evening was a teenaged Mac Rebennack, a.k.a. Dr. John.

Later, at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, where Clark’s uncle,

an ex-boxer, took tickets, he met legendary Ellington drummer Sam

Woodyard backstage, and was told to dig out quarter notes on the cym-

bal with an “ice cream scoop” gesture. “I was never not a musician and I

was never not in a nightclub,” he says. “Other kids didn’t roll like that.”

It’s safe to say that few other 1946 babies were rolling with Art Blakey’s

Drum Suite, a 1957 release that Clark’s father brought home. “That

changed everything,” Clark says. “Then I heard Max and Philly Joe, and

slowly built up a record collection. I didn’t know about form and chord

changes, but somehow I got it, and I could play something close to Max’s

solos. The new way of comping, no more 4/4 bass drum, what they used

to call ‘dropping bombs’—it was an exciting new frontier.”

Clark was “working all the time” by 1964, when he graduated from

high school in Sacramento. On extended visits to his father in Fort

Worth, where he gigged with, among others, Albert King, Freddie

King, Albert Collins and Jimmy Reed, he mastered the shuffle beat

and “learned to play a slow blues like I mean it.” He swung for Vince

Guaraldi in the mid-’60s, and would tour with the pianist later that

decade and into the ’70s. Already “working seven nights a week” in the

Bay Area by 1967, he got a house in East Oakland with Paul Jackson,

his “best friend,” then playing upright bass, that became an epicenter

for musical and various extracurricular activities. A favorite spot was

the Both/And Club, which booked national stars like Woody Shaw,

Freddie Hubbard and Bobby Hutcherson, who, when “they couldn’t

afford to bring out Lenny White or one of the guys who made the

DAV

ID S

OKE

L

Review: Wolff & Clark Expedition


records,” retained either Clark’s or Eddie Marshall’s services.

In 1973, after Harvey Mason left Headhunters, White and Jackson

separately recommended Clark to Hancock. “I wasn’t sure I wanted the

gig,” Clark says. “Of course, anyone would want to play with Herbie. But

I knew everyone would know me from that thing, whatever you want to

call it. They didn’t call it anything then. I find playing funky music tune

after tune incredibly boring. It’s a great rush, but after two of them I’m

done. I want to play a standard with brushes, or swing hard, or do some-

thing creative. But it was a job, and I needed rent. I asked Herbie all the

time if we could play ‘The Eye of the Hurricane’ or some of his jazz pieces.

‘We’ll do that later.’ But we never did. The whole band put the cuffs on me,

like, ‘Play that funky music, white boy.’ It was completely ‘let’s make some

money.’ When I was playing with blues guys who could really shout and

scream, then it made sense. But when you’re back there chopping wood

for a bunch of jazz musicians, it’s like a dog getting off on your leg.”

After leaving the Headhunters in 1977, Clark returned to the Both/

And for an 18-month, five-nights-a-week run with a sextet led by Eddie

Henderson that included saxophonist Dave Liebman. “I had to dig deeper

and deeper,” Clark says. “It was very important then to be what they called

‘modern’—to make that jump from Philly Joe and Max into Elvin and

Tony. I worked out a lot of stuff with Eddie. I had all these bits and pieces of

each era together, even 1940, and that gig helped me to solidify who I am.”

He moved to New York after the Both/And closed in 1978, taking an

8 p.m. to 7 a.m. sinecure at a speakeasy at 138th and Amsterdam in

Harlem for $50 a night. That spawned a slew of associations—avant-blues

with saxophonist Julius Hemphill and trumpeter Baikida Carroll, trios

with Wolff and guitarist Jack Wilkins, several years with trumpeter Jack

Walrath, frequent organ gigs on the Tri-State Area soul-jazz circuit. “None

of these were like the Vanguard,” Clark says. “This is where I learned

to play the music much better than when I first moved here. I wasn’t

business-minded. I knew Bruce Lundvall and those guys from Herbie.

I didn’t go talk to them about record dates. What I did was play five to

seven nights a week for years, always straight-ahead.”

He intends to apply that blue collar m.o. as he progresses through his

eighth decade. “Everything has changed,” Clark says. “Drums are tuned

differently. The cymbals are different. You have a soundman that controls

everything, and a monitor screaming in your ear. You can’t keep going

along like it’s 1960. I make the changes I can live with, that allow me to

continue to work without changing parts of my music that I love.” JT

Recommended Listening:Herbie Hancock Thrust (Columbia, 1974)

Mike Clark Blueprints of Jazz, Vol. 1 (Talking House, 2009)

Mike Clark Carnival of Soul (Owl, 2010)

Michael Wolff/Mike Clark Wolff & Clark Expedition 2(Random Act, 2015)

“I asked Herbie all the time if we could play ‘The Eye of the Hurricane’ or some

of his jazz pieces. ‘We’ll do that later.’ But we never did.”


When Antonio Sanchez eats at restaurants in New York, he’ll often ask the busboys where they’re from. Sanchez, Pat Metheny’s drummer for the past 17 years and the leader of his own band, Migration, is from Mexico City, so he identifies with his fellow Latino immigrants. Sometimes he’ll get into long conversations with them,

and those talks linger in his head when he’s composing new music. “The accusation against immigrants is that they’re lazy, they don’t

pay taxes and just soak up resources,” he says. “But when I talk to these guys, it’s obvious that the truth is the exact opposite. No one works harder than they do.”

Sanchez, who became a U.S. citizen in October of 2016, at the age of 44, is angry about the current Republican backlash against immigration. But how can he express those feelings? It’s not as if he were an essayist or song lyricist who can channel that rage into words, or a trumpeter or pianist who can translate that fury into melody. Sanchez is a drummer. His instrument is commonly assumed to be limited to rhythm. But Sanchez is determined to refute that notion.

ImmigrantSongsWith his boldly rhythm-centric

approach to musical storytelling, Mexican-American drummer A N T O N I O S A N C H E Z

chronicles the migrant’s struggle

BY GEOFFREY HIMES


JUST

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Sanchez widens that hole with his new

album, Bad Hombre (CAM Jazz). The

back cover of the CD presents a mugshot

photo of the drummer in profile, and

proclaims in white letters against a

black background: “All tracks written,

arranged, produced and performed by

Antonio Sanchez.” And while those

tracks include a healthy dose of elec-

tronica, it’s clear that the keyboards and

programming are usually accompanying

the drums and not the other way around.

Sanchez confirms this impression in

early August, during a conversation the

morning of his bandleader debut at the

Newport Jazz Festival. Wearing green

cargo shorts, a silver earring and a black

T-shirt and sporting a sparse beard, he

leans forward in a plush chair in the lob-

He punched a big hole in those assumptions with his

innovative score for the 2014 film Birdman or (The Unexpected

Virtue of Ignorance), which consists of unaccompanied

drumming. Sanchez demonstrated that a standard drum

kit has enough versatility to alert a movie audience to every

twist and turn of Michael Keaton’s psyche as his character

tries to mount a Broadway show.

by of his hotel and explains how the new

album came into being. “After the success

of the soundtrack,” he recalls, “I wanted

to do a drum-oriented project that was

more than just a lot of drum solos. As

a listener, I might listen to that kind of

record once and never again. But I’d been

listening to a lot of electronic music, and

I thought that might be a good comple-

ment to the drums. But I didn’t want to

program a lot of loops and then play over

them. I hate drum-clinic music where

you’re going crazy over prerecorded

tracks. I wanted it to be interactive.”

When he was shopping for a new home

a couple of years ago, the first request he

made to the real-estate agents was “Show

me the basement.” The agents had never

encountered such an approach to house-

buying, but they obliged by showing him

a lot of cellars. He found a great basement

in the Queens neighborhood of Jackson

Heights with a nice house attached, and

after moving in at the end of 2015, the

first thing he did was convert the lowest

floor into a recording studio. “As soon as

the studio was set up,” he says, “I recorded

hours and hours of myself drumming

alone. There was no pre-written music, but

I might give myself rules, such as ‘Just play

this part of the kit’ or ‘Speed up and then

play the cymbals.’ I had all the time in the

world, and I wanted to have hours of music

to choose from for each track.”

Sanchez is on the road a lot, with

Metheny and Migration, so he records as

much as he can when he’s home and then

takes the tapes on tour. On planes, in hotels

and in dressing rooms, he listens to the

tracks obsessively until he finds certain sec-

tions that he especially likes; then he begins

layering electronic sounds onto the drum

tracks while trying to make the master

track an acceptable length. Sometimes he

likes a particular sound so much that it in-

spires a new composition and more drum

improvisation. “That’s why I say it’s interac-

tive,” he explains, “because the keyboard

is reacting to the drums, and sometimes←

Migration at Newport: Matt Brewer, Thana Alexa, Seamus Blake and Sanchez (from left) onstage in August; keyboardist John Escreet is out of the frame

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Live Review: Antonio Sanchez performs his Birdman score

the drums are reacting to the keys. It was

completely intuitive; I had no master plan. It’s

not like I sat down and said, ‘Now I’m going

to play a song about a guy crossing the Rio

Grande.’ It was more that my feelings come

out when I’m drumming, and because I had

all that anxiety about the immigration situa-

tion, that came out in the improvisations.”

It’s one thing to recognize those feel-

ings in your own drumming, but it’s quite

another to make the listener recognize them

too. This is always a challenge in instrumen-

tal music—especially in music limited to

drums and electronica. So Sanchez sought

out ways to provide clues for the listener

without being too explicit. The biggest clue

is the album’s title, Bad Hombre, taken from

Donald Trump’s notorious accusation about

the criminality of Mexican immigrants.

Reinforcing that connection is the album’s

prelude, “Bad Hombre Intro,” a sound

collage of a mariachi band and Sanchez’s

grandfather reciting a story about the Mexi-

can Revolution over a drum beat. It ends

with Sanchez’s own electronically filtered

voice declaring, “We’re the bad hombres,

and we’re not getting out.” This segues into

“Bad Hombre,” a drum-and-synth-bass duet

that suggests a remix of Ennio Morricone’s

spaghetti western soundtracks. The bass pat-

tern holds steady, but the drumming quick-

ens like the pulse of an unshaven gunslinger

in a poncho and wide-brimmed hat.

“I’ve struggled for years with my dual identity,”

Sanchez says. “I’ll always be

Mexican, because I grew up there …

But I don’t feel completely Mexican,

because my entire professional life has

been here [in the U.S.].”

The most descriptive track is “The

Crossing,” where the bass drum evokes

the sound of footsteps getting closer

and closer as a whooshing synth sound

suggests the desert wind. This time it’s

the bleeps and burbles of electronica that

represent the jangling nerves of the trav-

eler as he nears the border. Suddenly he’s

across; his nerves calm, and the footsteps

grow bolder as they head north.

But most of the album’s 10 tracks are

not as easy to decipher as those three.

The other seven wordless tunes are full

of emotions—the ominous dread of “Fire

Trail,” the hopeful yearning of “Dis-

tant Glow” and the chaotic pressure of

“BBO”—but it would

be difficult to tie those

feelings to specific

causes without the clues

mentioned above. With or without those

clues, however, the passions are vivid

because Sanchez uses the drums to do a

lot more than just keep time. They tell

stories with musical characters progress-

ing through a narrative form. “When

I studied classical piano in Mexico

City, we learned forms,” he explains.

“Without form you don’t have as much

impact. In my clinics, I always empha-

size motive development. I go back to

Max Roach’s ‘For Big Sid,’ and point out how

he created motifs that he could repeat, vary

and develop. When I’m composing for my

band, I build the forms as I write the music.

But I took a different approach on Bad

Hombre; I improvised for hours and hours

without form and then added the structure

in the editing. The result is the same: Form

organizes music for the listener.”

••••

SANCHEZ DEMONSTRATED THIS STORYTELLING TECHNIQUE LATER THAT AFTERNOON AT THE NEWPORT JAZZ FESTIVAL’S HARBOR STAGE.Wearing a black T-shirt with the silver de-

sign of a psychedelic Day of the Dead skull, ←

(above) Sanchez at age 9, the day after he received his first drum kit; at 18, gig-ging in Mexico City with the rock band La Zona Muerta

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he sat behind his enormous drum kit:

kick, one rack tom, two floor toms, three

snares, hi-hat and six other cymbals. He

was positioned sideways so he could look

directly at his four musicians: his wife

and vocalist Thana Alexa, saxophonist

Seamus Blake, keyboardist John Escreet

and bassist Matt Brewer.

They began with the first four move-

ments of Sanchez’s five-movement,

90-minute work that comprised his

2015 album, The Meridian Suite. When

Escreet announced the initial theme on

the piano, Sanchez quickly reinforced not

only its rhythmic phrasing but also its

melodic contours. Those motifs became

characters who travel across the land-

scape of the piece, both its rocky crescen-

dos and its placid valleys. “The Meridian

Suite is my most ambitious composition,”

Sanchez says. “It’s a musical novel where

the characters develop over 90 minutes. I

was commissioned by the George Wein/

Doris Duke Artistic Programming Fund

to compose a new piece to premiere at

this year’s festival. I knew it would be

following The Meridian Suite, so I wrote

something that would fit.”

He called it “Newport,” and it began

with a ballad melody framed by the

composer’s brushwork. Alexa’s word-

less vocalizing brought the theme into

focus, and Sanchez shifted the piece

into a higher gear. It climaxed once and

subsided into quiet solos by Escreet and

Brewer before climaxing a second time,

with Blake blowing a tenor solo over a

drum crescendo. Once again the drums

were defining not only the time but also

the themes. “I do a lot of clinics, and I

explain to people that the drums can

be a very melodic instrument,” he says.

“It’s really a mini-orchestra with a lot of

sounds. Each drum is a different note,

and you can tune them so they’re in har-

mony; I tune mine to the root, the fifth

and a third or fourth.”

“The drums are an inherently melodic

instrument,” adds Migration bassist Matt

Brewer, “and the voice leading that oc-

curs between all the different pitches of

the drum set automatically creates a kind

of harmony. I can hear this as much in

our ensemble as I can with Antonio’s solo

drum pieces.”

“[Antonio] values the sanctity of the bandstand the same way I do,” Pat Metheny says.

The cinematic nature of Sanchez’s

music is obviously influenced by his work

on Birdman. When the movie’s director,

Alejandro G. Iñárritu, invited Sanchez to

create the score, the drummer jumped at

the chance, not only because he loves film

but also because he owed the director a

tremendous debt. Iñárritu had once been

a disc jockey in Mexico City, and his show

is where a young Sanchez discovered many

influential musicians—including Metheny.

Following Birdman, Sanchez composed

the music for Politica, Manual Instrucciones,

a Spanish documentary about an emergent

leftist political party in Madrid, and he’s

now providing Bad Hombre-like music for

a new TV series based on Elmore Leonard’s

Get Shorty. But he gives a lot of credit for his

interest in narrative music to Metheny. “Pat

is one of the greatest storytellers in music,”

Sanchez says. “A lot of modern jazz sounds

complex just for the sake of complexity,

but Pat is the master of writing accessible

melodies over complex harmonies and time

signatures. I’m a sucker for a great melody,

because it’s like a character in a story who’s

revealing a secret.”

Adds Metheny, “Antonio has been able

to adapt the elements of drumming that

he was interested in and excelled at to

my thing, in a way that allowed him to

do what he does best while still serving

my music as it has developed over a long

period of time.”

In 2000, Metheny twice encountered

Sanchez when the latter was playing in

pianist Danilo Pérez’s trio. Metheny was

impressed with the way the drummer

made himself heard in a large outdoor

venue in Turin, but he was totally won

over by the way Sanchez mesmerized a

small London club on a ballad. As soon

as they started playing together, Metheny

knew that this was the drummer he’d

been looking for. “We had so much to talk

about musically,” Metheny says. “We have

that connection you only find a few times

along the way. We can both do what we do

best as individuals and yet find the space

to create a collective sound that adds up

to something beyond

either one of us. What

is great with Antonio is

that it isn’t particularly

← Sanchez

and Pat Metheny in 2003

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Feature: Sanchez and other musicians speak out against Trump


limited to [being] this thing or that thing—

it could be almost anything. That fits exactly

with my ecumenical sense of how this music

can rise above any partisan aspect of genre.”

Learning to play with Metheny, Sanchez says,

is not unlike learning to play bebop or fusion. As

with those styles, Metheny has his own lexicon

and parameters to understand. There’s a sonority

you have to fit in with; you have to know when to

leave space and when to build intensity. Sanchez

recalls a time when he invited his friend Scott

Colley to play a trio gig with Metheny. Afterward,

Colley told Sanchez, “Wow, you play so different

with Pat.” These days, Sanchez embraces the role

of easing newcomers into the band. “Antonio

has a personal maturity and awareness that is

really rare, and that has come to mean as much

or more to me than anything else as the years

have gone by,” Metheny says. “He values the

sanctity of the bandstand the same way I do.

With both of us maintaining that vibe, new

folks who come along understand very quickly

by example what is at stake there.”

Linda May Han Oh, the most recent bassist

in Metheny’s band, agrees. “Bass and drums

have to be a team,” she says, “and it’s incred-

ibly rewarding when you feel you’re in that

situation. Antonio balances his intuitive sup-

port with musical and rhythmic ideas that

stoke the fire. As a bassist, you have to keep

strong when that happens.”

••••

RAISED IN AN INTELLECTUAL MIDDLE-CLASS HOME, SANCHEZ DOES NOT FIT THE COMMON STEREOTYPE OF A MEXICAN IMMIGRANT. His mother, Susana López Aranda, is a noted

film critic, and his grandfather Ignacio López

Tarso is one of Mexico’s most famous actors.

“I saw that you could make a living by doing

what you love at a very high level, and that

was encouraging,” he remembers. “My mom

is the whole reason I started playing music,

because she loved rock ’n’ roll—Led Zeppelin

and the Police. She joked that Ginger Baker

was my real father. She was never into jazz

that much, but when I got interested, she did

too and bought all the records. We’d listen to

them together; I would give my reaction, and

she would give hers. She’s a critic, of course, so

I got that analytic approach from her.”

Like most Latin musicians who come to

the U.S., Sanchez found that the easiest way

to get gigs was to play Latin jazz. He did that

with Paquito D’Rivera and Pérez, but he grew

restless. He wanted to play bebop when it felt

right, fusion when it felt right and Mexican

music when it felt right. Like many immi-

grants, he wanted to find the ideal balance

between his old country and his new one.

Now, when that balance is threatened by a

resurgent right-wing movement, he values the

two-sidedness of his life more than ever.

“I’ve struggled for years with my dual

identity,” Sanchez says. “I’ll always be Mexi-

can, because I grew up there, my family’s

there and I go back all the time. But I don’t

feel completely Mexican, because my entire

professional life has been here. I live here,

and I’m more involved in what’s going on

here. I’d been planning to become a U.S.

citizen for a long time, but I hurried up

when I saw that Trump might have a shot.

Residency is a privilege that can be taken

away. Citizenship is a right.” JT

hether or not Buddy Rich is the great-

est drummer in jazz history might be the

least interesting question surrounding this

singular artist. Born in Brooklyn on Sept.

30, 1917, Rich died three decades ago at the

age of 69, his status as a household name

undiminished until the end. And what’s strik-

ing today is that while the sturm und drang

surrounding other era-defining jazz contro-

versies has largely faded away—try raising a ruckus with

a denunciation of Miles’ fusion—Rich has lost none of his

argument-starting mojo.

Part of what makes the drummer a lightning rod is that

his legacy extends far beyond the world of jazz. Rich wasn’t

just a preternaturally gifted musician who started working

in vaudeville as a toddler and took on the primary provid-

er role for his family in his early teens. He was also a fine

singer, a skilled tap dancer and a supremely self-confident

raconteur who became a ubiquitous fixture on talk shows

in the 1960s and ’70s, when network TV blithely reigned

as the most pervasive and powerful cultural force in the

United States. Many of rock’s most famous drummers cited

Rich as a primary influence, which is why he’s often the

only jazz cat included on clickbait listicles purporting to

reveal the trap set’s greatest practitioners.

In Buddy Rich’scentennial year,

ANDREW GILBERTconsiders the

brilliant drummer’scontentious legacy

BESTBUDDY?

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Rich backstage at New York City’s Arcadia Ballroom, c. May 1947

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What is it about the drums that inspires the

need for superlatives? In jazz we talk about

our favorite bassists, saxophonists and gui-

tarists, embracing the wondrous individu-

ality of a multigenerational array of masters. We

don’t say Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins, Lester

Young or Trane was the Best Tenor Saxophonist

Ever. Maybe it’s the athletic quality of the instru-

ment that leads to the kind of categorical claims

delineated by Steve Smith, who spearheaded the

excellent Rich-alumni project Buddy’s Buddies.

“When I was coming up in the ’60s, Buddy was

regarded as the greatest living drummer of the

time,” Smith says. “He has this perpetual place

as the greatest drum-set virtuoso who ever lived,

and that still stands up today, though there are

drummers who have developed incredible abilities

through practice. Still, there’s something about

Buddy’s visceral energy and natural technique,

his swing, his feel, his musicianship, his high

intensity and the way he could drive a band, the

way he would play the music and raise the level

of musicians around him. The biggest change was

the arrival of Mahavishnu Orchestra, when Billy

Cobham became the king of the hill for a good

long time, as far as being influential.”

Smith makes a compelling case, and few

take issue with Rich’s enduring influ-

ence. What raises hackles is how his long

shadow can obscure the vast contribu-

tions of his fellow drummers. And the

fact that Rich’s visibility was inextri-

cably linked to his race amplifies the

emotions around his contested claim

as the Greatest of All Time. Analo-

gies between sports and jazz are often

more entertaining than elucidating,

but discussions about Rich often

echo the endless G.O.A.T. debates

over Lebron James and Michael

Jordan (with the ancillary dispute

about whether you can meaning-

fully compare figures from different

eras). More telling than the G.O.A.T.

fight is the enduring disagreement

over who should receive the NBA’s

Most Valuable Player Award, with

some arguing that the honor should

go to the most dominant figure and

others maintaining that the trophy

belongs to the player who contributes

the most to his team.

Rich seems to inspire the same kinds

of discussions. When we talk about

Buddy, we’re talking about the nature of

genius and what we value most in a jazz artist.

However you feel about the way he played time,

Rich tends to stand alone, and I don’t mean as the

G.O.A.T. Just about every other major drum inno-

vator made their definitive contributions within

the context of specific rhythm sections and

bands, as part of a larger gestalt. Think

of his rough contemporary Papa Jo

Jones in Basie’s All-American Rhythm

Section, Elvin Jones with Jimmy Garri-

son and McCoy Tyner, or Tony Williams

with Ron Carter and Herbie Hancock.

Yet a drummer from another definitive

Miles Davis rhythm section, Philly Joe

Jones, “loved Buddy Rich,” says drummer

Mike Clark, who sought out his drum he-

roes as a young player in the 1960s, sussing

out whether they were in the mood for

conversation. “He wanted to be able to play

what Buddy played and was frustrated that

he couldn’t. Buddy made up combinations

of things between hands and feet that nobody was

doing in the 1940s. But in a small group, Philly

would be my guy; I like Philly Joe’s poetry more

than Buddy Rich’s poetry.”

|| ||

Simply attempting to start a conversation about

Rich can create tension. In reaching out to an

array of drummers for this story, I contacted

E.J. Strickland, who politely declined to talk

about Rich. He made it clear he recognizes Rich’s

outsized talent, but he expressed frustration that

writers ask him about Buddy more than they ask

about any other drummer. He took to Facebook to

lament that Rich continues to overshadow so many

other supremely talented players. “I have nothing to

say,” he wrote. “He’s AMAZING!! We all know this.

But to tell you the truth, I was much more interested

in many, many other drummers. Why? Because I

just felt they made much more ‘music’ as opposed

to ‘drumming.’ … What I am saying is that many

others made the music ‘feel’ so great, and had such

a personal ‘feel’ that it is the precise thing that dis-

tinguished them from one another and the precise

thing that stood out. If you just mention Al Foster’s

name, I start dancing a certain way. His ride-cymbal

beat is funky as hell. And how melodic is his drum

soloing? How lyrical? Certain things just stand out

to me.”

Strickland’s post quickly garnered more than 100

comments (mostly from drummers), with some

passionate partisans rushing to Rich’s defense, even

though Strickland had merely expressed a prefer-

ence for other players. And really, he’s got a point.

As a faithful, tithing member of the Church of Billy

Higgins, I get this.

It’s particularly galling that so much of Rich’s

notoriety outside of jazz stems from the infamous

bus tapes that captured the drummer berating his

band. Made by pianist

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ary of 1983 and

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Rich, seen here in New York in 1946,

began working in vaudeville as a toddler and became a skilled

singer, tap dancer and raconteur, in addition

to earning a reputation as the world’s

greatest drummer


Feature: The Buddy Rich Tapes

available, complete with transcripts. Long before

they surfaced online the rants became fodder

for comedians, including Larry David and Jerry

Seinfeld, who worked several Rich-isms into

Seinfeld scripts. But in the widely watched clip of

Seinfeld detailing how he repurposed three quotes

from Rich rants as lines of dialogue, the joke is on

Jerry. He seems to misunderstand the motive for

Rich’s rage, saying the drummer is mad because

the band is playing too loudly, when of course he’s

irate because he thinks the musicians were playing

badly, loud.

As Mel Tormé captured so vividly in his affection-

ate biography Traps: The Drum Wonder, Rich could

be irrepressibly immature. Tormé doesn’t defend

Rich’s conduct, but he does make it clear that he

was generous to a fault, and carried a burden from a

childhood laden with adult responsibilities. Indeed,

looking at the life trajectory of so many child stars,

Rich comes out looking pretty darn good. And it’s

easy to forget the timeline when it comes to Rich, as

he was such an unprecedented prodigy. He was head-

lining in vaudeville in 1921, when Louis Armstrong

was still playing on riverboats with Fate Marable.

Though he had little experience playing jazz, he

turned his attention to the music in the mid-1930s

and quickly became an innovative force, expanding

on the trap-set vocabulary honed by Chick Webb.

If he heard a young drummer with promise, he

often made a point of taking an interest. Billy Hart

recalls Rich coming by to hear him play several times

when he was working with Stan Getz. Hart doesn’t

count Buddy among

his foundational

influences, but he

absorbed his playing

on the essential 1946

Lester Young session

with Nat Cole and

Charlie Parker With

Strings, “the first Bird

record I owned,” Hart

says. “I memorized

that record.”

“I remember hang-

ing out with Tony

Bennett in Japan, and

“[Rich] has this perpetual place as the greatest drum-set virtuoso who ever lived, and that still stands up today.”

— STEVE SMITH

“Buddy gave me some advice about how I was sitting on the drums, about my posture. I followed his advice.” — BILLY HART

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he kept with him a tape that he played for me with

Buddy Rich sitting in with the Count Basie Orchestra,

and that was impressive,” he continues. “Buddy’s in

one of the only videos where you can see Bird live

[a short clip from 1950], and I was impressed with

that. Then, when I was playing at the Newport Jazz

Festival with my first big-name band, Jimmy Smith,

we followed the Brubeck Quartet with Joe Morello.

Buddy was going to follow me, and they wanted to

hang out, so instead of going somewhere else they

just stayed backstage and talked and watched me play.

When I finished, Buddy gave me some advice about

how I was sitting on the drums, about my posture. I

followed his advice.”

One reason why some players who came of age af-

ter Rich’s death might find the claims of Buddy devo-

tees so annoying is that his influence doesn’t always

serve aspiring drummers well. But just as Betty Carter

shouldn’t be blamed for the countless singers who

imitate her full-throttle scatting without her sense of

form and rhythmic prowess, Rich can’t be held re-

sponsible for a certain chops-or-bust mentality taken

up by his disciples. (That approach was illustrated so

disturbingly in Damien Chazelle’s 2014 film Whip-

lash, in which the Rich-revering protagonist seeks

musical greatness without evidencing much interest in

actually making music with his fellow human beings.)

Tommy Igoe, the son of the late great studio

drummer, teacher, jazz player and close Rich col-

league Sonny Igoe, knew Buddy well growing up and

speaks avidly about Rich’s brilliance. He’s put together

several concerts this year celebrating Rich’s centennial,

including a bravura show at Yoshi’s in July. Fronting a

talent-packed orchestra, Igoe played charts from Rich’s

big band, including fierce versions of Don Menza’s

“Groovin’ Hard” and “Time Check,” a dynamically

rhythmic, tidal-force take on Mike Abene’s “Birdland,”

and a huge, walloping finale of Bill Reddie’s West Side

Story medley. Catching up with Igoe after the gig, he

talked about how Rich’s music doesn’t always translate

well in less accomplished hands.

“You either hit a grand slam playing Buddy’s charts

or flail like a kid,” he says. “They’re very athletic, and

not just the drum chair. The whole band needs thor-

oughbreds; you need studs or it’s going to sound like a

high school band. I was raised on a steady diet of that,

of Art Blakey and Buddy Rich. Talk about two polar

opposites coming at you! But Buddy and Art were the

same way—old-school, no excuses. When somebody

was complaining about the quality of drums, it was

“You either hit a grand slam playing Buddy’s

charts or flail like a kid. … The whole band

needs thoroughbreds; you need studs or it’s

going to sound like a high school band.”

— TOMMY IGOE

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‘Shut the fuck up. You should be able to play on the

boxes they came in.’”

|| ||

Ulysses Owens Jr. wasn’t yet 5 years old when

Rich died, and he’s swimming against the

millennial current in his devotion to Rich’s

legacy. As a kid he cajoled his parents into

getting him Rich’s instructional video, which planted

in him a deep love of the drumming tradition. It’s

a critique made by many veteran players who say

young tenor saxophonists start with Michael Brecker,

or Chris Potter, or Mark Turner. “Most drummers

of my generation are only dealing with Tony, Jack,

Elvin and the guys that came up in the ’60s, and move

forward [from] there,” Owens says. “Buddy is almost

an entertainer to them. But that’s one thing I loved

about Buddy Rich and Max Roach and Art Blakey:

They transcended jazz culture. Buddy could sing and

tap dance. You’ve got to be a bad cat to play the crap

out of the drums and end up as a guest on the Tonight

Show. I’m very influenced by all those guys—Papa Jo,

Ray Bauduc, Sid Catlett. And no one from that era

was more inventive than Buddy Rich.”

For young musicians put off by Rich’s fire-

works, Steve Smith recommends checking out

the sessions “where he’s not in the heroic mode,

the albums that Buddy Rich played on in such a

sympathetic role that you may not recognize it’s

Buddy playing,” he says. “For instance, listen to

the albums Charlie Parker With

Strings, Ella and Louis and one

of my favorites, Lester Young

Trio featuring Young with

Nat Cole and Buddy. Sublime

accompaniment. For a lesser-

known album featuring explosive

accompaniment, check out Sammy avis Jr./

Buddy Rich: The Sounds of ’66. The album was

recorded live in Las Vegas when Buddy was

starting his ‘Swingin’ New Big Band.’ The per-

formance of ‘Come Back to Me’ is amazing!”

Frankly, the debate about Buddy Rich reveals

more about our taste than his. At 100, Rich’s

legacy is inextricably woven into jazz’s lustrous

rhythmic fabric, and one needn’t parse his

particular position in the firmament to marvel

at his astonishing gift. JT

“That’s one thing I loved about Buddy Rich and Max Roach and Art Blakey: They transcended jazz culture. … You’ve got to be a bad cat to play the crap out of the drums and end up as a guest onthe Tonight Show.”— ULYSSES OWENS JR.RA

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On May 31, drummer Louis Hayes celebrated his 80th birthday and a new album at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in New York, surrounded by friends, collaborators and acolytes, including drummers Michael Carvin,

Nasheet Waits and Eric McPherson, and trumpeters Jimmy Owens and Jeremy Pelt, the

latter of whom sat in. Another presence loomed large: pianist-composer Horace Silver, the

subject of Hayes’ recent Blue Note debut, Serenade for Horace, a heartfelt tribute to the man

who gave Hayes his start in 1956 with “Señor Blues.” It was the beginning of a three-year col-

laboration that helped codify both hard bop and the Rudy Van Gelder sound over five albums.

Hayes left Silver in 1959 to join the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, but the two re-

mained close until the hard-bop progenitor’s passing in 2014. Stints followed with Oscar

Peterson, the Louis Hayes-Woody Shaw Quintet, Stan Getz, McCoy Tyner and the Can-

nonball Legacy Band, which Hayes leads. Throughout his career he’s solidified a place as

one of jazz’s most soulfully swinging drummers, and become a cornerstone of the legacy

of Detroit-born percussionists that includes Elvin Jones, Roy Brooks, Frank Gant and

Oliver Jackson, and extends forward to Gerald Cleaver.

At Dizzy’s, Hayes used his hyper-responsive left hand to goose the soloists in his sextet

while keeping the fugitive spirit alive with his right on the ride cymbal. His approach

seemed to declare the ensemble’s m.o., which balanced rhythmic ferocity and harmonic

adventurousness with a reverence for the Silver sprezzatura. The Bronx-based drummer

recently reflected on his tenures with Silver, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon and others, as

well as on the close-knit Detroit jazz community and a certain ineffable musical feeling

you know when you hear it—what he refers to as “just history getting ready to be made.”

LOUISHAYES

BY AIDAN LEVY


THE MASTERDRUMMERDISCUSSES

HIS STORIED PASTAND SWINGING

PRESENT

HORACE SILVER6 Pieces of Silver (Blue Note)Silver, piano; Donald Byrd, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor saxo-

phone; Doug Watkins, bass; Hayes, drums. Recorded in 1956.

The first time I recorded in a studio was

with Horace Silver in 1956, with those

magnificent musicians. Horace invited me

to come to New York and join his quintet.

Hearing myself on record was just fantastic

for me. I had just turned 19 years old.

Doug Watkins and Donald Byrd were

the two who recommended me to Horace Silver. Over the years,

Donald was highly inventive. I really didn’t know Doug or Don-

ald in Detroit. They were a little older, and I saw them in a place

called the World Stage that musicians were in control of, like

Kenny Burrell and Barry Harris and others. But Doug did come

back to Detroit, and at one point we were at this place called

the West End [Hotel], where the artists used to gather after 2

o’clock, when the clubs would close. He went back to New York,

and the Jazz Messengers were disbanding. Art Blakey was keep-

ing the Jazz Messengers and Horace was starting his group, so

the timing was just marvelous.

Horace never wrote anything out for me. He wrote music out

for the other guys in the band, naturally, but with me he would

say, “Louis, do what you do and just create.” And that’s what I

did on “Señor Blues.” I listened to Horace play the piano, and

I came up with that way of approaching that composition, and

I’m very happy that I did.

BRIGHT MOMENTS

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BRIGHT MOMENTS Louis Hayes

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Horace Silver (left) and Hayes confer at the 1956 session for the pianist’s 6 Pieces of Silver

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YUSEF LATEEFJazz Mood (Savoy)Lateef, tenor saxophone, flute, arghul, scraper; Curtis Fuller,

trombone, tambourine; Hugh Lawson, piano; Ernie Farrow, bass,

rabat; Hayes, drums; Doug Watkins, finger cymbals, percussion.

Recorded in 1957.

I had been appearing at the World Stage

before, but with Yusef, how I got the job I

do not know. Naturally I knew who he

was, but how he got to where he knew

who I was, I’m not sure of that. The World

Stage wasn’t a place where people worked

actually. It was just a place where artists

came and enjoyed themselves, and the audience came and

enjoyed themselves. There wasn’t any alcohol or anything like

that, so that was not a club where you made money.

But he asked me to play with him at Klein’s Show Bar on

12th Street [in Detroit], and I was not old enough to be in. You

were supposed to be 21 to be appearing in a place that sold

alcohol in Detroit at the time. I wasn’t even close; I was about

18. So I was there with the group for a period of time, and

we played four or five nights a week. With that personnel, we

had the top job in Detroit at that time. I lost the job after they

found out I was about 18. But luckily, that’s just when Doug and

Donald were there and went back to New York and said some-

thing to Horace. Things happen like that.

With Yusef, we had such a wonderful relationship and rap-

port. So when I came to New York and joined Horace Silver’s

quintet, Yusef came to New York and we recorded here—I didn’t

record with them in Detroit. I was already in the Horace Silver

Quintet, but I recorded with that group in New York, and I

think we did at least two albums [Stable Mates and Before Dawn:

The Music of Yusef Lateef].

Ernie Farrow was a bassist who’s passed away. He could

have been a big force playing bass in New York and the world,

but he chose to stay in Detroit. He was also Alice Coltrane’s

[half-brother]. So Alice was the same age as I am, and we used

to play together in different homes in Detroit. Hugh Lawson

was a friend in Detroit, and his contribution to that group was

fantastic. He did come to New York and was here with Harry

“Sweets” Edison.

I had an opportunity to appear with Yusef, not only in De-

troit, but Yusef was on my first recording date as a leader in New

York on Vee-Jay Records [Louis Hayes]. He was also with Can-

nonball Adderley; the quintet turned into a sextet when Yusef

joined. So we had that opportunity to make that history also.


CECIL TAYLORStereo Drive (United Artists)Taylor, piano; John Coltrane, tenor saxophone [credited as “Blue

Train”]; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Chuck Israels, bass; Hayes,

drums. Recorded in 1958; reissued in 1963 as Coltrane Time.

I had the opportunity to play a couple jobs

with Coltrane in Brooklyn. My assessment

of it is that [it’s] history I was able to make

at a young age. I have nothing to say about

whether I like it or dislike it—I love it! I

recorded with Coltrane, Donald Byrd,

Paul Chambers and Red Garland [Lush

Life], and with [trumpeter] Wilbur Harden [on Mainstream

1958: The East Coast Jazz Scene] with Coltrane, Doug Watkins,

bass, and Tommy Flanagan, piano. So that’s at least three times

I had the opportunity to make history with John Coltrane. And

those three albums, I put them right up there at the top of my

all-time recording dates.

HORACE SILVERFinger Poppin’ With the Horace Silver Quintet (Blue Note)

Silver, piano; Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Junior

Cook, tenor saxophone; Gene Taylor, bass;

Hayes, drums. Recorded in 1959.

By that time I had been exposed to New

York for a period of time. I got here in

’56, so my ability to perform had grown

by that time. I enjoy Finger Poppin’; well,

I enjoy all of the albums I did with Horace. But I was very

comfortable with who I was [by the time we recorded Finger

Poppin’], so as far as feeling, that’s one of my favorites. And the

personnel, we got along very well.

Gene Taylor was a little older than I was, but I did know him as

a kid in Detroit, so when we got together in New York with Horace

Silver, instantly it was just the way it was supposed to be. Gene knew

exactly what to do and he was a strong bassist, a good-feeling person.

Gene came there after Doug Watkins and Teddy Kotick, in that order.

With Gene, we had it together. The feeling was just magnificent. It

was just history getting ready to be made.

HORACE SILVERBlowin’ the Blues Away (Blue Note)Silver, piano; Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Junior Cook, tenor saxophone;

Gene Taylor, bass; Hayes, drums. Recorded in 1959.

Blowin’ the Blues Away was the last recording

date I did with Horace Silver at that time with

his quintet, [before] I joined Cannon[ball

Adderley]. The [final] one was [1997’s] A

Prescription for the Blues. Horace and myself

got along very well together, and after I left his

group, we still got along well. We stayed in

touch with each other periodically through the years.

I will say this about Rudy Van Gelder: Rudy listened first to

the artists, how they wanted to be recorded. He took it from

there and developed a sound, a Rudy Van Gelder sound, but he

listened to the artists.

NANCY WILSON/CANNONBALL ADDERLEYNancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley (Capitol)Wilson, vocals; Adderley, alto saxophone; Nat Adderley, cornet;

Joe Zawinul, piano; Sam Jones, bass; Hayes, drums. Recorded in 1961.

With Cannonball it was a different approach

to the way we dealt with recording dates. We

did not rehearse a lot—not at all. Cannon and

the band decided on what we were going to

do, and it was participation from everyone in

the group as far as how we were going to

approach whichever compositions we were

going to play. Everyone had a good feeling. Cannon had a family

band, so we were comfortable with each other and we could do

what we felt like doing. It wasn’t a big thing. … We came up with

“Horace [Silver] never wrote anything out for me. He wrote music out

for the other guys in the band, naturally, but with me

he would say, ‘Louis, do what you do and just create.’

And that’s what I did on ‘Señor Blues.’”

←

Hayes at the Van Gelder Studio

during Silver’s Finger Poppin’

session in 1959

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Review: Harvey Pekar on Hayes’ The Real Thing


BRIGHT MOMENTS Louis Hayes

ideas and we just did it! And we were friends. [Sometimes]

you have to work it out for long periods of time and try to

figure out what you’re going to do; that’s one way of approach-

ing things, and I have no qualms about that. But with Cannon,

it was just natural. And Nancy [Wilson], she was and is such a

wonderful-feeling person, and we all got along so well.

OSCAR PETERSONBlues Etude (Limelight)Peterson, piano; Ray Brown, Sam Jones, bass; Hayes, drums.

Recorded in 1965-66.

Well, that was a change in my way of

dealing with this art form. He and Ray

Brown had been together for 15, 16

years with Ed Thigpen. Playing [in the

trio format] is different because it’s only

a trio, so making mistakes is not

something that you want to do.

Knowing the arrangement and playing it and doing the

things that you’re supposed to do was for me very impor-

tant at that time. I’m glad I was able to deal with Oscar

Peterson—from the point of view of the trio, I can’t think of

anything being any better, that’s for damn sure. Having the

opportunity to be in Ray Brown’s company and especially to

play with him—what a guy.

Oscar and I had a wonderful relationship. I was probably

the only drummer he asked to be with the trio two times,

because Oscar could be difficult to deal with! Making that

history with Oscar was a challenge for me. It was not a physi-

cal challenge, because I had the facility to do whatever Oscar

wanted me to do, but the arrangements were the main thing.

You have to make sure you do things on the highest level at all

times.

JOE HENDERSON SEXTETThe Kicker (Milestone)Henderson, tenor saxophone; Mike Lawrence, trumpet; Grachan

Moncur III, trombone; Kenny Barron, piano; Ron Carter, bass;

Hayes, drums. Recorded in 1967.

That was one of the greatest feelings. I don’t

listen to myself too much on albums or dates

I did a long time ago, but that’s one I like

listening to. I enjoy Ron Carter. See, with

Sam Jones we had a reputation of a certain

feeling, and we recorded with a lot of other

artists. While we were with Cannon, they

would want that feeling that Sam and myself had, so we were one

of the few rhythm sections that had a reputation like that. But

with Ron Carter on that date the feeling was so magnificent, so I

like listening to that when I’m in my place, just to groove. I didn’t

know Ron in Detroit, but whenever I’ve had the opportunity to

play with him, it’s magnificent.

Joe Henderson was a friend, and when you say Joe Henderson

to me, I have to mention Freddie Hubbard, because Freddie was

my friend first, and I started a group with the three of us. With Joe,

his knowledge and creativity on that date knock me out.

DEXTER GORDONHomecoming: Live at the Village Vanguard (CBS)Gordon, tenor saxophone; Woody Shaw, trumpet, flugelhorn; Ronnie

Mathews, piano; Stafford James, bass; Hayes, drums. Recorded in 1976.

Working with Dex was fun. I had a group

with Woody Shaw, Junior Cook, Ronnie

Mathews and Stafford James, and that was

one of the first groups I had traveling in

Europe, and Maxine [Gordon] was handling

the business. And Dex was over there in

Copenhagen, and on occasion he would

make a job with us at the [Copenhagen club] [Jazzhus] Mont-

martre. So we came to New York, and Dex came back to New

York. That recording date at the Vanguard was a big deal. It was a

great feeling, and we were very comfortable with each other,

because we had already performed together in Europe. Actually,

it was my band, but it didn’t say that on the album. But anyway,

Dex was very comfortable with that [group], and the guys in the

band were very comfortable with each other.

Dex was a wonderful person. Charlie Parker is a person who re-

ally got me involved in this art form on the highest level. Listening

to Charlie Parker, he made me think a certain way. And Dex, he’s

one of the people who came out of that era that meant so much to

so many people. And I’m just glad to have made history with all

these people.

“Making history with Oscar [Peterson] was a challenge for me. It was not a physical challenge, because I had the facility to do whatever Oscar wanted me to do. But the arrangements were the main thing. You have to make sure you do things on the highest level at all times.”


LOUIS HAYESSerenade for Horace (Blue Note)Hayes, drums; Josh Evans, trumpet; Abraham Burton, tenor saxo-

phone; Steve Nelson, vibraphone; David Bryant, piano; Dezron

Douglas, bass; Gregory Porter, vocals. Recorded in 2016.

In my life, what I have been able to accom-

plish with all of these different magnificent

artists, Horace started it out for me. After his

passing, people would ask me sometimes to

participate or do something and I didn’t

want to do it. So I’ll say a little bit about that.

Horace’s family and myself, we got in-

volved—together. That’s why the recording date is named what

it’s named, because his wife [Jemela Mwelu] named it. And his

son Gregory put a paragraph in the liner notes of what he wanted

to say. That’s why I wanted to do it.

And this is important. I chose the artists that I wanted for this

recording date because I wanted a certain sound and a feel-

ing, and the family was involved in that. And it was not just me

choosing all the compositions. We talked it over in terms of how

we were going to approach this and what we were going to do.

I wanted to record it on Blue Note, because [label head Don

Was and I] had a good rapport together. I did five with Horace

[at Blue Note], so that’s what I wanted to do. I did not want to

do it on these different labels. Maxine Gordon set it up, and

Maurice [Montoya], who’s still with me booking jobs, all of these

people had to come together for this to happen. So I really feel

good about Blue Note and their participation in bringing this

to fruition. We can talk about all these things, but without them

coming together and making it happen, there’s nothing. JT

LOUIS HAYES/JUNIOR COOK QUINTETIchi-Ban (Timeless)

Hayes, drums; Cook,

tenor saxophone;

Woody Shaw, trumpet;

Ronnie Mathews,

piano; Stafford James,

bass; Guilherme

Franco, percussion.

Recorded in 1976.

I was living in Brooklyn; I was no longer

living in Manhattan. I had this opportunity

to bring a group to Europe and do some

touring. I did not have a band at that time,

so I put it together. I knew Stafford James

and Ronnie Mathews, and I chose to get

those people together. That’s how it started.

Ronnie was in Brooklyn, Stafford was in Brooklyn, Junior

was my friend from Horace, and Woody was this magnificent

young person coming up playing the trumpet. We got togeth-

er, and again it was one of those things where everybody was

so in tune that we could play very well together. We could just

knock people out because it was so strong. We were young.

MCCOY TYNERJust Feelin’ (Palo Alto)Tyner, piano; Avery Sharpe, bass; Hayes, drums; Babatunde

Lea, percussion. Recorded in 1985.

I was with McCoy for over two years.

McCoy and I knew each other while he

was with Mr. John Coltrane, and

especially when I was with Cannonball.

McCoy is such an interesting personality

and in the way he plays. When McCoy

wanted to have this trio, I had been

performing with a couple groups that I had as a leader, but I

needed a change. At that time in my life, I thought it was best

for me to go with McCoy. I’m very glad I did.

We got along superbly. The way he attacks and plays the

piano is some real percussion. Boy, McCoy is rough. So the time

that I spent with him and Avery Sharpe was a very wonderful

period in my life. We became friends offstage, and musically we

became friends. I feel so honored to have been able to spend

that time with those guys.

←

“Horace started [my career] out

for me,” Hayes says

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AudioFilesSound advice

BY OFFERING INSIGHTFUL CURATION, A VARIETY OF AUDIO FORMATS AND AN ARTIST-FRIENDLY BUSINESS MODEL, BANDCAMP APPLIES OLD-SCHOOL MUSIC-BUYING CULTURE TO A DIGITAL PLATFORMBy Brent Butterworth

Bringing Back the Record Rack

With music now coming

to us from streaming

services, downloads,

Internet radio and art-

ist websites in addition to traditional

physical media like CDs, many jazz

fans may long for the days when we

had but a single simple way to discover

the latest music: flipping through the

racks at the local record store. One

website, Bandcamp, seeks to bring

back that simple pleasure while

letting you stream for free or buy in

practically any format you want.

Hitting Bandcamp’s home page is

like walking into a record store with

offerings that are refreshed every

day and staff who are truly passion-

ate about music. At the top, you’ll see

interviews with various artists, plus

articles focusing on genres both

familiar (indie rock, pop and

EDM) and foreign (Japanese

house music, German tropical

drum recordings). Scroll down

to the Discover section and click

on the Jazz tab, and you’ll find

new music from current jazz

artists such as Christian Scott

aTunde Adjuah, Tyshawn Sorey,

Anat Cohen, Snarky Puppy

and Jason Moran. Focusing on

subgenres such as bebop, free

jazz and soul-jazz requires just

one more click.

Advance-release tracks are available,

too. On a recent visit, I discovered a live

version of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

classic “Meeting of the Spirits,” off John

McLaughlin & the 4th Dimension’s

then-unreleased Abstract Logix album

Live at Ronnie Scott’s.

But Bandcamp is much more than a

friendly way to find new jazz. It’s also

a disruptive, artist-controlled means of

distribution that can provide jazz players

with a way to make money off

their recordings and help keep

the creative fire burning.

Phone to PhonoFor the jazz fan, and particularly

the audiophile, one of the best

things about Bandcamp is

that it lets you enjoy music

exactly the way you want to.

Free streaming is available, and

any digital music you purchase

can be downloaded in your choice

of digital formats, from phone-

friendly MP3 and AAC files to

full-resolution WAV and FLAC

files. Artists can also offer their

music on physical media, includ-

ing CD, vinyl records and even

cassettes, which are enjoying a mini-

renaissance among collectors of punk

rock and experimental music.

←Bandcamp features music from, and edito-rial content on, artists both emerging and established

Explore Bandcamp


What appears on Bandcamp is

entirely up to the artist. “An artist can

upload an album and begin selling it to

fans within minutes. There’s no waiting

period,” Bandcamp senior editor Mar-

cus J. Moore said.

Bandcamp receives 15 percent of an

artist’s revenues up to $5,000, and 10

percent after that. But the artist decides

whether to sell the music in digital

downloads or physical media (which the

artist or record label must produce and

ship to the customer), and also decides on

the pricing. “I can set prices to whatever

I like, and fans can donate more if they

wish,” said Yazz Ahmed, a U.K.-based

flugelhornist and trumpeter who has

played with such diverse artists as Toshiko

Akiyoshi, Lee “Scratch” Perry and Radio-

head, and who records for Naim Records,

a division of electronics manufacturer

Naim Audio. “My first albums are on

Amazon, and I don’t have any control on

pricing. I’ve seen them selling for hun-

dreds of pounds, which is ridiculous, but

there’s nothing much you can do.”

Jazz on the RiseBandcamp originally attracted mostly

indie-rock and punk artists, but many

jazz players and labels have gravitated

to it because of the control they have

over the process, and because of the

promotion the site gives them. “Between

labels like Brownswood, Naim and

Jazz re:freshed, the music’s always been

there,” Moore said. “But its presence has

been amplified through Bandcamp Daily

articles and our own respective tastes.

One of my favorite jazz writers, Dave

Sumner, does a monthly column for

Bandcamp Daily, and our chief curator,

Andrew Jervis, hosts a weekly podcast

that often features interviews with jazz

musicians like Portico Quartet, Matthew

Halsall, Monty Alexander, ESKA and

Nubya Garcia.”

“Bandcamp has become like a commu-

nity,” Ahmed said. “They feature new art-

ists and they have very engaging articles,

which the fans really enjoy. They also have

playlists that are very eclectic, with all

sorts of weird and wonderful music.”

The site does not demand exclusive

arrangements; artists are free to sell

or stream their albums through other

means if they choose. “I’m on Spotify,

too, but to me, that’s more like radio, a

way to get your name out there,” Ahmed

said. “As an artist operating in a niche

genre, I felt it was important to have

physical products available, especially

as my potential audience might be more

inclined to want to own something

tangible, in the knowledge that buying a

copy would also support me and enable

me to create more music.”

Surprisingly in a time when most

music fans have shifted from physical

media to streaming, Ahmed reports

that Bandcamp is moving a lot of sides

for her. “The vinyl of my new album,

La Saboteuse, sold out before it was

released, which was quite a lovely

surprise, and we had to press more

CDs,” she said. “As a result of them

highlighting La Saboteuse over the last

few months, I’m also selling many more

copies of my debut album on Band-

camp, which is great because I’m finally

getting some space back in my loft.”

While many music sites have strug-

gled to survive, Bandcamp seems built to

last. Moore reports that the site, which

was founded in 2008, has been profit-

able since 2012, and that in 2016, digital

album sales grew by 20 percent, with

vinyl-record sales up 48 percent—mak-

ing it a rare and welcome success story in

the music distribution business. JT

“BANDCAMP HAS BECOME LIKE A COMMUNITY,” SAID YAZZ AHMED, A U.K.-BASED FLUGELHORNIST AND TRUMPETER.

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ChopsSound advice

TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON, DAVE KING AND JEFF “TAIN” WATTS ON THE PLIGHT OF THE DRUMMER-COMPOSERBy Shaun Brady

Of Sticks & Staff Paper

Stop me if you’ve

heard this one before:

What’s the last thing

a drummer says to

their band? “Hey guys, let’s

try one of my songs!”

Jeff “Tain” Watts, who’s

managed to stick around in a

number of bands after intro-

ducing his own tunes into their

books—including groups led

by Branford Marsalis and Geri

Allen—has a sense of humor

about such clichés. “It’s one of

those ancient arguments, like

a black guy can’t be a quarter-

back or a woman can’t fly a

plane,” he shrugs. “It’s kind of dumb at this

point. Just for your own sanity, you have to

act like it doesn’t even exist.”

Stereotypes about drummers lacking the

wit to be composers may be persistent, but

it’s easy to rattle off a long list of names that

refute such condescending old saws. Watts

immediately points to Jack DeJohnette,

while Dave King, best known for his work

in the Bad Plus, says, “John Hollenbeck is

considered one of the heavier composers

of today and he’s a drummer. Realizing that

there’s so much music that’s been composed

by drummers can be an asset to think more

musically on the instrument and be able to

stretch other instruments out rhythmically.”

Drummers come to composition in

different ways and at different times. King,

who started playing piano at the age of 4,

had written countless pieces by the time

he even picked up a pair of sticks, while

Watts was already an established side-

man before he ventured to pick up his

first songwriting credit. In any case, the

first obstacle to overcome is the perceived

disadvantage of not playing a harmonic or

melodic instrument.

As Watts points out, though, drum-

mers are in a unique position to take in the

structure of the music they’re propelling.

“Drummers sit inside of the band and have

a good viewpoint on how things develop,”

he says. “You also have a certain amount of

responsibility as far as helping people de-

velop their ideas, and you know something

about pacing.”

Even without a single piano lesson, adds

Terri Lyne Carrington, drummers can

begin to write melodies using the most

universal instrument: their voice. “Sing the

melody,” she says. “Don’t get intimidated

by the inability to play an instrument to the

point where it makes you not want to com-

pose. Record yourself singing and just start

stacking parts in whatever program you use

and see what happens. If you hear a melody

and you hear a bassline, that immediately

lends itself to a harmony. In essence, you

can write some pretty spectacular music

without sitting down to figure out what the

chords are.”

That’s a good start, but it can only take

you so far. King insists that any drummer

serious about becoming a composer should

gain at least a rudimentary knowledge of

the piano. “You don’t need to be able to

blow bebop solos,” he says, “but you’ve

got to get your head wrapped around a

harmonic and

melodic instru-

ment like piano.

Most jazz musi-

cians, even horn

players, compose at the piano.”

Carrington agrees. “I think it’s hard to

take somebody seriously if they haven’t done

that,” she says. “Doing everything by ear

is OK up to a point, but people aren’t just

writing 32-bar songs anymore. That kind of

evolution takes some mind-expanding to

compose and to listen to.”

Having to push past the so-called limita-

tions of the drums can also be a blessing in

disguise, Carrington continues. “I’m not a

piano player by any stretch, so I’m forced to

push myself. And when you push yourself,

a kind of magic happens. Some people feel

like they’re mailing it in when they’re play-

ing; they’re too comfortable. People who

are on a path of discovery every time they CLO

CKW

ISE

FRO

M T

OP:

TRA

CY L

OV

E, C

OU

RTES

Y O

F TH

E A

RTIS

T, J

OH

N R

OG

ERS

←Clockwise from top:

Carrington, King and Watts

Column: Nate Chinen on his drum obsession


improvise are the players who are most

interesting, and it’s the same thing with

composers. When I hear something, my

challenge is to get it out onto the piano. I

don’t always arrive at what I’m hearing in

my head, but I may arrive someplace else

that’s equally interesting.”

Drummer-composers are at a particular

advantage in the modern jazz world, where

highly complex rhythmic ideas are central

to so many composers’ work. “Today

you’ve got to deal with different rhythmic

grids that they weren’t dealing with in

earlier ages of jazz,” King says. “Architec-

tural mystery is more a part of today’s jazz

than the ethereal, spiritual mysticism of the

Coltrane era, and that’s not coming from

a lyrical saxophone language—it’s coming

from a drum language.”

Being a composer and being a drummer,

then, are not two separate identities; ac-

cording to King, thinking compositionally

applies to a good drummer’s playing even

when they’re not putting notes on paper.

“The heaviest drummers are deep, deep

musicians, and the people known more

for drummerly things like Buddy Rich,

nobody gives a shit,” he says. “The drums

are as musical an instrument as anything

else, so drummers should never feel like

they need to work on muscle-car chops

stuff and not think about music.”

That said, those stereotypes do persist,

even among fans. “When people come to

“ARCHITECTURAL MYSTERY IS MORE A PART OF TODAY’S JAZZ THAN THE ETHEREAL, SPIRITUAL MYSTICISM OF THE COLTRANE ERA, AND THAT’S NOT COMING FROM A LYRICAL SAXOPHONE LANGUAGE—IT’S COMING FROM A DRUM LANGUAGE.” – DAVE KING

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see my group,” Watts admits, “maybe 40

percent of them couldn’t care less if I write.

They’re coming to get some drum thrills. I

try to ignore it or make jokes about it, but

you just do the best that you can knowing

that you’ll have opportunities to do better

and that you learn something from each

thing you try to write.” JT

GearHeadSound advice

Body & Soul: The Evolution of a Tenor Saxophone Standard

Jack DeJohnette HHX Shimmering ‘75’ Ride Cymbal by Sabian

Collings Julian Lage Signature OM1 Guitar

As we were assembling last issue’s “Essential Solos”

feature, this fairly recent book from Jamey Aeber-

sold Jazz caught our eye and then knocked us out.

It’s a simple enough concept but one demanding

painstaking work: Saxophonist Eric Allen offers

transcriptions and analyses of “Body & Soul”

improvisations by an A-team of tenormen, begin-

ning with the musician who defined the tune in a

jazz context, Coleman Hawkins, and continuing

through Lester Young, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins,

John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Michael Brecker

and Chris Potter (who wrote the forward). Also

included is a study of the “Cry Me a River” lick, a

compilation of the differing chord changes used, a reproduction of the original

1930 sheet music and an informative introduction. Invaluable. $29.95; online

sale price: $19.47. jazzbooks.com

Released to celebrate Jack DeJohnette’s 75th

birthday, Sabian’s HHX Shimmering

‘75’ Ride is a medium-weight, dark-sound-

ing triple-hammered cymbal with a heavily

hammered bell. The company says it was

designed to the drum great’s demanding

specs, and describes its sound and response

as such: “[T]he tone is rich, the stick is

always articulate and the bell is solid with-

out ever being piercing.” Run to your local

drum shop to check it out: Only 75 will be

produced. MSRP: $731. sabian.com

This collaborative instrument by Bill

Collings and Julian Lage is based on the

brilliant young guitarist’s beloved 1939

Martin 000-18, in fascinatingly specific

ways. The singular taper of the Martin’s

neck, for instance, shaped by years of being

played, is faithfully recreated via both tech-

nology and handcraftsmanship in the OM1.

(The scale length has been expanded to a

more robust and accurate 25 1/2 inches.)

And the custom satin lacquer finish allows

for rustic, classic looks and an airy tone.

MSRP: $5,150. collingsguitars.com

Many makers of similar guitar expression pedals,

which attempt to man more than one stompbox or

synth, don’t understand how unique effects can be.

Enter this new Electro-Harmonix pedal, made of

light yet tough polymer, featuring independent

range and reverse controls for each output, along

with polarity switches that aim to accommodate

any expression-ready box out there. Includes two

6-foot TRS cables. $72.70 online. ehx.com

Electro-Harmonix Dual Expression Pedal

The New Vox Continental KeyboardImprovising keyboardists with an ear for prog, psych, krautrock

and ’60s pop and R&B will want to check this one out. Vox has

reinvented its trademark transistor combo organ as a stage keyboard

featuring a heap of organ sounds as well as electric and acoustic pia-

nos, synths and much more. Stand and expression pedal included.

61-key: $1,999 online; 73-key: $2,199. voxamps.com

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CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE BIG BANDBRINGIN’ IT (Mack Avenue)

Six years have passed since

the release of The Good

Feeling, Christian McBride’s

Grammy-winning debut as

a big-band leader. But he’s

been busy: During that time the bassist-

composer became the voice of NPR’s Jazz

Night in America and the artistic director

of the Newport Jazz Festival, continued his

work as an educator and a leader of small

groups, served as a prolific sideman and

more. For Bringin’ It, McBride arranged all

but two tracks, going for a canny balance

between the swinging, the funky and the

cool; his charts are precise but he

encourages the soloists to go out on a

limb, the majority of them returnees from

the earlier project. It’s a firecracker of a

recording.

“Gettin’ to It,” the Tower of Power-

esque lead track, one of three penned

by McBride, pushes a trio of the band’s

stars—trumpeter Freddie Hendrix, tenor

saxophonist Ron Blake and guitarist

Rodney Jones (who, sadly, appears on

•“The swinging, the funky and the cool’’: Christian McBride

only one other track)—to the forefront.

Hendrix’s first break is a relentless jolt,

an early notification that this is not your

grandpa’s big band.

Among the covers, “Mr. Bojangles,”

the Jerry Jeff Walker tale of a tap-dancing

arrestee, is the most surprising. Sung

by Melissa Walker, McBride’s wife, with

good-natured swagger, it’s a peppy shuffle

here, and Joe McDonough’s trombone

solo is restrained and well drawn. “I

Thought About You,” the Johnny Mercer-

Jimmy Van Heusen ballad, belongs to

trumpeter Brandon Lee, who unreels

an extended, elegiac solo that meshes

conversationally with Xavier Davis’

firm piano bed and Quincy Phillips’

unencumbered drumming. McCoy

Tyner’s “Sahara,” up next, shifts the mood

considerably, all spark and flourish.

Throughout, McBride upholds his rep

as the most reliable man in bassdom.

Here he’s never ostentatious; he’s simply

always where he needs to be, acting as

if he’s just another band member even

though you know he’s calling the shots

on every sound we hear.

JEFF TAMARKIN

STEFANO BATTAGLIAPELAGOS (ECM)

Pelagos, Stefano Battaglia’s

seventh recording for

ECM, is his best. That is a

bold claim, given that

Battaglia’s ECM discogra-

phy is one of the permanent bodies of

piano work in the new millennium. But

Pelagos is an achievement of extraordi-

nary depth, realized through an

extraordinary range of artistic means.

It was made in two solo sessions on

the same day at the Fazioli Concert Hall

in Sacile, Italy, one “behind closed doors”

and one live in concert. There are five

Battaglia compositions, 11 improvisations

and an Arabic traditional song. Tracks

from the sessions are intermixed on two

CDs. Applause at the live concert has

been cut out. It sounds like one seamless

performance.

Pelagos has a theme: “the suffering

countries of the Mediterranean and

Balkan areas.” Battaglia spent the two

days before the recording in a monas-

tery, “meditating upon the meaning of

migration [every kind of migration].”

“Lampedusa” is named for an Italian

island in the Mediterranean where

many boats of refugees from Libya have

landed. Some boats have sunk on the

way. It is an improvised piece of devas-

tating sadness. Crushed notes, in pairs,

become slowly louder, in protest or sim-

ply in pain. “Horgos e Roszke,” named

for towns on the Hungary-Serbia border,

is an improvised requiem of quiet cries,

for the asylum seekers turned back

there. “Exilium” (Latin for “exile”) and

“Destino” (Italian for “destiny”) are

founded on a few dark repeating left-

hand chords like knells of finality, from

which Battaglia’s right hand seeks release

in markings upon silence, in isolated

notes that gather to bare melodies.

The solemnity of this recital is some-

times suspended in surges of energy.

Battaglia’s empathy for the exiles leads

him to include their songs and dances in

his own compositions. “Halap,” perhaps

a Balkan circle dance, is a fervent ritual.

For Battaglia, ritual and improvisation are

one creative process. Only through sur-

CDs

VoxReviews 54 61

Watch a teaser video on the Christian McBride Big Band


render to the moment could he have come

upon the ritual, the sacrament, of those

crushed notes on “Lampedusa.”

Battaglia’s music transcends its theme.

Its universality creates its power. We are all

exiles from something or somewhere. We

are all asylum seekers. THOMAS CONRAD

JOHN BEASLEYMONK’ESTRA VOL. 2 (Mack Avenue)

Long before the arrival of

2017, his centennial year,

Thelonious Monk had

become the most covered

composer in jazz. It

sometimes feels like every new jazz record

has to have a Monk tune. And Monk tribute

albums are myriad: Latin Monk, vocal

Monk, alt-rock Monk, organ Monk. His art

is large enough to absorb almost anything.

John Beasley’s salute to Monk, now in two

volumes, is an ambitious big-band project

featuring new arrangements, 16 proficient

players and several high-profile guests. Vol.

1 got good press and two Grammy nomina-

tions. The news on Vol. 2 is mixed.

Beasley is a very clever arranger who

works his charts hard, and this album is

continuously surprising. Every piece twists

Monk into new shapes and paints him in

new gaudy colors. Monk loved to break

rules. Therefore there are no rules for a

Monk tribute. Beasley comes up with rap

Monk (“Brake’s Sake”), funk Monk (“I

Mean You”) and clave Monk (“Criss Cross,”

with guest Pedrito Martinez, a badass, on

congas). All the guests (violinist Regina

Carter, trombonist Conrad Herwig, vocalist

Dianne Reeves) make vivid contributions,

especially saxophonist Kamasi Washington,

who seizes “Evidence” and flies away.

But carte blanche to mess with Monk is

one thing. Questionable taste is another.

Beasley’s little backbeat groove trivializes

“Pannonica,” one of Monk’s loveliest, most

mysterious ballads, and his gratuitous noisy

riffs intrude upon its spirit. The shattering

insertions are even more destructive to

“Crepuscule With Nellie,” Monk’s haunting

love song to his wife. The shrieking brass

expletives are incongruous.

The downside of too much cleverness is

that it sounds gimmicky; at worst it sounds

cute. Beasley’s busy, spiky charts are over-

wrought with extraneous flourishes and

nervous tempo reversals. His Monk shtick

becomes a novelty act. This is a technically

dexterous, entertaining, inconsequential

record. THOMAS CONRAD

TIM BERNE’S SNAKEOILINCIDENTALS (ECM)

“I’ve always liked the idea of

steering people away from

the material we start with,”

Tim Berne says in the press

notes for Incidentals, the

latest album by the alto saxophonist’s daring,

ever-developing group Snakeoil. It doesn’t

take long for the music here to reflect that

open strategy. Slowly emerging from pure

silence, the opening track, “Hora Feliz,”

suggests an “Also sprach”-like calm before a

storm, building on pianist Matt Mitchell’s

dappled and skittering notes and Berne’s

placid tones, before abruptly shifting gears

via the leader’s charged playing and

clarinetist Oscar Noriega’s wiggly solo.

Snakeoil, also featuring the texture-

minded guitarist Ryan Ferreira (a terrific

recent add-on to the band) and the willfully

creative drummer/vibraphonist Ches Smith,

takes its freeform, rhythmically free-floating

approach to the limit on “Sideshow,” a

26-minute epic of toasty harmonies, blurred

dissonances, ambient shifts and explosive

effects (to which guitarist David Torn, the

band’s regular producer, contributes). The

piece is actually taken from an hour-long

work combining it and “Small World in

a Small Town,” which was presented as a

separate track on the band’s previous album,

You’ve Been Watching Me.

Among its many rewards, Incidentals

documents the growth of the exciting

partnership between Berne and Mitchell.

The pianist recently recorded a critically ac-

claimed solo album of Berne compositions,

FØRAGE. Here he relates to the leader

through the heady way he embroiders open

spaces, enhances the album’s pervasive

classical imprint, intensifies the architecture

of certain tunes and subtly colors the aural

landscape with electronic touches. Berne

thrives on his presence, as reflected in his

Ornette-influenced playing on the roaring,

group-powered “Incidentals Contact” and

his hard-hitting, affecting solo on the con-

cluding medley, “Prelude One/Sequel Too.”

LLOYD SACHS

PETER BERNSTEINSIGNS LIVE! (Smoke Sessions)

They’re all stars today, but

when guitarist Peter

Bernstein recorded his

second album, Signs of Life,

in 1994, he and the members

of his quartet—pianist Brad Mehldau,

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bassist Christian McBride and drummer

Gregory Hutchinson—were young and just

starting out. McBride’s debut album as a

leader had just been released, and Mehldau

didn’t have one. They wouldn’t reassemble

until 2015, for sets at Dizzy’s Club Coca-

Cola, where it was as though they’d been

playing together all these years. If you didn’t

know anything about this group, you’d think

it was a longtime working band, not a

once-every-two-decades gig.

The recording from that stand, the two-

disc Signs LIVE!, is pure perfection, four

musicians interacting with empathy for two

and a half hours, not just playing songs but

using them as launch pads for dynamic con-

versations. Nearly every solo has multiple

subplots going on: McBride and Hutchin-

son engaging in playful exchanges during

Mehldau’s solo on “All Too Real”; all three

of them laying down an intricate rhythmic

web for Bernstein’s explorations on “Blues

for Bulgaria.” There’s a moment a third of

the way into the 18-minute “Dragonfly”

when each member contributes equally to a

buildup of tension that becomes so strong it

threatens to overwhelm. Most of the tunes

run more than 13 minutes, and none feels

too long. “Jive Coffee,” a bouncy number

that appeared on Signs of Life, goes on for a

breezy 19 minutes, propelled at first by Ber-

nstein’s tasteful single-note picking and then

by Mehldau’s dazzling two-handed solo. All

of the tunes are Bernstein originals except

for a few Monk pieces; the guitarist turns

in a sublime unaccompanied “Crepuscule

With Nellie” that leads to the quartet’s take

on “We See.” Signs LIVE! is pure joy. Hope-

fully we won’t have to wait until 2035 for the

next reunion. STEVE GREENLEEE

BLUE NOTE ALL-STARSOUR POINT OF VIEW (Blue Note)

Every so often the current

powers that be at Blue Note

gather several marquee artists,

not all of them necessarily on

the label’s roster, put them in

a studio together and let them loose with the

intent of bowing to the company’s storied

history. In 2009 it was the Blue Note 7, a

one-shot that included Ravi Coltrane, Bill

Charlap and others. Before that, in 1995, a

collective calling itself the Blue Note All Stars

(Tim Hagans, Greg Osby, etc.) cut another

one-off.

There are no holdovers on Our Point

of View. These All-Stars are luminaries

of the present Don Was-run iteration of

the label: Robert Glasper (keyboards),

Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet), Marcus

Strickland (tenor saxophone), Lionel

Loueke (guitar), Derrick Hodge (bass)

and Kendrick Scott (drums).

As one might expect, the sextet brings

a contemporary vibe to this joint project,

but that doesn’t mean there’s no acknowl-

edgement of legacy. Quite the opposite, in

fact. The album is bookended by a pair of

tributes to the late, revered Bruce Lundvall:

“Bruce’s Vibe,” a 90-second nod featuring

a snippet of the Blue Note president’s 2011

Grammy speech over pensive Glasper

piano; and Akinmusire’s “Bruce the Last Di-

nosaur,” it too a restrained couple minutes

of elegy.

In between, things get livelier. “Mas-

qualero” spotlights its author, Wayne

Shorter, who guests on soprano, with Her-

bie Hancock taking over the piano bench

as Glasper shifts to the Rhodes. Forget any

notion that it might be a throwback due to

the visitors’ senior status—the take is darker

and edgier than the version on Miles’ Sor-

cerer. Among the others, all written by All-

Stars save for a second Shorter contribution,

Loueke’s deep-funk “Freedom Dance” and

Scott’s sizzling “Cycling Through Reality”

serve as full-band showcases that succeed in

confirming the might of Blue Note’s current

roster. JEFF TAMARKIN

GUILHEM FLOUZAT TRIOA THING CALLED JOE (Sunnyside)

Guilhem Flouzat, 32, is a

different drummer. His third

album as a leader is a radical

move. He plays songs you

know. Almost no one in the

new jazz generation does that. They all

think they are composers.

Flouzat’s strong previous recording, Por-

traits, was much more typical. It contained

his originals exclusively. Therefore you are

caught off guard when A Thing Called Joe

opens with “There’s No You,” composed by

Hal Hopper in 1944 and made famous by

Frank Sinatra. You wait for this contempo-

rary version to become ironic, but it doesn’t.

The wistful melody is lovely, and pianist

Sullivan Fortner revels in it, albeit percus-

sively. Then he imposes his own free varia-

tions upon it and weaves long counterlines

through it. As with many young players

from New Orleans, Fortner’s fresh creativity

sounds grounded in tradition.

Flouzat leads this piano trio from behind.

He has a subtle touch but always imprints

himself on the music, sometimes sub-

liminally. He and bassist Desmond White

conjure an undercurrent of stealth rumba

that pulls against “When I Fall in Love.”

Keith Jarrett, who knows a thing or two

about reimagining standards, often does

Victor Young’s greatest tune as an encore.

The interpretation here is very different.

Fortner marks out the melody in irregular

shapes, in a hard, edgy iteration of lyricism.

Flouzat’s trio views the song from a current

vantage point but preserves its poignant

avowal of faith.

Probably not many jazz players under 40

care about “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe.”

Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg wrote it in

1943. Flouzat’s trio plays it almost straight,

in a gentle throb, as a lilting affirmation.

Because we live in troubled times, nostal-

gia calls to us; it fills a need. But all times

are troubled. Unsentimental expressions

of actual happiness never go out of style.

THOMAS CONRAD

TOMAS FUJIWARATRIPLE DOUBLE (Firehouse 12)

Tomas Fujiwara’s sextet is

named Triple Double for a

couple of reasons. It is

composed of three instru-

mental pairings: guitarists

Mary Halvorson and Brandon Seabrook,

horns Ralph Alessi (trumpet) and Taylor Ho

Bynum (cornet) and the drumming duo of

Fujiwara and Gerald Cleaver. Then there is

the fact that the Tomas Fujiwara Trio

includes Seabrook and Alessi, and he has

played so often with Halvorson and Bynum

together in larger ensembles (including

Illegal Crowns and the Thirteenth Assem-

bly) and in each other’s bands that their trio

interaction happens organically.

While all six musicians travel in similar

circles and are stylistically disposed toward

consonance more than contrast, their

collective talent and Fujiwara’s innovative

leadership make for a tonic of unpredictabil-

ity. The leadoff track, “Diving for Quarters,”

highlights the pairs—the guitars on their

own for the first 90 seconds, horns jousting

in the middle, drum beats holding sway at

the end—while “Blueberry Eyes” and “Pock-

et Pass” strut the brutish flair of a heavy rock

ensemble flirting with outside jazz. Two

guitar-drum duets, both entitled “Hurry

Home,” portray the nuanced differences

inherent on the disc. The Seabrook-Cleaver

“B/G” version is more delicate, utilizing

effects and brushes, while the Halvorson-


Fujiwara “M/T” version deploys echoes

and beats to derive a similarly ominous

overtone.

There is a sweet spot in the middle of

Triple Double that begins with “For Alan,”

in which Fujiwara replays tape of the

still-relevant instruction provided by his

teacher, Alan Dawson, back when he was

10. In a duo performance with Cleaver, he

blends the audio with his current, Andrew

Cyrille-like floating rolls and combinations

that are the dividends of Dawson’s lessons.

That’s followed by “Love and Protest,”

a heaving maelstrom pockmarked by a

variety of vivid solos and an ongoing bass

undertow that is remarkable in a band

without a bassist. Then “Decisive Shadow”

conjures a totally different vibe, quirky and

more carefree, with a spatial density that is

less ocean and more jigsaw puzzle. A triple

scoop of great music. BRITT ROBSON

MARK GUILIANA JAZZ QUARTETJERSEY (Motéma)

Precious few, if any, jazz

drummers utilize electron-

ics in their overall approach

to sound and rhythm with

as much panache and

distinction as Mark Guiliana. He has been

the not-so-secret ingredient in the music of

Donny McCaslin and, subsequently, David

Bowie. He was the catalyst behind pianist

Brad Mehldau’s electronic awakening in

the duo Mehliana. And his own Beat Music

releases mash funk, jazz and dance grooves

into marvelous new territory.

But like most serious musicians,

Guiliana doesn’t like to be typecast. Conse-

quently, with the Mark Guiliana Jazz Quar-

tet, the drummer-composer conspicuously

invokes the more traditional, acoustic-jazz

aspects of his artistry. The instrumentation

is standard: the drummer plus saxophon-

ist Jason Rigby, pianist Fabian Almazan

and bassist Chris Morrissey. The mate-

rial is primarily postbop, almost all band

originals. And the ambiance is almost the

converse of the loops, grooves and hard

pivots for which Guiliana ensembles are

renowned. The drummer remains a kinetic

force—he’s adopted the best attributes of

his idols, the hard beats of Elvin Jones and

the agility of Tony Williams—but there is

a stately beauty, occasionally tinged with

melancholy, which permeates many of the

compositions, including the title track,

“September,” “The Mayor of Rotterdam”

On Public Radio SiriusXM & iTunes

and a closing cover of Bowie’s “Where Are

We Now?” Rigby’s patient, voluptuous sax

phrases linger longest in the memory.

Jersey is a fine example of progressive

acoustic jazz, good listening and keen

improvisation. But unlike Guiliana’s work

with McCaslin, Mehldau and Beat Music,

it does not separate itself from its stylistic

peers—it’s enjoyable, not indelible. To be

sure, Guiliana deserves accolades here. It

just isn’t the first thing I’ll reach for from

his catalog. BRITT ROBSON

BRUCE HARRISBEGINNINGS (Posi-Tone)

After more than a decade of

gigging, Bruce Harris

spends the first six seconds

of his debut album blowing

hot, unaccompanied

trumpet, as if to establish, for those

unfamiliar with him, that he can really play

the thing. That accomplished in record

time, he gets down to business, introducing

his core band—pianist Michael Weiss,


Reviews

bassist Clovis Nicolas and drummer Pete

Van Nostrand—and two of the five

saxophonists with whom Harris will

generously share the spotlight for the next

47 minutes.

That first track, “Ask Questions,” one of

three Harris originals here, is a breathless

bopper that finds the leader first peeling

out a shiny, raucous solo before tagging

baritone man Frank Basile, alto saxophon-

ist Dmitry Baevsky and pianist Weiss to

embellish the theme. Horace Silver’s “Mr.

Blakey” spotlights Basile alongside two

tenormen, Andy Farber and Grant Stew-

art, and, in deference to the title’s honoree,

gives wide berth to Van Nostrand to

dictate the tune’s feel. (A third tenor guest,

Jerry Weldon, appears on “Ill Wind.”)

Harris’ compositions are quite refined,

his interpretive skills are acute and he’s

well suited for leadership. He’s an impres-

sive voice on the trumpet, boasting strong

chops and versatility. If anything, he

doesn’t reserve enough breakout space for

himself. Only two of the tracks here are

sax-free, and when Harris brings it down

to the quartet he displays more of his own

agility; he utterly transforms Prince’s “Do

U Lie?,” bringing to it a modified waltz

tempo while retaining the original’s sen-

suality. Beginnings is just that, but it’s a fine

initial leader statement. JEFF TAMARKIN

KEYON HARROLDTHE MUGICIAN (Legacy/Mass Appeal)

The music of “Voicemail,”

which opens trumpeter

Keyon Harrold’s The

Mugician, is beautiful. But

as accompaniment to

inspirational thoughts from Harrold’s

mother, a jazz-quintet-plus-five-back-

ground-vocalists-and-a-string-quartet lays

it on awfully thick. Using a voicemail is

clichéd, too. Unfortunately, “Voicemail”

sets the tone for Harrold’s album. It tries

too hard and yields little we haven’t

already heard.

Similarly, the track behind Guy Torry’s

politically/racially charged spoken word

on “When Will It Stop” has appeal,

particularly Nir Felder’s funky guitar and

Harrold’s overdubbed trumpet and flugel-

horn. But Torry has the spotlight and he’s

artless—a lecturer. More ponderous still is

Andrea Pizziconi’s “Broken News,” which

doesn’t so much comment on contempo-

rary issues as list them, or rub one’s nose

in them.

The Mugician’s lone political success is

“Circus Show,” featuring bluesman Gary

Clark Jr., whose style allows for bluntness

without fists of ham. The album fares much

better when the intensity goes to less overtly

topical places, such as when Jermaine

Holmes and Georgia Anne Muldrow take

on the searing “Wayfaring Traveler,” explor-

ing injustice’s psychological toll.

Instrumentals also garner mixed results.

“MB Lament” is a poignant elegy for

Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo., with its

quotes of “St. Louis Blues” and long, sus-

penseful notes from Harrold’s trumpet (al-

though its strings, now 10 pieces, are again

overwrought). Without nearly as much

flair, “Ethereal Souls” and “Bubba Rides

Again” travel similar hip-hop-infused roads

as Ben Williams and Robert Glasper. (The

latter is another of the album’s high-profile

guests, along with Bilal and the rappers Big

K.R.I.T. and Pharoahe Monch.)

Harrold also seems after the political fire

of musicians like Christian Scott aTunde

Adjuah, Ambrose Akinmusire and Kend-

rick Scott, but with considerably less finesse

and insight. He’s a fine trumpeter: pungent

tone, technical grace (his phrasing on “MB

Lament” is impeccable) and emotional

resonance. But his path may not be that of

The Mugician. MICHAEL J. WEST

JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRAWITH WYNTON MARSALISHANDFUL OF KEYS (Blue Engine)

An unlimited number of

possibilities rest within the

piano’s 88 keys, and this

survey of a century’s worth

of jazz piano offers proof of

that fact. Six pianists of various vintage,

background and taste rotate on and off the

bench here, joining Wynton Marsalis and

company in an engaging program that

moves from stride to outside without a

hitch. Bright light Isaiah J. Thompson

makes his mark on a broadened journey

through Fats Waller’s “Lulu’s Back in Town”

and a bluesy-and-proud take on Oscar

Peterson’s “Hymn to Freedom.” Helen Sung

flies with grace and hammers with gusto on

her own expansive arrangement of McCoy

Tyner’s “Four by Five,” and Dan Nimmer

occupies his usual perch within this top-tier

outfit for a snazzy nod to Wynton Kelly in

the form of “Temperance.”

Dick Hyman serves as the elder states-

man of the bunch, flexing his encyclopedic

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Fall Lineup 2017

October 4: Pianist Ellis Marsalis

October 11: Singer Germaine Bazzle

October 18: Percussionist John Wooton

October 25: Trumpeter Andrew Baham

November 1: Guitarist Mike Moreno

November 8: Bassist Rufus Reid

November 15: Clarinetist James Evans


“Bringing the spirit of the sixties into the 21st Century”

Featuring: Carl Filipiak, Frank Young, Matthew Everhart, Paul Hannah,

special guest Brian Simms

Available at iTunesAmazon.com • CD Baby

CARL FILIPIAK AND THE JIMI JAZZ BAND

WHAT NOW

carlfilipiak.com

fingers on a jaunty trip through James

P. Johnson’s “Jingles” and an organically

swinging “All of Me,” while wunderkind

Joey Alexander, who juxtaposes his

own mindset against Bill Evans’ ideals

on Walter Blanding’s arrangement of

“Very Early,” represents the other side of

the age spectrum. Every pianist on the

program makes a firm impression, but

the MVP award ends up going to Myra

Melford, for her thoroughly engaging,

outside-the-box explorations on “The

Strawberry.” Ted Nash’s charged ar-

rangement accentuates Melford’s musi-

cal identity, honoring her creative spirit

and leaving space for her intelligently

audacious statements to shine through.

DAN BILAWSKY

DAVE LIEBMAN& MARTIAL SOLALMASTERS IN BORDEAUX (Sunnyside)

When it comes to improvisa-

tional savvy and interpretive

insight, it doesn’t get any

better than these two. NEA

Jazz Master Dave Liebman

has decoded and developed numerous

forms of language over the course of the past

50 years, exploring and expanding the

boundaries of jazz while establishing himself

as a guiding light in the music. French

pianist Martial Solal, who recently entered

the nonagenarian club, is one of the crown

jewels of the European jazz world, serving as

a direct link to everybody from Sidney

Bechet to Paul Motian to Dave Douglas.

There’s never been anything predict-

able about how these men operate in their

individual pursuits, so it should come as

no shock that their duo is full of surprises.

All six of the tunes they perform here may

be incredibly well worn, but Liebman and

Solal reinvigorate each one. Their takes on

classics are mildly transgressive yet highly

accessible, playful and probing in nature

but lyrical and tradition-minded at the

core. It’s hard to believe that any program

including “Night and Day,” “Solar” and

“On Green Dolphin Street” could possibly

be capable of providing a real taste of the

unexpected, but this one beats the odds.

Solal’s teetering foundations and Lieb-

man’s searching soprano set the scene for

an “All the Things You Are” that’s abso-

lutely ripe and tasty, complete with impish

play atop solid form outlining. “What

Is This Thing Called Love” opens with a

minute of Sonny Rollins-esque carnival-

barker lines from Liebman before the

real games begin. And “Lover Man” is

set adrift, floating pleasurably on and off

course. Liebman and Solal maintain dual

musical citizenship with this one, existing

as the ultimate insiders and outliers.

DAN BILAWSKY

RUDRESH MAHANTHAPPA’S INDO-PAK COALITIONAGRIMA (rudreshm.com)

Since the last Indo-Pak

Coalition album came out

in 2008, saxophonist

Rudresh Mahanthappa and

guitarist Rez Abbasi have

each released a handful of substantial

records as bandleaders, and drummer-

tabla player Dan Weiss has generated his

own strong discography. On this belated

follow-up, Agrima, the trio has less to

prove and more to flex.

The most obvious additions to the sinu-

ous raga-jazz of the debut are the intro-

duction of electronic effects and a greater

inclination to indulge the crossover sizzle

that can occur when Western rock and

blues meshes with cantering Indian and

Pakistani rhythms. This is especially true

of the title song, which bends the sax-

guitar braid into an almost bagpipe-like

keening and then keeps circling back to

the melodic chorus, after quiet interludes,

with increasing speed and intensity. On

two other resplendent numbers, “Snap”

and “Rasikapriya,” the core Indo-Pak

template is established—Mahanthappa

bristling, Weiss strafing the mix with tabla

beats, Abbasi chording and then engag-

ing the sax in call and response—before

pivoting to a new level. On “Snap,” Abbasi

goes woozy abetted by electronics and

then gradually begins to shred, as Weiss,

on drums, helps him up the ante before

Mahanthappa takes his heavily modulated

solo. On “Rasikapriya,” the band disap-

pears into an ether of effects, from which

the sax and guitar emerge like geese com-

ing out of the fog—one of many segues

that also include a return to the template,

a Hendrix-ian quaver from Abbasi and

some beat-stalking power-trio interplay.

Agrima has its flaws. There are bouts of

meandering—almost all of “Can-Did” and

the first half of the 14-minute “Revati”—

and Mahanthappa’s distinctive alto attack

occasionally devolves from galvanizing

to garrulous. But there isn’t another band

quite like this—the old Shakti, with John


McLaughlin in the Mahanthappa role, is

the closest comparison. These are three

distinct talents, unfettered in pursuit of the

brutish beauty of their collective vision, like

the Indo-jazz version of Cream. Nearly a

decade between albums, but worth the wait.

BRITT ROBSON

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN & THE 4TH DIMENSIONLIVE @ RONNIE SCOTT’S (Abstract Logix)

Among the knocks against

fusion is that it too often

sacrifices subtlety for

loudness and chops. There

are counterexamples, but

John McLaughlin’s Live @ Ronnie Scott’s isn’t

one. Never averse to introducing subtler ele-

ments just so he can pound the hell out of

them, the septuagenarian guitar legend—

chops as sharp as ever—seems to intend

here to wreck what finer details of his

compositions he’d left behind.

On the Mahavishnu Orchestra classic

“Miles Beyond,” for example, keyboardist

Gary Husband delicately sets up a funk-soul

groove on Fender Rhodes, only to have

McLaughlin’s heavily distorted ax, along

with bassist Etienne Mbappe and drum-

mer Ranjit Barot, steamroll it immediately.

(McLaughlin likes the effect so much he

mimics it, taking over the delicacy and let-

ting Mbappe snowplow it.) He takes a differ-

ent approach on “Sanctuary,” playing a faith-

ful rendition but underlining every note,

beat and timbre. Meanwhile, on already

intense pieces like “Meeting of the Spirits,”

any facet that even remotely softened the

blow, such as the violin ostinato, has to go.

It’s not just the old tunes. A third of

the program comes from the 4th Dimen-

sion’s 2015 album, Black Light: same era,

same personnel, same instrumentation.

Why, then, must the dulcet Spanish guitar

timbre of “El Hombre Que Sabia” yield to

McLaughlin’s overdriven tone in concert?

Ditto “Gaza City,” which only Husband’s

acoustic piano saves from overcooking?

Of course a guitar god is going to act

like one onstage, and live albums always

demand the big guns. But there is one tune

that McLaughlin and the band handle with

both care and enthusiasm. “New Blues Old

Bruise” loses none of its propulsion or its

flavor or even its chops, despite the fact that

the players show some restraint. It’s not that

the band on Live can’t hold back; it simply

doesn’t, to its detriment. MICHAEL J. WEST

ERIC REVISSING ME SOME CRY (Clean Feed)

Eric Revis has multiple jazz personalities. One of the most in-demand bassists, he swings hard when he plays in Branford Marsalis’ quartet

and swings elegantly when he backs the likes of Kurt Rosenwinkel. But through a series of albums on the Clean Feed label, he has also developed into one of the most creative makers of modern improvised music. In Sing Me Some Cry he has another masterful album, this time with three avant-garde A-listers: saxophonist Ken Vandermark, pianist Kris Davis and drummer Chad Taylor.

Stylistically, Sing Me Some Cry runs the

gamut of free (or free-ish) jazz. The title

track contains no structure, just four musi-

cians rummaging around and surprising

themselves with what they dig up. (It’s

the only composition out of nine that is

credited to all of them.) “Good Company,”

Vandermark’s one contribution, is a muscu-

lar number that feels like the halfway point

between his Vandermark 5 and Marsalis’

quartet. Davis and Taylor each contribute a

tune, Revis offers four and one is a cover of

guitarist Adam Rogers’ funky “Rumples.”

These four musicians have spent time

honing their individual voices, but they fit

together so well. That is as apparent on the

pretty ballad “Glyph” and the pointillistic

“Solstice.... The Girls (for Max & XiXi)” as

it is on “Rye Eclipse,” which touts the brute

force of a band that means business.

STEVE GREENLEE

BOBBY WATSONMADE IN AMERICA (Smoke Sessions)

History has a way of

elevating some heroes and

obscuring others. Saxophon-

ist Bobby Watson’s Made in

America serves as something

of a corrective to that kind of presentational

injustice. Over the course of 65 minutes, his

soulful alto rolls out a series of musical

portraits highlighting the contributions of

important yet oft-overlooked African-

American pioneers. A few figures on the

list may transcend the theme—Sammy

Davis, Jr. is far from unheralded, guitarist

Grant Green is certainly acknowledged in

the jazz world, and Butterfly McQueen

holds a certain cachet in film circles—but

the majority fit the bill.

Wendell Pruitt, a Tuskegee Airman who

flew dozens of combat missions, is saluted

on “The Aviator,” a number that sows

melodic seeds taken from “The U.S. Air

Force Song” and shifts from a lightly funky

gait to solid swing. Madam C.J. Walker, a

self-made millionaire who created a line of

beauty products for black women, is repre-

sented with “The Entrepreneur,” a joyously

flowing statement with a pseudo-calypso

lilt. Dr. Mark Dean, one of the chief minds

behind the creation of IBM computers,

is honored on “The Computer Scientist,”

a firm-handed and witty scenario that’s

perfectly fitting in sound and scope.

Davis is the one figure who gets two

nods here, and he’s certainly deserving: “I’ve

Gotta Be Me,” the crooner’s self-proclaimed

theme, and “The G.O.A.T,” on which drum-

mer Lewis Nash’s brushes operate with a

soft-shoe aesthetic and Curtis Lundy’s pli-

ant bass comes to the fore. Watson, pianist

Stephen Scott and the joined-at-the-hip

combination of Lundy and Nash do these

significant men and women justice while

elevating their own art. DAN BILAWSKY

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ReviewsVoxby Christopher Loudon

GREGORY PORTERNAT “KING” COLE & ME (Blue Note)

It’s not that Gregory Porter

hasn’t put his stamp on

standards. Seven years into

his reign as arguably the

most impressive new voice

in jazz, Porter has included exquisite

readings of, among others, “Skylark,” “I

Fall in Love Too Easily” and “God Bless

the Child” across various albums. But far

greater emphasis has been placed on his

exceptional compositions, ranging from

sage sociopolitical commentary to deeply

personal tales of love, loss and spirituality.

Fittingly, Porter’s long affection for

Nat Cole provides the foundation for

his first full-length exploration of pop

and jazz classics. That Porter and Cole

are kindred spirits is undeniable: both

warm, enthralling baritones; both blessed

with tremendous, infectious charm. It

is Porter’s first album featuring full and

mighty orchestral accompaniment, with

an ace rhythm section—pianist Chris-

tian Sands, bassist Reuben Rogers and

drummer Ulysses Owens Jr., plus guest

trumpeter Terence Blanchard—backed

on most tracks by the London Studio

Orchestra under the deft direction of

Vince Mendoza.

Porter hinted at his lifelong admiration

of Cole when he included the moving

“When Love Was King” on 2013’s Liquid

Spirit. It is reimagined here, the album’s

sole original, with equal ardour and added

lushness. The balance of the 12 selections

(15 on the deluxe edition), span Cole’s

entire vocal career. All of the performanc-

es—from the mystical rapture of “Nature

Boy” and the shadowy stealth of “Quizas,

Quizas, Quizas,” to a featherlight “Sweet

Lorraine” (sans orchestra), an ebullient

“L-O-V-E” and a swirling “Ballerina”—

are distinctively magical.

SARAH ELIZABETH CHARLESFREE OF FORM (Stretch/Ropeadope)

Impeccable technical

prowess providing the base

for boldly uninhibited

expression, all driving

sharply shaped political and

cultural views: It’s a combination as rare as

it is thrilling, bringing to mind Betty

Carter and Abbey Lincoln and, over the

past half-decade, the neo-soul-meets-

jazz fervor of Sarah Elizabeth Charles.

Charles’ progress has been signifi-

cantly enriched in two ways: first, via

her deepening symbiosis with trumpet-

er Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, who

coproduced and made guest appear-

ances on her sophomore release, 2015’s

Inner Dialogue, and does likewise here;

and then there’s the oneness that she’s

built alongside quartet-mates Jesse

Elder (keyboards), John Davis (drums)

and Burniss Earl Travis II (bass), since

her 2012 debut, Red.

Free of Form, Charles’ first album

devoted exclusively to original composi-

tions, opens with what sounds like a

deflating balloon, courtesy of Scott, be-

fore soaring to freedom-seeking heights.

The skyward search continues with the

title track, an impassioned quest for

self-actualization, a theme expanded in

the uplifting “Taller.” The metronomic

plod of “March to Revolution” opens

up to a rallying cry that evolves through

the steadily intensifying “Change to

Come”; “Zombie,” a searing condemna-

tion of passivity; and the turbulent “The

←“Arguably the most impressive new voice in jazz”: Gregory Porter

ERIK

UM

PHER

Y


Struggle.” The message is powerful and

profound and clear: Get involved, take a

stand and thereby discover your best self.

BILLY DANIELSAT THE STARDUST, LAS VEGAS/YOU GO TO MY HEAD (Sepia)

In his 1950s prime, Billy

Daniels combined the

baronial lustre of Billy

Eckstine, the smooth

elegance of Nat Cole and

the outsized showmanship of Sammy

Davis Jr. Yet while all three of those peers

earned legendary status, Daniels is

largely forgotten. His recorded output

wasn’t voluminous, and not nearly

enough of what he did produce has

survived into the digital age. Which

makes this twofer especially welcome.

When the Stardust hotel and casino

opened in 1958, then the largest, most

lavish addition to the Vegas Strip, Daniels

was signed to a 40-week contract as head-

liner in the main lounge. A live album

seemed a canny move. In fact, At the Star-

dust was shaped in an L.A. studio. Aside

from waves of sloppily added applause, it’s

a gem, Daniels fronting the Benny Payne

Orchestra—with Payne proving plenty of

vocal interplay—as he weaves tender bal-

lads with such rousing crowd-pleasers as

“The Birth of the Blues,” “Temptation” and

“Ol’ Man River.”

But Stardust pales in comparison to

the sublime You Go to My Head, re-

corded a year later under the direction of

Benny Carter (leading his orchestra and

crafting the arrangements) and featur-

ing such stellar players as Ben Webster,

Harry “Sweets” Edison, Pete Candoli

and an uncredited Paul Smith. Though

impressive from end-to-end, Daniels and

company reach dazzling heights on “It’s

De-Lovely,” “Comes Love” and a glorious

“Hallelujah.” Two bonus tracks come

from 1961: a rollicking “Gonna Build

a Mountain” and a wildly overblown

“What Kind of Fool Am I.”

BOB DOROUGH TRIOLIVE AT THE DEER HEAD INN (Deer Head)

The oldest continuously

running jazz club in

America isn’t in New York,

Chicago or New Orleans

but in the Delaware Water

Gap of Pennsylvania, where for nearly

seven decades the Deer Head Inn has

hosted everyone from Stan Getz to Keith

Jarrett. If the Deer Head can claim a

resident headliner, it is surely Bob

Dorough, who, nearing 94, still makes

regular appearances. This particular set,

featuring trio-mates Steve Berger (guitar)

and Pat O’Leary (bass), plus two special

guests, was captured on Dec. 12, 2015,

Dorough’s 92nd birthday.

Dorough’s rank among the sharpest

songwriters of his (or any) generation is

beyond question, as is his prowess as a

pianist. As a singer he is utterly unique,

a peerless blend of grit and charm, imps

dancing with angels. And Dorough is

superb at shaping set lists, as evidenced

here with a marvellous intermingling of

Richard Rodgers, Bacharach and David,

Ray Noble, Jack Teagarden and origi-

nals familiar (“Devil May Care”), new

(the beautifully contemplative “Summer

Solstice”), witty (“Wily Wily Woman”)

and sly (“It’s Bound to End in Tears,”

co-written with the equally crafty Fran

Landesman).

Ever the gentleman, Dorough leaves

plenty of room for laudable contributions

from across the bandstand, including

daughter Aralee’s keenly navigated, three-

and-a-half-minute flute intro to “Flamin-

go,” thoughtful solos from O’Leary and

Berger on Rodgers’ wishful “The Sweetest

Sounds” and, on harmonica, Larry Fink’s

bluesy, mischievous propulsion of “Wily

Wily Woman.”

CHAMPIAN FULTON & SCOTT HAMILTONTHE THINGS WE DID LAST SUMMER (Blau)

Vocalist-pianist Champian

Fulton knows from

legendary horn players.

Before her first birthday she

was introduced to Clark

Terry. She cut her jazz teeth in and around

the Terry-named International Institute of

Jazz Studies, run by her trumpeter father,

Steve Fulton. And at age 10, the prodigy

performed at Terry’s 75th birthday

festivities. Later, she studied under

another trumpet great, Jon Faddis, at

SUNY Purchase.

So the fact that Fulton, now 32, has

joined forces with the master saxophonist

Scott Hamilton is not surprising. They’ve

performed together before, in New York,

but this hour-long live session unfolded

this past April in Spain, at the Espai de la

Música Mestre Vila in Benicàssim. Shar-

ing the stage are two excellent, long-

established Spaniards, bassist Ignasi

Gonzalez and drummer Esteve Pi.

As a pianist, Fulton, a dextrous,

imaginative player, blends beauti-

fully with the astute Hamilton. Their

shared inventiveness is evident across

everything from a satiny meander

through the title cut to a freewheeling

“Runnin’ Wild” and, the set’s apex, a

10-minute twining of Illinois Jacquet’s

“Black Velvet” and “Don’cha Go ’Way

Mad.” Indeed, they are so simpatico, so

mutually respectful that this might have

worked better as a purely instrumental

album. Which isn’t to malign the vocals

Fulton adds to five of eight tracks, her

ripened sound marrying Nancy Wilson

sophistication to Dinah Washington-

styled phrasing. Particular affecting is

her dreamily insinuating take on “My

Future Just Passed.”

SETH MACFARLANEIN FULL SWING (Republic/Verve)

How delightfully

idiosyncratic that Seth

MacFarlane, who’s built a

film and TV empire by

trading in the most

sophomoric of humor, has emerged as

an old-school crooner, breezily mining

Tin Pan Alley tunes with the verve of

Dean Martin and the snap of Sinatra.

Given his place near the top of the

Hollywood firmament, it’s understand-

able that MacFarlane is provided the

sort of luxurious trappings few pop-jazz

vocalists have enjoyed since Sinatra’s

heyday. He recorded this fourth album,

In Full Swing, at Abbey Road Studios

with the savviest of co-producers, Joel

McNeely, who also shapes punchy,

brassy, string-dripping arrangements

worthy of Billy May and Neal Hefti.

Anchoring the 48-piece orchestra, ex-

panded to an overwhelming 60 for one

track, are such fine players as guitarist

Larry Koonse, keyboardist Tom Ranier,

bassist Chuck Berghofer and drummer

Peter Erskine.

Fortunately, MacFarlane proves (yet

again) fully worthy of such bounty.

Alongside top-tier standards from

the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Jerome

Kern, Rodgers and Hart, Lerner and

Loewe and Jimmy Van Heusen, he

unearths several less precious though

no less glittering baubles. Among them:

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the overjoyed “I Like Myself,” from It’s

Always Fair Weather; the jaunty Gordon

MacRae-Gisele McKenzie number

“My Buick, My Love and I” (featuring

Elizabeth Gillies); the pert “A Kiss or

Two”; and a sparkling parry with Norah

Jones on “If I Had a Talking Picture of

You.” Through it all, you can’t help but

be carried away by MacFarlane’s joie de

vivre, like a kid in a candy store gleefully

sharing his sugar-dusted treats.

NICKI PARROTTDEAR BLOSSOM (Arbors)

Few, if any, contemporary

jazz singers can match the

recording prolificacy of

Nicki Parrott: close to 30

albums (many for Japan’s

Venus label) in less than 15 years,

including tributes to mentor Les Paul,

Doris Day, Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, the

Carpenters and, just released overseas,

Burt Bacharach. Here the indefatigable

Australian salutes Blossom Dearie, a task

more difficult than it may seem.

Anyone who’s heard even a single Dea-

rie track knows the unforgettable voice:

that sweet, childlike mew. But underlying

that seemingly innocent purr, and essen-

tial to the definition of her genius, was a

slyness that could reveal itself as playful,

coy, smirking or sardonic.

Parrott, also a skilled bassist, has a

fuller, richer and more sanguine sound

than Dearie, but she ably echoes her

fetchingly girlish side. That’s all that’s

needed for such winsome selections as “I

Wish You Love” and “Inside a Silent Tear,”

and dreamier fare like “It Amazes Me” and

“I Walk a Little Faster.” Others, though

consistently charming (particularly “Peel

Me a Grape,” Parrott alone with cornetist

Warren Vaché), fall short—missing that

vital substrata.

“Rhode Island Is Famous for You,” for

example, bounces brightly but without

the flippantly comic edge. Ditto the

absent cynicism on “Everything I’ve Got

Belongs to You.” And, modernizing the

lyrics to “I’m Hip,” Parrott undermines

the Dave Frishberg/Bob Dorough tune’s

intent: to reveal how intrinsically un-hip

the narrator is. Parrott includes one origi-

nal, the paean “Dear Blossom”—win-

ningly tender, yet again failing to capture

Dearie’s full essence. JT


ARTIST’S CHOICE

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, EM

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LEK

CYMBAL CREATIVITY B Y R U D Y R O Y S T O N

Paul Bley Trio(Barry Altschul, drums)“PABLO”Touching (Debut, 1965)He’s harmonic, he’s melodic, he’s colorful. You don’t feel that he’s

just hitting the cymbal; you feel that he’s playing something on

purpose. He’s comping—contributing these little melodies or

complementing what Paul Bley is doing. It’s like an orchestration.

Roy Haynes(Haynes, drums)“EQUIPOISE”Hip Ensemble (Mainstream, 1971)There’s a break in this tune, and every time after the break he

goes to a certain ride cymbal. He plays off the cymbal so it’s a

staccato but full sound. For a drummer, that’s like saying every

time we get to the B section, we just like the way this major-7/

sharp-11 sounds. You don’t have to play that chord, but you

just like the vibe that it creates.

Miles Davis(Tony Williams, drums)“WATER BABIES”Water Babies (Columbia, rec. 1967)I like when cymbals are used in harmonic ways. On this tune

Tony uses the cymbals like orchestration. The whole tune is

the hi-hat; I don’t think he hits the drums once. And he plays

the cymbals in a way that illustrates [the concept behind the

title]—there are water droplets and splashes.

Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette(DeJohnette, drums)“THE CURE”The Cure (ECM, 1991)Jack uses cymbals precisely for pitch and tone in certain parts of

the tune, which is all closed hi-hat. There’s a groove background

but also a textural background. He sets up his own harmonics

before his solo, and when he gets to the solo it’s just short crashes,

short explosions.

The use of cymbals should be as purposeful as it is mechanical.

Some of us drummers sit at our kits and swat at the cymbals

as if they were merely flattened pieces of metal. Much rarer

is a musician who uses the cymbals to expand into not only

pitch and texture but also color, atmosphere and other tools for

creating melody and harmony from behind the kit. Here are

key performances by some of my favorite drummers, who use

cymbals not only rhythmically but in orchestral ways as well.

Rudy Royston is a drummer and composer based in New Jersey. He regularly performs and records with Dave Douglas, Bill Frisell, JD Allen, Linda May Han Oh and others. As a leader, Royston has released two albums on the Greenleaf Music label, most recently the trio album Rise of Orion. Visit him at rudyroyston.com.

Branford Marsalis Trio(Jeff “Tain” Watts, drums)“THE BEAUTYFUL ONES ARE NOT YET BORN”The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (Columbia, 1991) Tain is the ultimate—a strong, killing drummer but not bashing.

And he’ll use these very quiet cymbal textures for orchestration.

Sometimes we drummers do small swells, and we want to be

heard. He’ll do them, but it’s not to be heard; it’s to be felt. On this

track he creates a total harmonic atmosphere and plays this sort

of Eastern rhythm behind what Branford is doing.

Ben Allison (Jeff Ballard, drums)“SPY”Medicine Wheel (Palmetto, 1998) Jeff Ballard is all about touch. When you hear him, you don’t feel

like you’re hearing cymbals and drums; you’re just hearing the set.

Even when he’s crashing he never gets out of control. There’s this

rhythmic interplay between drums and cymbals.

Brian Blade Fellowship(Blade, drums)“EVINRUDE-FIFTY (TREMBLING)”Perceptual (Blue Note, 2000) Within the first two minutes he’s played 30 tones on his cymbals. It

has a chordal quality—if the piano wasn’t playing, you’d still feel the

chord go by. Then he repeats things. If you want to know when a

drummer is playing melody on the cymbals in his or her mind, listen

for them to repeat the same thing over and over. Those are notes. JT

[As told to Jeff Tamarkin]

←

Melody on metal: Brian Blade

Artist’s Choice: Matt Wilson on ride-cymbal melodies

INCLUDES

ANNUAL JAZZ EDUCATION DIRECTORY

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CARRYINGTHETRAD-JAZZTORCH IN NEW ORLEANSHOW TO:Expand Your Ensemble's Fan BaseKeep Your Students Focused | Bridge the Rock/Jazz Gap

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OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS AND FINANCIAL AID MANHATTAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC 120 CLAREMONT AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10027 917 493 4436 | [email protected]

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Study with accomplished faculty, who include Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera orchestra members, Metropolitan and Lyric opera sensations, renowned soloists, Grammy-winning jazz musicians, and award-winning composers. Enjoy opportunities to perform in professional venues.

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DEGREE PROGRAMS: Bachelor of Music in Jazz and Contemporary

Music with concentrations in vocal or instrumental performance

CCPA JAZZ FACULTY:Neal Alger, Ruben Alvarez, Stephen Berry,

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Scott Mason, John McLean, Jeffrey Morrow, John Moulder, Marlene Rosenberg, Fred Simon,

Michael Smith, Jim Trompeter, Marshall Vente, Paul Wertico, Cheryl Wilson

LIVE, LEARN AND PERFORM IN CHICAGO THE MUSIC CONSERVATORY AT ROOSEVELT UNIVERSITY

Terell Stafford Director of Jazz Studies

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VIBRAPHONETony MiceliWarren Wolf

VIOLINZach Brock

ORGANLucas BrownPat Bianchi

Terell Stafford, Director of Jazz Studies (trumpet) and Dick Oatts (saxophone/jazz faculty) with the Temple University Studio Orchestra during a performance of “Frank Sinatra Suite,” commissioned by the Boyer College

of Music and Dance from Michael Abene. Photo: Janette McVey

FACULTY

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY BOYER COLLEGE OF MUSIC AND DANCE

PROGRAMS OF STUDY

BM: Jazz Performance (Instrumental, Keyboard or Voice)

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Large and small ensemble playing in a thriving cultural community.

2018 AUDITION DATESJanuary 12 & 13February 2 & 3March 2 & 3

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The Herb Alpert School of Music

at CalArtsmusic.calarts.edu

PERFORMERJAZZCOMPOSERFounded by the late jazz giant Charlie Haden as a creative alternative to academic jazz studies, the Herb Alpert School of Music’s Jazz Specialization at CalArts emphasizes small ensemble performance and improvisation, training students to become highly versatile performers, improvisers, and composers. Along with the closely related Performer-Composer Specialization, these areas of study reflect the increasing demand today for flexible musicians who are able to integrate multiple modes of music making.

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Faculty ListDavid Roitstein Chair, Jazz: Jazz Piano

Joseph (Joey) De Leon Jazz: Latin Percussion

John Fumo Jazz: Trumpet

Alex Iles Jazz: Trombone

Alphonso Johnson Jazz: Electric Bass

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Joe LaBarbera Jazz: Drumset

Bennie Maupin Jazz: Woodwinds

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Darek Oles Jazz: Bass

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78 J A Z Z T I M E S • E D U C AT I O N G U I D E 2 0 1 7 / 2 0 1 8

EDUCATION GUIDE2017/2018

100 MICK GOODRICKA mentor whose pupils include Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Ben Monder and Julian Lage must be doing something right. Meet Mick Goodrick, the wry shaman of jazz guitar. BY JOEL HARRISON

104 BRIDGING THE ROCK-TO-JAZZ GAP

How should a talented young player adept in popular styles make the leap into jazz? Experts including Peter Erskine and Jeff Coffin offer ideas. BY BRAD FARBERMAN

80 GERI ALLENAllen, who died of cancer in June, just 60, wasn’t only one of the most fearless and important pianists in jazz history. She was also among its great teachers, as artists including Esperanza Spalding and Jason Moran explain. BY SHAUN BRADY

86 BANDSTAND BEHAVIORHow to keep your student musicians engaged, attentive and respectful, with input from Bob Mintzer, Terell Stafford and others. BY SHAUN BRADY

92 TEACHING TRAD-JAZZ IN NOLA

In the Crescent City, traditional jazz is taken up by new generations despite cultural and political setbacks. BY JENNIFER ODELL

96 EXPANDING YOUR SCHOOL’S FAN BASE

Top band directors and educators weigh in on how school jazz ensembles can attract new listeners and keep them interested. BY DAN BILAWSKY

DEPARTMENTS108 COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY BAND CD ROUNDUP BY KEN FRANCKLING

111 DIRECTORY OF SCHOOLS & PROGRAMS

144 FINAL EXAMJT publisher LEE MERGNER talks to trombonist and educator WYCLIFFE GORDON

INSIDE


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On the day that I

interviewed her for

JazzTimes’ 2010-

11 Jazz Education

Guide, Geri Allen

complained that she

was “feeling sick to my stomach … in

disbelief.” Earlier that morning, she’d

received news that the Detroit Public

Schools planned to fire a number of arts

and music teachers in an ill-advised

budget-cutting move, including the or-

chestra conductor and music teacher at

Allen’s own alma mater, Cass Technical

High School.

That visceral reaction should come as

no surprise to anyone who knew Allen.

In the wake of her passing on June 27, at

age 60, she’s been rightly celebrated as a

pioneering pianist, an artist whose work

encompassed an unusually wide swath

of jazz history and offered a model for

the 21st-century jazz musician that deftly

balanced tradition and innovation. But

she was also possessed by an unmatched BY SHAUN BRADY

The brilliant

pianist and composer

GERI ALLEN approached her work

in jazz education

with the same level of

enthusiasm, compassion

and intelligence, as her

many renowned students

and colleagues attest

NurturerTHE

passion for education, an intense dedica-

tion to passing along a torch she felt she’d

inherited from forebears like Mary Lou

Williams and Dr. Billy Taylor.

That intensity was admirable but could

also prove daunting. I felt the brunt of

it in the wake of our conversation that

July day at the Montclair Art Museum.

A routine fact-check email turned into a

somewhat contentious back-and-forth, as

Allen attempted to rewrite many of her

quotes, expanding some of them to three

or four times their original length. It was

an impossible request to honor, given

ethical concerns and space constraints,

and made for a few uneasy dialogues. But

what was evident throughout was just how

extensive and developed her thoughts on

music education were, how strongly she

felt about them and how powerfully she

wanted them communicated.

82 J A Z Z T I M E S • E D U C AT I O N G U I D E 2 0 1 7

At the time of her death, Allen

was the director of jazz studies

at the University of Pittsburgh.

Prior to assuming that mantle in 2013,

she’d served as a faculty member at How-

ard University, New England Conserva-

tory, Montclair State University, the New

School and the University of Michigan,

where she taught for 10 years.

Allen grew up in a family of educators;

her father spent more than three decades

as a teacher and administrator in the De-

troit Public Schools system, following in

the footsteps of his mother, who taught

in a one-room schoolhouse in Tennes-

see. She proudly pointed to the legacy

of work with children that ran through

generations of her extended family, and

included teachers as well as doctors, min-

isters and social workers.

Determined to pursue a life in music,

Allen initially rebelled against the edu-

cational path, but was inevitably drawn

back in by the example established by

her own mentors: her childhood piano

teacher, Patricia Wilhelm, who guided

her from the age of 7 all the way through

high school; trumpeter Marcus Belgrave,

a Detroit legend who instilled valuable

lessons at Cass High and on the band-

stand; Billy Eckstine Orchestra pianist

John Malachi, with whom she studied at

Howard University; Nathan Davis, her

predecessor at Pitt, who widened her

perspective through ethnomusicology

classes; and David Baker, whose instruc-

tional books led her to think more deeply

about tracing knowledge to its source.

At the same time, she was learning the

old-fashioned way, in the often-cutthroat

environment found in Detroit clubs. In

her gentle but stern way, Allen tried to in-

tegrate those two approaches, coupling the

intellectual approach of classroom learn-

ing with the trial-by-fire tests of mettle

offered by real-world experience. “I’m

integrating both ideals,” Allen explained,

pointing to the Mary Lou Williams-style

piano salons she organized for her stu-

“Now that she’s gone, I realize there was not another pianist in the history of the music like her.” — Jason Moran

←

Allen performs at Ornette Coleman’s funeral; New York’s Riverside Church, June 2015 A

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dents. “It’s like a laboratory of scien-

tists all working on this idea for a new

breakthrough, all coming with their own

ideas, all having something of great value

to share with each other. It’s competitive

but friendly at the same time. I think that

peer relationship is very powerful.”

“[Her teaching method] was more

like an apprenticeship approach,” said

trumpeter Sean Jones, who crossed

Allen’s path both on the bandstand and

in the classroom at various points. “A

lot of times in higher academia you get

folks who teach from a textbook, and it’s

really easy to plug and play when you

do that. Geri was teaching from her life

experience. The people who know what

life is like on the road know what it is to

play on a high level, know what it is to

struggle to get to a certain level of suc-

cess—those cats are the real examples.

That’s what Geri was.”

Shaun Brady’s original Education Guide profile of Geri Allen


“Geri was very conscious of passing

on knowledge, and at the same time

she was very conscious of making sure

that younger musicians understood the

legacy and hierarchy in jazz,” added

drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, a

longtime friend and collaborator who

wasn’t yet a teenager when she first

played with Allen.

A Ph.D. student in jazz studies at

Pitt, Irene Monteverde served as one of

Allen’s teaching assistants for the last

two years. Watching Allen lecture to

classes of more than 300 on the history

of jazz, she observed that wide-ranging

approach firsthand. “She always wanted

to pay respect to her mentors,” Monte-

verde described. “But it was important

to her not just to regurgitate the history

of jazz but to make it [relevant to] ev-

eryday life. She wanted to connect with

the students on a very real level about

what’s happening now.”

That included not only music but

technology. Allen was keenly interested

in incorporating the latest classroom

innovations, becoming an advocate

for the real-time networking tech of

Internet2, through which she played

and taught with colleagues at other

institutions, including Carrington and

pianist Jason Moran. In that way she

took advantage of opportunities offered

by the same cultural upheavals she

felt the need to fight against—specifi-

←

Clockwise from right: Allen with Clark Terry in late 1999; in Harlem with Henry Threadgill, Henry Grimes and Jason Moran (from left) to honor Cecil Taylor, 2015; and at New York’s Vanguard Studios in 1984, age 27

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cally the new devices and technologies

that seemed to be isolating people by

absorbing them into narcissistic “social”

networks. “The world has changed so

much,” she told me. “We really don’t

have to deal with each other so much

anymore. We’re challenged with what

the whole idea of human interaction

means. And a big part of what this mu-

sic is about is the reality of interacting

with people.”

B assist Esperanza Spalding is

usually hesitant about taking a

“women-in-jazz” approach to

discussing her place in the music, but

she readily admits that Allen has been

a powerful role model in that context.

“I always think it’s not about being a

woman,” Spalding said, “but then I real-

ize that I was looking to Geri specifically

for guidance because she is a woman.

I don’t know why that’s true, and I’m


a little embarrassed to admit it, but

honestly, knowing that she did it gives me

confidence. I can’t go into the details of

why because I don’t fully understand, but

I do know that stepping out into the pa-

triarchal world that we live in feels a little

less scary having a reference like Geri.”

Allen took that role especially seri-

ously, particularly in her capacity as the

program director for the annual All-

Female Jazz Residency of the New Jersey

Performing Arts Center (NJPAC). “A

big part of how she wanted to make sure

the future was educated [was seeing to

it] that women had a sense of place and

agency and power,” said Moran. “[One

of the most important aspects of her

legacy] is what she represents for the

African-American woman in jazz. She

made sure that stayed firmly in people’s

eyes and that you had to be able to

reckon with that history. She wanted to

make sure that history was not going to

be deleted or erased on her watch; she

was going to put the work in to make

sure that you would know Mary Lou

Williams’ name.”

Moran recalled one of his earliest

experiences with Allen’s music, when he

brought a date to the Village Vanguard

“I do know that stepping out into the patriarchal world that

we live in feels a little less scary having a reference like Geri.”

— Esperanza Spalding

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←

Christian Sands, Esperanza Spalding and Terri Lyne Carrington (from left) invoke Allen’s spirit at the Newport Jazz Festival in August


“as a test to see if she could handle Geri

Allen.” (The verdict: “They couldn’t, so

they weren’t the one for me.”) While

that evening didn’t net Moran a soul

mate, it did reinforce a feeling that

he’d sensed about Allen’s distinctive

approach, that she paved the way for a

generation of pianists who wanted to

incorporate the vast sweep of history

into a single style. In that sense, she’s

been a mentor for many of today’s most

progressive musicians.

“Any student with half a brain would

understand that she would dig into a

bunch of different bags,” Moran said,

“whether it was Mary Lou Williams or

Cecil Taylor, playing with Betty Carter

or playing with M-Base, writing her

own music or being the only pianist

Ornette Coleman would hire in later

years. Any student who has future plans

for a career, she marked it out for you:

You should pay honor to the people

around you and above you; you should

share with the ones below you; you

should treat your bandstand as one that

is open; and you should play music that

challenges. Now that she’s gone, I realize

there was not another pianist in the his-

tory of the music like her.”

Spalding, who worked alongside

Allen and Carrington in recent years

in the ACS trio, didn’t hesitate to call

Allen a mentor, even as she meditated

on what the term really means. “I felt

very reverential towards Geri and

would defer to her before my own call

on any musical question,” she said. “But

we were so busy making music together

that I never even

thought to assume

a disciple mode. I

don’t think I really took advantage of the

potential for her to be an active mentor,

but you don’t have to talk about some-

thing explicitly to be teaching about it.

Her approach to people on and off the

bandstand was a constant education.

She encouraged me to do more than I

thought I could do, just by celebrating

what was happening and acknowledging

it. She would comment on things I didn’t

even know I was doing, and that encour-

aged me to seek further.”

One of Monteverde’s final opportu-

nities to spend time with Allen came

when the pianist asked her young TA,

who’d formerly studied at Siena Jazz, to

accompany her during a European tour

with Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava. It

proved to be another instance of Allen’s

subtle method of leading by example,

showing her student how to maintain

a down-to-earth demeanor in the face

of the challenges that life on the road

presents. “She was like a friend and a

mom and a teacher,” Monteverde

said. “She was always calm and

soft-spoken, but you knew that

she meant business.”

Spalding agreed that Allen’s

demeanor could be as influential

as her artistry: “She never got

perturbed by people or by situa-

tions. She interfaced with every-

one from a place of openness and

humility. She would leave a lot of

room for people to be themselves,

and she didn’t judge them. It’s

so encouraging to think that her

students were getting a dose of

all her musicianship and that

model of humanity.”

Allen closed our conver-

sation back in 2010 by

musing on the point

made by many veteran musi-

cians, especially those deeply

involved in education. She con-

tinued to consider herself a stu-

dent, and in her case the cliché

rang truer than with many of her

peers. Unique among them, Al-

len seemed to continue to hear,

absorb and learn from the discoveries

made by successive generations of young

innovators, not just the forebears she

championed.

It’s been valuable to me, in the months

since her passing, to reflect on the quote

that ended that original story, words of

wisdom that resonate all the more deeply

now that she’s gone. “We have to be

students of life and be very careful as we

move through it,” she concluded. “There’s

always some kind of unexpected moment

that happens each and every day, and

you have to adjust. Music is like that. You

can’t ever take it for granted.” JTSHA

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Allen and Afro Blue, the premier vocal group of her alma mater, Howard University, pay homage to the “Great Jazz Women of the Apollo” in Harlem, May 2013


If the students in his rehearsal room

at Camden’s Creative Arts Morgan

Village Academy start to get restless,

unruly or unfocused, Jamal Dicker-

son simply points to an empty spot

on the wall. The average observer

might search in vain for the object of

Dickerson’s gesture, but his students

know exactly what he’s pointing out, as

vivid in their minds as if it were etched

in stone.

“There’s an unwritten rule on the wall

that no one can see except the students

and I,” says Dickerson, who’s been the

Director of Bands and Instrumental

Music Teacher at the New Jersey middle

and high school for over 15 years. “It

says: ‘It’s not about music; it’s about life.’”

While he’s guided his students, who

hail from a city regularly described as

one of the country’s poorest and most

dangerous, to scholarships and award-

winning festival performances, Dick-

erson says that instilling discipline is a

far more crucial part of his job than any

music lesson could be. “How important

is discipline on the bandstand? I would

answer that question with a question,”

he says. “I would say, ‘How important is

discipline to being successful in life?’

“Discipline by definition is strict

and regular mental or moral training,”

he continues. “We’re here to develop

the hard-work muscle. Because if you

develop the hard-work muscle, then

you’ll be successful at whatever you plan

on doing. It’s like my father used to say,

‘You have to impose discipline until they

develop self-discipline.’ So every day

we’re going to come back to the same

boring room and practice discipline in

every way—the way we look, the way we

walk, the way we act.”

That sentiment is echoed by saxo-

phonist Bob Mintzer, Chair of Jazz

Studies at the University of Southern

California in Los Angeles. “It’s critical to

develop good habits in your formative

years, because this is something you’re

going to work on for your whole life,” he

says. “It’s so important to have a strong

work ethic. That’s going to be the foun-

dation for getting work, keeping work

and getting called back.”

•••

DISCIPLINE, FOCUS, RESPECT: These can be

challenging concepts to grasp for young

men and women on the cusp of adult-

hood, many of them tasting indepen-

dence for the first time in their lives. So

while a teacher may want to concentrate

on instrumental technique or harmonic

theory, reality often intrudes. “I think

the smaller part of my job sometimes

is teaching,” says trumpeter Terell

Stafford, Chair of Instrumental Studies

and Director of Jazz Studies at Temple

University in Philadelphia. “I should

have gotten a degree in psychology,

because the biggest part of my job is

speaking to students and helping them

DISCIPLINE, FOCUS, RESPECTHow to encourage and enforce good behavior on the bandstand By Shaun Brady

work through problems and issues. It’s a

challenge, but I do believe that disci-

pline and focus can be taught.”

For Stafford, that means treating

every class or rehearsal as if it were

a professional gig. “Every time we’re

together it’s a performance setting,” he

says. “The way they act, the way they

carry themselves; let’s have posture, let’s

have attention to detail, teamwork, lis-

tening and respect, just as you would in

a performance. If you do it in rehearsal,

in performance it’s second nature. But if


←

Saxophonist and educator Paul Carr,seen here leading his Jazz Academy

Orchestra,instills in his students a respectfor good onstage presentation.

“It tells the audience how seriouslyyou take what you’re doing,”he says

you only instill those principles in a per-

formance, then they never get a chance

to really rehearse them.”

That said, different musicians and

educators have different approaches

to instilling good behavior on the

bandstand. Where Stafford encourages

a more formal environment, perhaps

reflecting his early training in classical

music, Mintzer prefers to keep things a

bit looser. “I like having fun,” he shrugs.

“When I started my big band in New

York, it was full of a cast of characters

and it was a lot of fun just to partake

in the patter that would happen on

the bandstand. So I’m not a hardcore

disciplinarian. Having fun is all good by

me, as long as it doesn’t wind up being

a distraction. If we’re in the middle of

rehearsing or discussing something

important, I don’t want people fooling

around. But generally I don’t have to

bring it up. Most people realize when it’s

time to stop kidding and get serious.”

Saxophonist Paul Carr, founder and

Executive Director of the Maryland/

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D.C.-based Jazz Academy of Music,

which hosts summer camps and year-

round jazz ensembles for high school-

age students, and Jazz Band Director at

Gettysburg College, explains that being

too strict can actually hamper students’

imaginations. “Jazz is a social music;

that’s how it was born and bred,” he

says. “We’ve turned it into this hyper-

intellectual sit-down music and put it

in big concert halls, but jazz grew out

of people having a good time. The way

that kids are taught today is actually

anti-creativity. Everything is a formula,

so when it comes time to be creative it’s

very intimidating to them, even if they’re

really prepared musically. So making it

fun, having them smile, keeping them

loose, actually makes the music better.”

Students arriving at college or a jazz

camp come together with other musi-

cians from a variety of educational and

skill levels, which could easily result in

disrespectful comments or complaints.

Carr overcomes that challenge by mak-

ing respect a self-policed quality, as his

students critique one another in a daily

exercise he calls the “Cocoon of Love.”

“Every day at JAM Camp a group comes

up to play and the kids critique them-

selves,” he says. “They learn how to say

something to somebody without hurting

their feelings, because they know five

minutes later they’re going to be up

there. So if someone misses an entrance

or someone turns the beat around when

we’re trading fours, they’ll point that

out in a more constructive way. At

that age there’s always some smart

aleck who’s going to say something a

little mean, but the whole camp gets

down on them. Most of the time the

faculty doesn’t have to say anything.”

Dickerson has built his entire

program around such self-reliance,

as each class in the four-year high

school program plays its role in rela-

tion to fellow students. “The system

of discipline is vertical,” he says. “We

critique one another, and everyone

knows the rule is to first tell them

what they’re doing well, then one as-

pect of their performance that needs

some improvement. Everyone has to

be listening, actively engaged in what

we’re doing. Doing this day after

day, the freshmen’s eyes glaze over,

but by the time you’re a sophomore

you understand it. The juniors are

the enforcers, while the seniors start

to focus on getting out of here. It’s a

well-oiled machine: encouraging to

the ninth-graders, affirming for the

sophomores, the juniors drive the

bus and the seniors pass the torch. I

become a coach on the sidelines.”

•••

THE MODERN AGE OFFERS ITS OWN CHALLENGES, as perpetually distracted

teens and 20-somethings now have

an outlet for those distractions in the

palms of their hands. The umbili-

cal link that students have to their

smartphones inspired Carr to fight

fire with fire, inventing the hashtag

#ResistYourPhone as a reminder for

JAM campers. “When you cut the

band off and you’re explaining some-

thing or you’re in a coaching session

with a combo, as soon as the attention

turns away from an individual they

go right to their phone,” he says. “So

I started a rule where I don’t want to

see your cellphones in rehearsal. But

the attention spans are so short that

“I’M FROM THE TRADITION THAT IF YOU DON’T DO THE WORK, YOU FAIL. AN F GRADE DOESN’T MEAN NEARLY AS MUCH AS GETTING OUT INTO THE WORLD AND NOT BEING PREPARED.” – Bob Mintzer, the University of Southern California

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when you’re teaching now you have to re-

member to say the same exact thing four

or five times—minimum—maybe within

a span of five minutes. We’re in such a

mind trance with these devices, which

annoys a lot of educators, but I just look

at it as the way of the world now.”

Many teachers maintain a love/hate

relationship with such devices. Stafford

points out that tablets are now a regular

presence on the bandstand as a limitless

resource for sheet music, which has

changed the way young musicians learn

tunes. “We’re an information society,”

Stafford says with an edge of resigna-

tion. “When I was growing up, if there

was a tune you didn’t know, you learned

it. You knew not to bring music on the

bandstand. These days kids bring iPads,

so there’s no such thing as memoriz-

ing tunes; everybody can just flip to a

page in seconds and pull up music. If

being able to pop on YouTube is going

to help them learn, then I support that.

But if they’re doing it in a disrespectful

way, checking out the Internet dur-

ing rehearsal, that’s a big problem and

something I really don’t tolerate.”

That said, individual responsibility

has to play a role in forming discipline as

well. As Mintzer says, “If you don’t want

to learn, I’m not going to force you to

learn. I’m not going to hold your hand.

You’re paying a lot of money to be at this

school, and I’m from the tradition that

if you don’t do the work, you fail. An F

grade doesn’t mean nearly as much as

getting out into the world and not being

prepared, so if someone gets thrown out

of the program, maybe that’s a good mes-

sage that they’re not going to be prepared

when they get out of school.”

Aside from imposing rules on stu-

dents, there are subtler ways to inspire

discipline: dress, for one. “I tell students

that someone on Wall Street is dressed

the way they dress because they have re-

spect for their job and their community,

“I THINK THE SMALLER PART OF MY JOB SOMETIMES IS TEACHING.

I SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN A DEGREE IN PSYCHOLOGY, BECAUSE THE BIGGEST

PART OF MY JOB IS SPEAKING TO STUDENTS AND HELPING THEM WORK

THROUGH PROBLEMS AND ISSUES.” – Terell Stafford, Temple University

“HOW IMPORTANT IS DISCIPLINE ON THE BANDSTAND? … HOW IMPORTANT IS DISCIPLINE TO BEING SUCCESSFUL IN LIFE?” – Jamal Dickerson, Creative Arts Morgan Village Academy

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

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Dealing with difficult students is one thing, and anunpleasant but expected part of a teaching gig.Dealing with parents who are trouble, on the other

hand, can be an even bigger and more unwelcomeheadache. “Every parent thinks that their kid is wonder-ful—and they are—but they might not be at the level thattheir parents feel they are,” says Paul Carr.

Especially at the high school level, helicopter parentscan make a nuisance of themselves, trying to microman-age their child’s education from a not-far-enough distance.Carr finds that it’s often the parents’ own unrealizeddreams that are at the root of such behavior. “Maybethey’re trying to live vicariously through the kid,” he says.“A lot of parents want their kids to come right off thestreets and into the orchestra. So I tell them they’re wel-come to come to a rehearsal and sight-read and play withus. Usually that takes care of itself.”

“There’s only so much you can do” to counteract badguidance from home, says Bob Mintzer. “Generally theparents that are involved, that show up at concerts andrehearsals and are on campus, are there because theylove the music and love the idea that their son or daughteris involved. But I remember one example where there wasa crazy father who was advising a crazy son in a crazyfashion, and the student was behaving in a bizarre way.I was working with the student, trying to get him morecentered and calm about things, but the kid finally left theprogram. Frequently students that are struggling with one

thing or another will blame their woes on the program, butthey usually find that they’re going to confront the sameissues at the next place.”

Stafford generally deals with parents only when scholar-ship time rolls around, but even then he runs into chal-lenges from time to time. He finds that overbearing parentsoften translate to a student with stunted maturity. “A lot ofparents won’t let their kids grow up,” he says. “I see itall the time: When they graduate they may have gainedsome knowledge but they haven’t matured to really makeit on their own. It’s really sad. I know kids who after fouryears of college can’t cook or clean for themselves, andthat’s just mind-blowing to me.”

Working in Camden, Jamal Dickerson often faces theopposite problem: Parents who don’t understand the valueof an arts education and are more eager for their child tofind a job—any job. “The biggest challenge here is theapathy,” he says. “You’ve got their parents telling them togo get a job, so they go end up at McDonald’s becausethey think the most important part is the money that youget at the end of the week. I have to convince the parentshow much more valuable it would be if [their child] invest-ed that time in something more worthwhile, like practicingtheir instrument. I’m not trying to make the child a musicianin life, but if they practice their instrument, more than likelythey’ll end up with a scholarship; they can study music un-dergrad, then go to med school or law school and neverstudy music again.” S.B.

PARENT TRAPHOW TO HANDLE OVERZEALOUS OR APATHETIC MOMS AND DADS


“THE WAY THAT KIDS ARE TAUGHT TODAY IS ACTUALLY ANTI-CREATIVITY. EVERYTHING IS A FORMULA. … SO MAKING IT FUN, HAVING THEM SMILE, KEEPING THEM LOOSE, ACTUALLY MAKES THE MUSIC BETTER.” – Paul Carr, the Jazz Academy of Music

so they do the same,” Stafford says

Carr agrees, saying, “When our forefa-

thers were playing jazz, they always looked

great. When you look a certain way, it tells

the audience how seriously you take what

you’re doing. When you ask a non-musi-

cian what they’re doing, they say they’re

going to ‘see’ so-and-so play. If everybody

wears whatever they want, some people

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Photo by Michael Kirby Smith / Equal Opportunity Institution

have holes in their jeans, they’re up there

without a smile on their face, looking dis-

interested as soon as they finish their solo,

and that’s what the people are taking in.”

But again, where some are strict, other

educators see more wiggle room. Mintzer

remembers facing a particularly SoCal

issue with one student. “We had one kid

who never wore shoes,” he recalls with

a chuckle. “He’d show up for a concert

in a tux and barefoot. You have to take

into consideration that people who are

18 to 22 years old are not yet formed as

mature, coherent people, and they’re try-

ing things, they’re searching, they might

be doing some things that on the outside

seem somewhat peculiar. I think back to

when I was that age, and I was a handful.

So I’m tolerant of these young folks—

within reason. Eventually I told him, ‘In

certain situations, you’ve gotta put some

shoes on.’ But other than that I left him

alone and he’s doing just fine.”

Perhaps the most important method

a teacher can employ—especially those

with their own professional credentials—

is to lead by example. Stafford directs

his own big band, the Jazz Orchestra of

Philadelphia, and opens the ensemble’s

on-campus rehearsals to interested

students. “They get the opportunity to see

how respectful and well disciplined their

teachers are,” he says. “When you can get

students out to live performances and

rehearsals, they can see that their heroes

and mentors are for the most part good

human beings and treat each other with

respect. Even with professional musicians

you have some knuckleheads, but it’s

important that teachers get students out

to see the quality of teamwork.”

Mintzer points to his nearly three-

decade tenure in Yellowjackets as living

proof of the benefits of mutual respect.

“If you create any sort of drama or sense

of tension it’s going to be picked up on

immediately, and there’s just no time for

that,” he says. “In the Yellowjackets there

might be disagreements, but they’re talk-

ed through in a respectful fashion and

there’s a profound level of gratitude that

we all get to play together. You don’t want

to bring your laundry to the bandstand.

You generally want to have a positive,

optimistic demeanor when you’re playing

music. Be on time, be prepared, practice

your music and be a team player.” JT


THE ROOTS MUST REMAINIn New Orleans,traditional jazz is taken upby new generations despite cultural and political setbacksBy Jennifer Odell

←

A band featuring such New Orleans greats as trumpeter Bunk Johnson, trombonist Jim Robinson and clarinetist George Lewis gigs in New York City, c. June 1946

When Aron Lambert

was 9 or 10, his

afternoons often

consisted of the

same ritual: After

school, he’d wander

a few blocks through

the French Quarter

to where his parents worked with his

aunt and uncle Jaffe at Preservation Hall.

If Speedy the maintenance man was still

playing. Frazier didn’t say much; he

just moved the cymbals away from the

apparently overzealous young drummer

and gestured for him to continue. Lam-

bert chalked it up to a lesson in focusing

on the drums rather than over-decorat-

ing the music. Other times, the lessons

Lambert took home from the hall were

less tangible. “The Humphrey Brothers,

Kid Thomas, Louis Nelson, all the greats

who I was blessed to grow up listening

to, they were the ones that I spent time

with,” Lambert, now 47 and a drummer

with the Treme Brass Band and others,

recently recalled.

Talking to older musicians about both

the music and their lives outside of jazz,

he explained, gave him a more complex

understanding of what traditional jazz

meant in New Orleans. “I got to know

them all as men, as individuals,” he said.

“The music wasn’t taught to kids as a

way to get to fame; it was taught as a

way of life, as a language.”

sweeping up from the previous night’s

show, Lambert would help him pick up

the discarded cups. When the space was

clean, Speedy would sit at the piano and

begin to play, while Lambert got behind

the drums and tapped out his best

semblance of what he’d seen Josiah “Cie”

Frazier and other drummers do with the

same familiar songs.

Once, Frazier passed through the car-

riageway while Lambert and Speedy were WIL

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That kind of mentorship in traditional

New Orleans jazz was not uncommon in

the ’70s, when Lambert was growing up,

or for many decades prior. The tradition’s

more recent history is often traced to

Danny Barker, who famously returned

to New Orleans from New York in the

’60s and discovered a drastic reduction

in the number of traditional-jazz bands

since he’d last lived in the city. Those that

remained were composed of increas-

ingly older musicians—a bad sign for the

music’s future.

In 1970, Barker organized a group of

mostly teenagers under the auspices of a

local church. The young Fairview Baptist

Church Brass Band performed reper-

toire drawn largely from spiritual music,

played in tempos and with rhythms made

for dancing—or marching, depending on

the occasion—and learned how to dress

in the traditional-jazz-band style: black

pants, crisp white shirts and caps display-

ing the name of their group. Locally, they

were a hit that spawned other young tra-

ditional-jazz outfits and helped prepare

members to become successful leaders in

the jazz and brass-band worlds.

•••

THE LANDSCAPE FOR TRADITIONAL NEW ORLEANS JAZZ CONTINUED TO EBB THROUGH THE DECADES. Today, the dance halls

and church parades that once helped

sustain the music are long gone. The

annual Sunday parades held by social

aid and pleasure clubs tend not to hire

traditional-jazz groups as they once did,

having developed a preference for bands

that play in the modern brass-band styles

popularized by the Dirty Dozen, another

Fairview band offshoot of the 1970s, and

Rebirth Brass Band in the ’80s. In more

recent decades, neighborhood demo-

graphics and the socioeconomic realities

of life in New Orleans changed, too,

particularly after Hurricane Katrina.

Despite these challenges, new efforts

are being made to perpetuate the music.

In some cases this is happening on band-

stands, in the city streets and in family

homes. In others, professional musicians

are taking up the mantle of mentor-

ship in schools and within nonprofit

organizations like the Preservation Hall

Foundation and the New Orleans Jazz &

Heritage Foundation.

Clarinetist Dr. Michael White is quick

to point out that there are limits to what

can be absorbed by a young musician in

2017. “The problem is this is a very spe-

cial and unique tradition,” White said in

a recent phone call. From his perspective,

the cumulative effect of being immersed

in the culture when it was still vibrant at

dances, parades and community events

was essential to his grasp of its depth and

meaning and sound. “If you don’t have

that now, the only way to get to it is to

talk to the few people around that know

and ask them as much as possible”—and

to study the history, he added, to listen

to the recordings until, as he put it, “they

become part of you.”

The clarinetist’s own experience as a tra-

ditional-jazz musician began in 1975, when

he was hired to play a church parade with

trumpeter Doc Paulin. He remained in the

band for about four years, during which

time he was encouraged and watched over

by the older musicians. “They’d tell you if

you were doing something wrong, what

you might need to work on,

specifically things like your

tone or the structure of

certain songs or the chord

changes,” White said.

“Some of them would tell

you about learning the

style of music—and in

traditional music, that’s

a big thing.”

As a teacher and men-

tor today, White keeps

in mind what he learned

from playing with Paulin

and other bands in the

’70s and early ’80s, espe-

cially given that the faster-

paced, modern brass-

band styles have veered

away from the traditional

approach, creating some

confusion about the dif-

ferences between the two.

White’s colleagues in Paulin’s band

included guys who’d played with

Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton,

Johnny Dodds, George Lewis and Bunk

Johnson, giving him a connection to

a lineage that’s increasingly harder to

find today. “They understood style and

values,” White said. “And they very eas-

ily sort of led you into figuring out what

the guidelines for the music were—but

also how you could find your own

sound and character and personality.”

One of those key guidelines is related

to the fact that traditional New Orleans

jazz was made for dancing. “It’s not about

how fast you can play,” White said. “This

is a leisurely type of music. It’s not like

Dixieland. … You’re generating a spirit

and a feeling. Rhythm should be a very

important, driving force.”

Perhaps the most universal emphasis

he heard from older players coming up

was on the importance of tone, some-

thing he tries to pass along. Historically,

the goal was “to develop a sound and

KATE

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“The older bands passed the traditions down to me, so I pass it down to the younger bands,” says

the Treme Brass Band’s Benny Jones Sr.


expression that was as

unique to you as your

voice or your facial fea-

tures or your handwrit-

ing,” White explained.

Similarly, when he

teaches melody, White

tells students to think of

how they might give a

speech, adding their own

inflections and inter-

pretations to the words

on the page. Those ideas—

that a musician’s tone and

melodies should sound like

them—may seem basic, but

as White explained, they’re

essential to traditional jazz

because of the context in

which the music was born. “W

jazz started it wasn’t about fame or mon-

ey. It was partly a response to the social

conditions going on in New Orleans,”

White said. “It was a time of great social

upheaval [and] racial turbulence. And

while there was this traditional need to

party and enjoy life, there was also this

need to respond to what was happening.”

It was “not an accident,” he added,

that the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision

that upheld racial segregation came out

of an incident in New Orleans at the

same time jazz was developing in the

city. “[Black] people were considered …

invisible,” White said. “You didn’t matter,

your life didn’t matter, your thoughts

didn’t matter, your spirit didn’t matter.

… And in a way, the values of early jazz

served as a metaphor for democracy, but

they were also a way of combatting this

invisibility by allowing for extreme vis-

ibility. People were recognized, praised

… able to be distinguished because of

their individual tone and sound.”

•••

MORE THAN A CENTURY LATER, THE LASTINGDEMOGRAPHIC EFFECTS OF HURRICANEKATRINA IN NEW ORLEANS echo many of

those issues of equality, visibility and

voice. They’ve affected

the way young people

in the city can and are

learning about their

traditional-jazz

heritage, too.

After New Orleans

rebuilt from a flood

that hit predomi-

nantly black and

working-class

eighborhoods

arder than it hit

ore affluent and

edominantly

hite sections of

e city, historically

ck neighbor-

ds like Treme

trified and

returned whiter. The amount of music

in the streets of those neighborhoods

dwindled. School districts changed, as

did the role of music in their curriculums.

When Preservation Hall launched its

foundation in 2011, these issues weren’t

far from mind. “Post-Katrina, there was

a large contingency of jazz and brass-

band programs that were part of the

normal school-day program that were

lost,” said the foundation’s Programs Di-

rector, trombonist and educator Ashley

Shabankareh. “Because of the disjointed

nature of the [charter] school system in

New Orleans today, you have kids that

aren’t connecting to the culture and the

tradition that’s in their neighborhood

because they can’t attend a school that’s

by their house anymore.”

The effect, she explained, is that chil-

dren who come through the organiza-

tion’s education programs largely seem

familiar with the concept of jazz and

brass bands but often have never seen

either style performed live, nor do they

know much about the roles jazz and

brass bands have played in their city

for more than a century. “You’re seeing

a generational loss of the culture being

passed down because the education

system is impeding on that opportunity,”

she said.

That’s where teachers like trumpeter

Kevin Louis come in. A New Orleans

native who attended the New Orleans

Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and

studied jazz at Oberlin, Louis returned

to New Orleans from New York after Ka-

trina with a specific interest in protecting

and preserving traditional jazz.

As a teacher with the hall’s education

programs, he has an opportunity to, as

he puts it, “work with my elders and the

younger generation, like I’m bridging the

gap.” When he introduces older players

affiliated with the hall to students, he tells

them, “This is our stuff; it’s the closest thing

to the ancestors. This music is our link.”

Louis, along with Lambert and others,

works with both the Kids in the Hall

Field Trip Program that busses children

to the historic venue, where they’re

taught about the history and style of the

music as well as the roles of different in-

struments, and the Neighborhood Horns

and Drums project, which sends teach-

ing artists into schools without brass or

jazz band instruction.

The foundation is embarking on other

programs, too, including the development

of curriculums for students with special

“[IN TRADITIONAL NEW ORLEANS JAZZ] IT’S NOT ABOUT HOWFAST YOU CAN PLAY. THIS IS A LEISURELY TYPE OF MUSIC.

IT’S NOT LIKE DIXIELAND. … YOU’RE GENERATING A SPIRIT AND A FEELING.”– Dr. Michael White

BRA

DEN

PIP

ER/©

BASI

N S

TREE

T RE

CORD

S

←

Danny Barker, through his young Fairview Baptist Church Brass Band, helped revitalize the trad-jazz and brass-band traditions in New Orleans in the ’70s


needs and for kids in detention centers.

The hall also offers a brass-band book—a

compilation of sheet music—that’s down-

loadable, for free, on its website. In 2018,

the foundation plans to disseminate a cur-

riculum designed to teach kids around the

country about the history of New Orleans

music, including traditional jazz.

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage

Foundation is also working to support

instruction in the history and perfor-

mance of traditional New Orleans jazz in

Louisiana schools. Since 2012, the foun-

dation has sponsored a “Class Got Brass”

contest in which Louisiana school bands,

adhering to trad-jazz instrumentation,

perform one dirge and one uptempo

number from a designated list of songs

in the traditional repertoire. They also

perform one contemporary brass-band

song, a stipulation that helps judges see

which students are learning the differ-

ences between the two styles. In 2017, a

total of $42,250, distributed via gift cer-

tificates redeemable only for instruments

and other band supplies, was awarded to

competing schools’ band programs.

Meanwhile, the tradition of less formal

mentorship in New Orleans continues,

even if it requires extra effort in 2017

to convey the nuances of the sound and

culture espoused by older bands like the

Eureka and Onward.

•••

WHILE GROUPS LIKE WHITE’S LIBERTYBRASS BAND HEW MORE STRICTLY TO THATEARLY SOUND, others, like Benny Jones

Sr.’s Treme Brass Band, play a mix of the

traditional style and brass-band music

that veers into more modern tempos

and repertoire.

Jones, 74, recently recalled that he

learned to play drums “by following the

old men” in Treme, as his father, drum-

mer Chester Jones, had before him. He

went on to play with numerous tradition-

al ensembles before cofounding the Dirty

Dozen. Eventually he left the Dozen and

returned to playing in the traditional

style with Anthony “Tuba Fats” Lacen

and others, finally creating the Treme

Brass Band. That trajectory probably

explains, at least in part, why the Treme’s

sound is slightly more flexible with

regard to the traditional style.

Today, he sees promise in young

players like trombonist Revon Andrews,

trumpeter John Michael Bradford and

saxophonist Orlando Gilbert. Many of

them developed their skills through a mix

of old-school and family-based music

mentorship, programs like the jazz camp

hosted by the Jazz & Heritage Foundation

and programs at the hall and schools like

NOCCA, where they learned technical

aspects of the music’s history.

Jones invites them to play club dates or

sit in with the Treme when he can. And

when the traditional-jazz-focused Black

Men of Labor

parade rolls around

each year, he

encourages them to

don their tradi-

tional black-and-white outfits and join him

on the street. “The older bands passed the

traditions down to me, so I pass it down to

the younger bands,” he say matter-of-factly.

For the much younger saxophonist

Calvin Johnson, it’s imperative that the

perpetuation of that tradition continue.

He worries about the music’s future, he

said, but some things give him hope.

Across the street from his house in the

Musicians’ Village, Johnson said he used

to watch a group of 9 or 10-year-olds

play makeshift instruments on their

porch. Cans, buckets, a plastic trumpet.

“Pretty soon, everybody started pitching

in with tips and even instruments, all of

the musicians in the neighborhood. … I

go out there and I meet ’em once a month

just to go over some basics with them,

some fundamentals, and about five other

musicians do too,” he said. “As elders, we

need to realize that this thing that we love

so much, this thing that we grew up with

as children, this history that we’re part

of—we have to give back to it or we’re not

doing our part.”

At this point, Johnson adds, the

kids on the porch across the street have

just about enough instruments for a

real band. JT

“THIS IS OUR STUFF; IT’S THE CLOSEST THING TO THE ANCESTORS. THIS MUSIC IS OUR LINK.” – Preservation Hall educator Kevin Louis

←

Student musicians listen at Preservation Hall during the 2017 conference of the Jazz Education Network

FRO

M T

OP:

REN

É H

UEM

ER, M

ELIS

SA C

ACC

IOLA


THE TOOLS OF ENGAGEMENTBand director and educator DAN BILAWSKY on how school jazz ensembles can attract new fans and keep them interested

f you poll a cross-section of jazz-band

directors about what they’re working

on at any given moment, you’re al-

most certain to receive some similar

responses. Many will likely cite spe-

cific charts, composers and arrangers,

noting the levels and styles of music

that their ensembles are exploring in

preparation for a concert or competi-

tion. Others might reference harmonic

progressions or scalar concepts—blues-

based exercises, “Rhythm” changes,

modes, ii-V-I turnarounds—pointing

toward grist for the improvisational

mill. And another subset may expound

on foundational nitty-gritty, discussing

technique, tone quality, articulation,

rhythmic language and various other

matters of prime importance.

Few, however, are likely to note

that they’re focusing on jazz outreach,

cultivating an audience for the future of

the music and building a fan base in the

present moment. Don’t misunderstand;

these forms of jazz advocacy are taking

place out there. But the art of engage-

ment remains an underserved area in

need of greater discussion and focus.

•••

ON THE BROADEST OF LEVELS, YOU WON’T FIND TOO MANY EDUCATORS WHO DISAGREE WITH THE NEED FOR BRIDGE BUILDING. It’s arguably the most important unspo-

ken responsibility we’re tasked with as

jazz-band directors. The “why” of the

conversation is simple for us to grasp,

but it’s the “how” aspects of the matter

that really hang us up the most. How do

we locate the right tools to expand our

reach? How do we go about fostering

a greater appreciation for the music?

How do we create access and exposure

for the rich history of jazz to serve as a

lure? There’s no single answer to properly

address each of those questions, and

even many of the most respected jazz

educators out there admit that audience

development is a struggle. Yet a number

of channels—social media, community

appearances, programming with a cura-

torial eye, the dangling carrot of a guest

artist—hold the keys to potential success.

The majority of music educators,

jazz-focused or otherwise, leave the halls

of higher education with excellent per-

formance skills and a strong grounding

in pedagogy, theory and history. But the

nature of what we do in the classroom

requires that we develop another skill

set entirely. In mirroring what many

jazz artists are faced with, there’s a need

for us to adopt a DIY mindset and take

on the roles of booking agent, public-

relations specialist, A&R expert and

concert producer. Some music programs

may have booster clubs that assist with

the heavy lifting in those departments,

and many schools have internal and

external mechanisms to help spread the

word about various goings-on, but we

essentially remain the captains of our

own ships. “Ultimately, I’m the one who

cares most about my program’s success,”

notes Earl MacDonald, Director of Jazz

Studies at the University of Connecticut.

“If I want to see it flourish, I must take

the bull by the horns.”

One of the simplest and most ef-

fective ways of controlling the content

surrounding your program is to dive

headlong into social media. The three

leading platforms in this realm—Face-

book, Instagram and Twitter—can offer

exponential reach and myriad oppor-

tunities to share information related to

your ensembles. Facebook, as of spring

2017, stakes claim to approximately 1.3

billion daily users; 700 million people

are currently sharing their stories on

Instagram; and more than 325 mil-

lion people use Twitter. Each avenue

provides the opportunity for audience

growth and development, with a dif-

ferent spin and emphasis. Twitter, for

example, is the most conversational,

offering the opportunity to work in suc-

cinct fashion. Instagram centers on the

sharing of photos and videos, serving

as the perfect outlet for posting clips of

your bands in action and disseminat-

ing show advertisements or fundraising

fliers. Facebook, in many ways, acts as

the best of both worlds, providing the

opportunity to post YouTube videos

I


and SoundCloud links to recordings,

share information about an event, and

interact with individuals, all without any

significant space limitations.

There are benefits and drawbacks to

each of these tools, and directors will

need to learn what works best for their

program. For David Lown, Director

of Jazz Bands at Carroll Senior High

School, the answer is Twitter. He leans

toward that line of communication to

control his own news network. Preston

Pierce, Jazz Band Director at Plano West

Senior High School, utilizes Twitter in

a similar fashion, but he supplements

with Facebook when it comes to pro-

moting performances and fundraisers.

Both of those Texas-based programs

have garnered a good deal of attention,

making a name for themselves in their

regions and sending bands to the Es-

sentially Ellington competition at Jazz at

Lincoln Center, so spreading the word is

of paramount importance.

•••

ANOTHER COMMONLY EMPLOYED METHOD OF GARNERING ATTENTION for school

jazz-band programs is to simply take

the program straight to the community.

Traditional in-house concert models

that place jazz groups alongside other

school ensembles for a 25-minute, here-

and-done performance two or three

times a year serve a critical purpose, let-

ting students shine and allowing parents

to see what hard work and discipline

can produce. But they don’t always help

to expand a band’s reach. We can’t as-

sume that new audience members will

find us in a school auditorium, so we

often need to go find them by seeking

out new avenues and creating symbiotic

relationships within our communities.

Jake Bergevin, Director of Bands at

Edmonds-Woodway High School in

Washington, does just that. While he’s

taken his groups to great heights on the

national stage at the Lionel Hamp-

ton Jazz Festival and the Essentially

Ellington finals, it’s the surrounding

Seattle scene that nurtures his program

year-round. Bergevin’s bands have had

the opportunity to perform for new

←

The Edmonds-Woodway High School Jazz Band, from Washington, has raised

its profile by participating in the Seattle jazz scene. At press time the ensemble

was anticipating a performance featuring guest saxophonist Roxy Coss at the

Earshot Jazz Festival

HA

RPER

TH

OM

AS


au ed

Hot Java Cool Jazz event and the Earshot

Jazz Festival; they’ve been spotlighted

at a Rotary Club-run fest; and they’ve

cultivated a relationship with their local

NPR affiliate. John Wojciechowski, a

renowned saxophonist and the jazz-band

director at St. Charles North High School,

near Chicago, sees a comparable benefit in

exploring a broader stage. His groups have

been invited to perform at the Jazz Educa-

tion Network (JEN) Conference and other

high-profile events, but he’s also branched

out in his local community by putting on

a free Veterans Day concert and creating a

special swing-centric show. Both of those

directors serve their communities and

demonstrate that an expanded outlook on

performance opportunities is necessary to

make an impact.

Many have already discovered that

social media and community-based out-

reach aid tremendously in the exposure

department, yet the quality of mate-

rial we present may be of even greater

significance when it comes to establishing

a following. Or, to put it another way,

advertising an event on Facebook and

taking your bands outside the school walls

can bring fresh faces into the audience, but

the music those audience members hear

once they’re in their seats will determine

whether or not they’ll stick around. There’s

no uni

selection, but finding balance in the

art-entertainment divide, developing a

thematic scope and utilizing historical

elements all tend to be important.

Pedagogical concerns, of course, will

always rank ahead of those matters

when it comes to how jazz educators

make their decisions, but there’s no

reason that a director can’t also consider

how things will be received

from a listener’s standpoint.

Shelly Berg, Dean at the

University of Miami’s Frost

School of Music and a world-

renowned pianist and arrang-

er, said it best when he noted

that entertainment need not

be viewed as a dirty word.

“It is not a synonym for pandering,” he

explains. “When a program features song

after song with a boatload of soloists, or a

lack of thought as to the ‘arc’ of the selec-

tions, the audience gets bored. Often the

players and conductor look disengaged. It

is a ‘show,’ folks, and that’s OK!”

As Berg points out, it’s about making

a performance a meaningful experience

for the musicians and the audience. That

←

Social media is an essential contemporary tool for expanding the fan base of your school’s ensembles. Pictured here are Twitter pages for two Texas-based programs, Carroll Senior High School (left) and Plano West Senior High School

“WHEN A PROGRAM FEATURES SONG AFTER SONG WITH A BOATLOAD OF SOLOISTS, OR A LACK OF THOUGHT AS TO THE ‘ARC’ OF THE SELECTIONS,

d “


can often come down to programming.

Many groups set certain special events

apart by using a theme—MacDonald

produces a Yule Be Swingin’ holiday

program that targets families, and Pierce

puts on a Glenn Miller Night Dinner

and Dance that tends to bring in new

blood—but creating a through line in

your garden-variety school concert can

be just as helpful. With an incredible

range of materials readily available, it’s

easier than ever to develop a mini-set

bound by common threads.

An evening devoted solely to the

music of Ellington, Miles Davis, Oliver

Nelson, Thad Jones, John Coltrane or

Count Basie is easily achievable for

bands of varying abilities. Honoring the

great trumpeters of this music could

bring about an attractively diverse

program that moves from Louis Arm-

strong to Dizzy Gillespie and Freddie

Hubbard to Woody Shaw. A trip down

the rabbit hole with some of Sierra Mu-

sic Publications’ Radiohead Jazz Project

charts might be just the thing to serve

as a gateway for the non-jazzers in a

high school or college environment.

And something as different as musings

on a color scheme—“The Red Door,”

“Orange Colored Sky,” “Purple Gazelle,”

“Blue Monk” and “On Green Dolphin

Street,” for example—could pique some

interest and bring about artful results.

Through directing the Harborfields

High School Jazz Band in New York,

I’ve found that in place of strict themes,

a mixture of timely music and timeless

selections can also work well. One recent

concert program emphasizing that point

included tributes to Ella Fitzgerald and

Buddy Rich—2017 marks the centen-

nial celebration for both figures—and a

pair of pieces from Duke Ellington’s New

Orleans Suite from 1970, reflective of our

band’s then-recent trip to the Crescent

City. There’s such a rich history associated

with this music, so it’s simply a matter of

knowing it or doing your homework.

•••

PRESENTING A GUEST ARTIST OR BRINGINGIN A TOURING OUTFIT IS ANOTHER STRATEGYTHAT OFTEN HELPS DRAW AN AUDIENCE. It’s

a tactic that, while potentially expen-

sive, yields tremendous dividends with

regards to both pedagogy and fan base.

Mark Stuckey saw that firsthand. Dur-

ing his days as a band director in the

Hampton Bays Public Schools in New

York, Stuckey brought baritone saxo-

phonist Lauren Sevian in as a clinician

and coordinated a visit from the U.S.

Army’s Jazz Ambassadors. In his new

role as a music and arts administra-

tor in the Patchogue-Medford School

District, he’s already been able to help

bring in tenor saxophonist Joel Frahm.

Such appearances are a win-win, as

these real-deal practitioners are able

to share their knowledge with students

and entice potential audience members

into showing up. “We always have the

artist come and play on a tune or two

with each ensemble, from the elemen-

tary district-wide band through the

high school,” Stuckey says. “It’s one of

the special highlights of the school year

and, since we don’t bring guest clini-

cians out to perform at every concert,

everyone knows it’s a real treat.”

In the end, it all basically comes

down to the art of branding. In working

with social media, getting out into the

community, leveraging history and rep-

ertoire and presenting notable guests,

you’re sending a message about your

jazz program’s core values and image.

Stephen Guerra, Managing Director

of the Henry Mancini Institute at the

Frost School of Music, wholeheartedly

agrees. “You have to approach your

ensemble as a brand nowadays, and

you need to shout about that brand

from the top of every mountain,” he

says. “There’s so much noise out there

and it takes something special to break

through, make an impact and build

a following.” JT

THE AUDIENCE GETS BORED.… IT IS A ‘SHOW,’FOLKS,ANDTHAT’S OK!” – Shelly Berg, University of Miami’s Frost School of Music

←

The University of Miami’s Shelly Berg has facilitated col-laborations between his Frost School of Music ensembles and high-profile guests. On the opposite page, Berg (right) has fun with singer-songwrit-er Ben Folds; here, the Frost Concert Jazz Band performs in a program featuring blues-rocker Steve Miller (not pictured)

SHEL

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There was a golden age of

jazz guitar in the mid-

1970s, when new blue-

prints were being created

by Pat Metheny, John Sco-

field, Bill Frisell, Mike Stern

and others. The founda-

tion was still Jim Hall and

Wes Montgomery, but the times called

for different aesthetics. Through studies

at Berklee and gigs on the Boston and

Cambridge jazz scene, these players would

reshape the landscape. And they shared

the same mentor, Mick Goodrick.

He has taught a remarkable number

of prominent guitarists, also including

Wolfgang Muthspiel, Ben Monder, Lionel

Loueke, Nir Felder, Lage Lund and Julian

Lage, and inspired many more. Simply

put, today’s guitar music wouldn’t sound

the same without him. Now 72 and thou-

sands of students later (including this

writer), Goodrick has been an eminence

in jazz education for half a century. Dur-

ing most of that time he’s been on the

faculty at Berklee, where, influenced by

Hall and Wes, he studied with Jack Peter-

son, Bill Leavitt and Herb Pomeroy and

earned his degree in 1967. He is beloved

by pupils and colleagues in ways that few

jazz-guitar teachers have ever been. “He

had an extraordinary way of unpacking

my problems by listening attentively and

then offering organic and often surpris-

ing solutions,” says Lage, who worked

with Goodrick for two and a half years.

“There was no limit to what he wanted to

share. I owe an enormous part of my way

of looking at the instrument to him.”

•••

HIS SIGNATURE CONTRIBUTION TO THE JAZZ-GUITAR PEDAGOGY HAS BEEN HIS ATTENTION to chord structures, harmony and comp-

ing. “For the most part, I think I got

hired because of my comping,” he says.

“And that’s one of the things I still en-

courage of my students. If you can make

someone sound good, maybe they’ll hire

you again. The person who is comping

has the best job. That person is really the

head of the rhythm section, the liaison

between bass and drums and the soloist.

Plus we also get to solo.”

During a conversation at his cluttered

Berklee office in July, Goodrick illustrates

this point with a story. A well-known

drummer was on the bandstand with a

bassist who displeased him. The music

felt locked-in, tepid. All of a sudden

Chick Corea, a master accompanist,

showed up and asked if he could sit in.

The moment Corea started playing the

music caught fire; his comping lit the

rhythm section up.

Goodrick’s many books, such as the

Almanac of Guitar Voice Leading series

and Creative Chordal Harmony for the

Guitar (with Tim Miller), are exhaustive

studies in voicings, the work of a scientist,

a completist, in which every last solu-

tion to a given problem is considered

and annotated. He has also applied his

meticulous attention to rhythmic cells and

strategies for opening up the fretboard

in soloing. “Every subject, whether voice

leading, rhythm, motivic cells, etc., is

logically taken to its comprehensive end

point, so that nothing is left unexplored,”

Monder says. “But then he doesn’t make it

easy for us; we are challenged to become

our own cartographers of the maps that

these systems suggest, thereby ensuring

that we all take personal journeys and

arrive at unique solutions.”

So how did Goodrick muster the

patience to so painstakingly docu-

ment each variable in a given subject?

The answers are rooted in the childhood

he spent in Sharon, Pa., about 70 miles

outside Pittsburgh. The first is that his

father was an accountant and pianist, who

instilled in him an early affinity not only

for music but also for numbers, math and

detailed research. The second is one he is a

bit reluctant to share. Goodrick discovered

about eight years ago that he had a condi-

tion commonly referred to as Einstein

syndrome, sometimes mistaken for autism

and most often associated with children

who begin speaking late. “People like this

tend to be high-functioning and bright,”

he says. “[They’re] involved with math-

ematics, have a parent who is a musician

or an engineer or accountant. They make

dictionaries and encyclopedias.”

Goodrick advises a practical approach

to his materials, so as not to become

overwhelmed by the gobs of information.

Approach the books passively, he recom-

mends; don’t worry about memorizing

or even remembering the material. Walk

through a page a day, and in 300 days your

playing will have changed without you

realizing it. Consider that one line might

occupy a month’s attention.

•••

ALSO A STORIED PERFORMER, GOODRICK DOWNPLAYS HIS CAREER ON THE BANDSTAND. “I always considered myself to be like a

Triple-A ballplayer,” he says. “I got called

up to have coffee a few times with some

great musicians.” But the list of artists he

has performed and recorded with belies

such modesty: Metheny, John Abercrom-

bie, Gary Burton, Charlie Haden, Paul

Motian, Steve Swallow, Jack DeJohnette

and many others. Among his high points:

the two-guitar band with Metheny that

Burton led in the 1970s, Haden’s Lib-

eration Music Orchestra, DeJohnette’s

SIX-STRING THEORISTMeet MICK GOODRICK, the most influential mentor in the history of jazz guitarBy Joel Harrison

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Special Edition and a long association

with saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi. He’s

also recorded as a leader, including the

1979 ECM LP In Pas(s)ing, featuring

saxophonist John Surman, bassist Eddie

Gomez and drummer DeJohnette.

“When I showed up in Boston in 1973,

Mick had a gigantic impact on the way I

think about sound,” Frisell says. “He took

the legato, liquid phrasing that Jim Hall

had developed even further. He joined

notes together in ways I never heard

before. He was the link from bebop to

what lay ahead.”

Others point to the thoughtfulness of

his playing—how focused it is, almost

austere, never showy. His lyricism and

gorgeous chord movement can bring an

almost classical sound to a jazz tune, with

long legato phrases full of hammer-ons

and pull-offs. There is a singing quality to

his phrasing, and he admits that his goal

as a player has always been to emulate

the human voice, from his moment as a

boy when he was bowled over by Elvis.

“I was already aware of Mick when

I moved to Boston to teach at Berklee

[in 1973],” Metheny says. “When we got

together to play at his Back Bay apart-

ment a few days after I got to town, there

appeared that sensation that I rarely get

with another player, particularly on an-

other harmonic instrument—that amaz-

ing feeling of unlimited possibility. It just

seemed like we could both do anything

we wanted. ... To be on the bandstand

with Mick night after night [in Burton’s

band] was incredible. Hearing him craft

his magnificent solos was inspiring and

illuminating in so many ways. And two

guitars [with vibes!] can be a challenging

thing, but somehow we were gradually

able to transfer a lot of the qualities that

made our duo concerts so special into an

ensemble sound behind Gary.”

Wolfgang Muthspiel feels that one of

Goodrick’s great assets is how interactive

he is. In their duo playing, as heard on the

2010 release Live at the Jazz Standard, it

can be difficult to tell who is playing what,

as the lines crisscross in an endless con-

trapuntal stream. And yet he retired from

performing around 10 years ago. “I had

assumed I would play forever,” Goodrick

reflects, “but when I hit 60 the desire kind

of stopped.” He remembers playing the

Montreal International Jazz Festival with

Metheny in 2005. They did standards and

free improv, and the music went extremely

well. When it was done he felt like he was

waking from a dream, as if the audience

had disappeared. He had no idea where he

was, and felt that he’d played at the highest

level he was capable of. A voice inside told

him, “You may not need to do this any-

more.” So other than a couple of faculty

←

Goodrick (left) teaches a clinic at Berklee in 2003, with special guest John Abercrombie

PHIL

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STILL ACTIVE AS A PERFORMER AND COMPOSER

September 2015 Release

My 90th birthday year

www.jimmyheathmusic.com

Now available for jazz and improvisational music residencies in

the U.S. and internationally, bringing over forty years in jazz

and more than 15 years of conservatory teaching experience.

Also available for lessons in Bass, Composition & Improvisation

in New York City, Baltimore, and on Skype

Contact: [email protected]: @MichaelFormanekResidencies

Bassist, Composer, Improviser,Bandleader, Educator & ECM recording artist

MICHAEL FORMANEK

shows at Berklee, that duo concert stands

as his final performance. “Been there, done

that,” he says.

•••

WHAT IS A LESSON WITH MICK GOODRICK LIKE? The first thing a student might notice is his

sly, dry sense of humor. Though encourag-

ing and patient with students, Goodrick is

not the warm-and-fuzzy type, not a hand-

holder. He is quick to disarm a student’s

ego and place attention on the deeper

issues of practice. Enigmatic and prone to

silence, he suggests but does not demand.

Recently he has focused on finding ways

to quiet the part of the brain that interferes

with the creative process, asking students

to use drawing as a tool towards that end.

Drawing, he says, helps us get past our

creative filters, allowing us to be more

present; these exercises trick the mind

into letting go of inhibitions and analyti-

cal mental structures. Now as interested

in neurology as he is in music, Goodrick

asks for a drawing a day. He also recom-

mends that his students take Zembrin, the

patented, over-the-counter version of an

ancient herbal supplement indigenous to

South Africa that helps calm the mind. “I

keep it pretty simple,” he says. “I assign

the drawing exercises, offer the Zembrin,

make sure they practice with the metro-

nome on 2 and 4 and build their repertoire

of standards and the attendant chord

work.” Simple? Perhaps. But also deep.

I was curious if he remembered some of

the more anarchical, arcane advice he of-

fered this writer in 1977. A few examples:

“don’t practice too much”; “sense your tear

ducts when you’re playing a sad song”;

“solo on one string”; “try destroying a solo

midflight.” He did not. And yet I sensed he

had very much the same concerns 40 years

ago as he does now. Back then Goodrick

espoused the virtues of psychoanalysis;

now it’s neurology. Today it’s drawing; then

it was reading Zen in the Art of Archery.

As for his own practice routine,

Goodrick continues to explore endlessly.

Not long ago he wrote out 55 different

ways to comp through the Steve Swal-

low tune “Falling Grace.” He was worried

he might never want to play the tune

again due to overexposure, but instead

he finds he just can’t get enough and

returns to it continually. His practicing

often becomes research, and a new book

is born. Those books, Goodrick says, are

his legacy, “without a doubt.” He men-

tions Monder, another master of chord

structures. “With all the work the books

took, all the money I lost,” Goodrick

says, “it all feels justified knowing where

Ben has taken this material.”

The voluminous content Goodrick

has compiled offers an almost unlim-

ited supply of ideas to us all for years

to come. Sadly, many of the books are

out of print, but the diligent seeker can

still find copies. And don’t forget his

records. There are several that Go-

odrick points to as peaks in his career,

including 1976’s Dreams So Real, with

Burton’s quintet also featuring Metheny;

1994’s Sunscreams, with Bergonzi,

bassist Bruce Gertz and drummer Gary

Chaffee; and a 1996 trio release entitled

In the Same Breath, with Muthspiel

and saxophonist Dave Liebman. “Mick

has a brilliant mind,” Liebman says.

“It’s amazing to watch him play. There’s

a stillness, a detachment. He barely

moves. You feel his presence, both

strong and subtle.”

“He is a truly considerate person in the

broadest meaning of the word,” Metheny

explains. “There is a kind of awareness in

the way he listens, both as a musician and

as a person who invites engagement and

communication. It seems we always take

up right where we left off.”

I ask Goodrick how the landscape of

jazz guitar is different today than it was

during his formative years. “Back then,”

he begins, “you either wanted to move

to New York and play with Miles or

get the gig with Gary Burton. So when

Gary asked me to join it was an impor-

tant moment of mentoring. When I

graduated from Berklee in the late ’60s,

I had a six-night-a-week gig, five sets a

night with Rick Laird and Alan Broad-

bent. It may be harder to get that now.

We gigged all the time. On the other

hand the instrument is still evolving. It’s

amazing what some people are doing.

So there are still all these possibilities

that are being explored.”

Goodrick is in the process of retiring

from Berklee, and he will be all but im-

possible to replace. Catch a lesson with

him while you still can. JT

Joel Harrison is a guitarist, composer

and concert producer whose most recent

album is The Other River (Whirlwind)


ight now, in a basement, garage or toolshed

somewhere in suburban America, there is a group

of teenagers figuring out music. They’ve got their

guitars and keyboards plugged in, a new carpet

under the drums, and they’re deep in a jam session,

earnestly digging into rock, funk, reggae and the

blues. And, for where they’re at, they’re good: They

take the odd lesson at the local music shop, skip

school to practice and go to concerts so that they can feel the

sounds they’ve been listening to at home. They can recreate

their favorite classic-rock cuts, play all the barre chords and

maybe even throw a decent improvised solo together. They’ve

got a house party or two under their belts. They’ve got it all;

they’re in a band.

But what’s next for these wide-eyed riffers? If it’s more rock,

blues, funk or roots music, they’ll do OK by simply gigging

more, talking and playing with new musicians and keep-

ing their eyes and ears open at live shows. But if jazz should

become an interest, they’re going to need a little more than an

Econoline or a bigger amp—they’re going to need some book

learning. The rhythmic, melodic and harmonic knowledge

in jazz don’t just appear one day; nobody’s born with those

things, and nobody acquires them without work. But what

skills continue to be essential in today’s jazz landscape, where

influences from electronica and rock provide fierce competi-

tion for swing, and young jazz players tend to fancy them-

selves composers more than interpreters of a songbook?

Before aspiring jazz musicians crack their first Aebersold

ROCK, BLUES, FUNK–NOW WHAT?How should a talented young player adept in popular styles make the leap into jazz? Our experts weigh inBy Brad Farberman

R


Play-A-Long, they should know that being able to play by ear

is invaluable, and they’re going to continue to need that abil-

ity—albeit in more developed and sometimes surprising ways.

Saxophonist Jeff Coffin, who performs as a solo artist and with

the Dave Matthews Band and teaches at Vanderbilt University,

is often onstage without a script, especially when it comes to

playing background figures with his Matthews horn partner,

trumpeter Rashawn Ross. “With Dave Matthews, Rashawn

and I, during other people’s solos, we’ll play or sing parts to

each other,” Coffin explains. “A lot of them aren’t terribly long

solos, so we’ll have 10 or 15 seconds to get the lick together,

and then our microphones are on and we’re playing it. So

there’s practical applications for that kind of stuff all over the

place. Not just in improvisatory music, but in music that has

parts.”

Peter Erskine, an in-demand drummer and a veteran

of Weather Report, has been teaching at the University of

Southern California for nearly 20 years. He sides with Coffin

in terms of how important it is for young musicians to work

on their listening. “Even when it comes to sight-reading, I like

to say that the ears are more important than the eyes,” Erskine

writes in an email. “The bottom line in any musical endeavor

is ‘How does it sound?’ The ear guides our choices [dynamic

balance, how many notes to play, which notes to play and

when]. The ear informs us. Plus, music is an imitative process

in the beginning, much like a child learning his or her first

words. Without a vocabulary, how might a musician speak

through their instrument?”

•••

OF COURSE, BEING A GOOD LISTENER IS ONLY ONE FACET OF BEING ACAPABLE INSTRUMENTALIST. Coffin points out that if one relies

merely on intuition as a player, the doors to certain opportuni-

ties—some of which are known to pay well—will remain closed.

“There are players who have made a living, and continue to

make a living, being ear players,” the saxophonist admits. “There

are traditions that are almost strictly by rote. But it is limited.

When I think about, for example, the scene down in New Or-

leans; a lot of that scene is by rote, meaning that they’re teaching

the tunes to each other. Or learning on the bandstand. Now,

that’s a great way to learn, don’t get me wrong. But for the most

part, if you’re a musician and you want to go into the studio,

if you want to do Broadway, if you want to be playing original

music, if you want to be doing big-band gigs—any place where

you have to read music—then playing by ear is not enough. You

have to have the other skill sets to be able to put yourself into

those positions and have a level of competency that will get you

called back.”

Carl Filipiak, a guitarist and private teacher based in Mary-

land, who has collaborated with Dennis Chambers, Victor

Wooten, Bob Berg and others, also recommends that students

with larger aspirations absorb the technical nuts and bolts of

jazz performance. He worries that a musician will hit a wall if

they don’t investigate theory. “Sometimes just having a good

ear may not be enough to really play some standards that are

beyond just basic ii-V-I’s,” he says. “I would never kid a student

and say, ‘Learn these few scales and you’re going to play some

Wayne Shorter tunes.’ I don’t care how much of an ear you

have. I think some [theoretical knowledge] you have to address.

There’s the ‘rocket science’ part of it. It’s a serious language, and

I don’t think you can get away from it.”

The ability to read has helped Coffin immeasurably in the

“EVEN WHEN IT COMES TO SIGHT-READING, I LIKE TO SAY THAT THE EARS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE EYES. THE BOTTOM LINE IN ANY MUSICAL ENDEAVOR IS ‘HOW DOES IT SOUND?’”

– Peter Erskine

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studio. “Two years ago, Rashawn had arranged some stuff

with Jerry Hey, for Dave Matthews,” Coffin remembers. “So it’s

[trumpeter] Jerry Hey, [trombonist] Bill Reichenbach, [saxo-

phonist] Dan Higgins, Rashawn and myself in the studio. These

are the guys that played on Thriller, all that Al Jarreau stuff,

Earth Wind & Fire. These are the cats. They knew Rashawn but

they had never met me, because I lived in Nashville and they

lived in Los Angeles. They came up and they said, ‘Wow, man,

you really sound great. You’re really blending in this section

well.’ And they said, ‘That is not an easy thing to do.’

“To me, that was one of the highest compliments I had ever

been paid,” he continues. “First of all, they didn’t have to say

that. Second, they were right, because I was listening with

however many ears I could. [laughs] And I had my reading

chops together. Those opportunities don’t exist if you can’t read,

if you can’t play in tune, if you can’t articulate in the right way.

Those opportunities don’t exist. Or they don’t for you. [laughs]

Somebody else who can do those things will get the gig. But you

want the gig. I want the gig. So I work on this stuff.”

Erskine argues for the importance of reading while emphasiz-

ing the fundamental side of those skills. He brings up the studio,

too, warning that a reading deficiency can lead to more work in

the overdubs department. “If you study with me, you learn how

to read very well,” he writes. “And I’m talking about basic rhyth-

mic reading skills and understanding—not complicated stuff

like you might find in a score of Zappa, Boulez or Messiaen …

just the normal combinations of beats and rhythms you might

find in most any piece of music. I can suggest the Louie Bellson

book Modern Reading Text in 4/4 for All Instruments. A page a

day will keep the Pro Tools edit away!”

•••

WHEN IT COMES TO MUSICIANS SERIOUSLY DEDICATING THEMSELVES TO THE STANDARD JAZZ REPERTOIRE, COFFIN HAS MIXED FEELINGS. Even with an album of reworked chestnuts in the can, the

saxophonist feels the way many of today’s jazz artists do: He

wants to play his own music. “I’ll be honest with you, man;

I’m a little on the fence about that,” Coffin says. “And the

reason I’m on the fence about that is I think that you have to

have a repertoire. … Like I tell my students, your repertoire

is your business. You have to decide what kind of music you

want to play. If you wanna play jazz standards, learn a ton of

jazz standards. … Personally, I’m more interested in original

compositions. I know tunes, I go out and play tunes, whatever.

But I’ve never recorded a standard on one of my own records.

I’ve got a record of decomposed, deranged standards that I did

a couple of years ago, that

I’ll release probably the

beginning of next year

or the end of this year,

just to have it out there as

part of my body of work.

But I’m way more inter-

ested in doing original

compositions.”

Filipiak, whose new

album, What Now (Geo-

metric), features mostly

original fusion influenced

“IF YOU CAN’T READ, IF YOU CAN’T PLAY IN TUNE, IF YOU CAN’T ARTICULATE IN THE RIGHT WAY, [CERTAIN] OPPORTUNITIES DON’T EXIST. OR THEY DON’T FOR YOU. [LAUGHS] SOMEBODY ELSE WHO CAN DO THOSE THINGS WILL GET THE GIG.” – Jeff Coffin CA

ROL

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AY


by the ’60s rock he grew up on, echoes Coffin’s interest in

coming up with fresh charts. But he brings up a very simple

reason to be familiar with time-tested tunes: You can learn

from them. “If somebody’s going to look at the future of

music and where it’s going to fall, I really don’t care about

that; I only care about being informed about the past and

what’s informing my current writing,” Filipiak says. “I

couldn’t play with the people I play [with] if I didn’t know

how to play standards. And even if I didn’t want to be in

a group that played jazz standards, so to speak, I think it’s

awesome to know, and it’s taught me so much about music.

I’m a big fan of it. And I actually have a group that plays

nothing but standards. … [Practicing them and under-

standing them] just makes me a better player.”

Erskine agrees. Digging into these compositions, the

drummer feels, can only lead to good things. “Standards

form the basis for much of the language of this music,” he

writes. “In order to have the opportunity to play as much as

possible with others [experience is how we best learn], then

you need to know the basics … and standards are part of

that language and tradition. [It’s] similar to learning to play

the music of Bach. This is not to say that truly innovative

artists won’t appear who will either choose to ignore or

somehow navigate their formative years without the benefit

of learning the basics. I was not that kind of genius, and so

the basics were very helpful to me, and I carry on in that

tradition when I teach.” JT

November 4–12

Manhattan TransferSat, Nov 4 @ 7:30PM

Hiromi & EdmarCastanedaSun, Nov 5 @ 3PM

Crosscurrents withDave Holland & FriendsSun, Nov 5 @ 7PM

Christian McBride &Dianne Reeves:One on OneFri, Nov 10 @ 7:30PM

John McLaughlin& Jimmy HerringFri, Nov 10 @ 8PM

Dorthaan’s PlaceJazz BrunchKevin MahoganySun, Nov 12 @ 11AM & 1PM

Sarah Vaughan Int’lJazz Vocal CompetitionSun, Nov 12 @ 3PMGuest judges include TS Monk,Ann Hampton Callaway,Will Downing, Vanessa Rubinand WBGO’s Gary Walker

Wed, Nov 8 @ 7:30PMThis world’s best-selling jazz instrumentalist returns to NJPAC.

Sun, Nov 12 @ 7PMGregory Porter (above), Lizz Wright, Regina Carter, ValerieSimpson, Randy Brecker, Sean Jones and the Christian McBrideBig Band salute Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie andcelebrate the Ella songbook.

chrisbotti

ella & dizzythe centennial

celebration

Sponsored by:

For tickets & full schedule visit njpac.org/moodyjazzor call 1.888.GO.NJPAC Groups 973.297.5804

One Center Street • Newark, NJ

More TD Moody Jazz to love this November!

“THERE’S THE ‘ROCKET SCIENCE’ PART OF [LEARNING JAZZ]. IT’S A SERIOUS LANGUAGE, AND I DON’T THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY FROM IT.” – Carl Filipiak

SAM

HO

LDEN


CDROUNDUP

←

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Jazz Ensemble I, with director Dave Loeb at far left

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UNIVERSITY OFCENTRAL FLORIDAFLYING HORSE BIG BANDBIG MAN ON CAMPUS (Flying Horse)

This project teams UCF’s

premier student jazz

ensemble with a special

guest, tenor saxophonist

Harry Allen. Big Man on

Campus features fine soloists and skilled

ensemble work on jazz standards, new

material and even something unexpected.

Allen emerged on the scene three

decades ago as one of the jazz world’s

fine swing tenors. In the last few years

he has intensified his composing and ar-

ranging skills, which are also showcased

here. Big Man on Campus includes five

Allen tunes, and he solos on four: “June

Song,” “This Is My Lucky Day,” “Can

You Love Once More?” and “A Lonely

Breeze.” The big band is featured on the

fifth, “The One for You.” Allen arranged

and solos on the opening track, Henry

Mancini’s “Dreamsville,” and joins the

band for gorgeous takes on Tom Jobim’s

“Triste” and Billy Strayhorn’s “Rain-

check.” The recording also includes

Michael Philip Mossman’s “Partido

Blue” and two originals by UCF Jazz

Studies Director Jeff Rupert, “B.M.O.C.”

and “The New Creole Love Call.”

British composer Alan Hawkshaw’s

“Move, Move, Move,” from the 2006 Jack

Black comedy Nacho Libre, adds a funky

twist. The latter tune and “Raincheck” are

strong features for Mudel Honore’s organ

artistry and guitarist Ryan Waszmer. Trum-

peter Alex Lewis, Waszmer and baritone

saxophonist Saul Dautch are featured on

Allen’s sprightly “The One for You.” Alto

saxophonist Luke Stribling shines on the

Brazilian-tinged “Partido Blue.” Tenor

saxophonist Gabe Wallace digs deep into

the playful strut of “B.M.O.C.”

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATICOLLEGECONSERVATORY OF MUSICTHE CCM JAZZ ORCHESTRAAS JAMES BONDNOBODY DOES IT BETTER (Summit)

This is one of the most

ferocious college big-band

projects to come down the

pike in a long time. CCM

Jazz Orchestra Musical

Director Scott Belck asked trumpeter

Steven Bernstein to transform his charts

from 2001’s Sex Mob Does Bond into

big-band arrangements. Bernstein signed

on enthusiastically as principal arranger

and special guest for this recording. The

music in the James Bond films, mostly

composed by John Barry, tends to be

robust and at times in-your-face. That

made it an ideal vehicle for Bernstein, who

fleshed it out with both wild textures and

teasing subtleties.

Bernstein solos on two of the eight

tunes: “Dr. Yes,” his own tango-flavored

twist on the theme from the 1963 film Dr.

No; and the Marvin Hamlisch and Carol

Bayer Sager-penned “Nobody Does It

Better,” from 1977’s The Spy Who Loved

Me. His slide-trumpet work dominates the

latter, one of the most intricate pieces here.

“Dawn Raid on Fort Knox,” from Goldfin-

ger, uses the “Goldfinger” melodic motif as

an interesting undercurrent.

Guitarist Joe Wittman adds intense,

bluesy solos to “Dr. Yes,” and contributes an

otherworldly feel to “This Never Happened

to the Other Fella,” from 1969’s On Her

Majesty’s Secret Service, and “Nobody Does

It Better.” Joe Duran, the orchestra’s bari-

tone sax player, arranged the theme songs

from You Only Live Twice and Thunderball.

Trumpeter Sam Lauritsen and trombon-

ist Chris Ott turn in memorable solos.

Conguero Shane Jones is featured on From

Russia With Love’s “Bond With Bongos.”

They’ve all done 007 proud.

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA,LAS VEGAS UNLV JAZZSTUDIES PROGRAMRAIL TRAILS & LATIN JOURNEY III (TNC)

UNLV’s robust Jazz

Ensemble I and very fine

Latin Jazz Ensemble

dominate this two-CD set,

but Jazz Studies Director

Dave Loeb found space to spotlight five

smaller student groups as well.

Billy Strayhorn’s “Johnny Come Lately”

and “Take the ‘A’ Train” open and close JEI’s

eight-tune big-band segment, which fea-

tures crisp ensemble work and some very

fine solos. Clay Jenkins’ “Rail Trails” is a

trumpet spotlight for Hazen Mayo. Pianist

Bennett Mason revels in Thad Jones’ slow-

blues “Basic-Ally Yours” and a Sammy

Nestico arrangement of “Ja Da.” Band

member Jorge Machain arranged JEI’s spir-

ited version of “Someday My Prince Will

Come,” which features Kenny Rampton as

a special guest. Trumpeters Rampton and

Machain go head to head, contrasting open

and muted horns. The strong brass section

complements solos by trombonist Dylan

Musso, tenor saxophonist Michael Spicer

and Mayo on Rob McConnell’s arrange-

ment of “‘A’ Train.”

BY KEN FRANCKLING


UNLV’s 11-member Contemporary

Jazz Ensemble is featured on Spicer’s

award-winning original “Calico” and the

frenetic and teasing “Mono,” composed

by UNLV alum Rachel Eckroth, now the

pianist in Chris Botti’s band. Summer

Kodama, the bass player in five of these

featured bands, composed the intro-

spective “Polaris,” the first of two tracks

by the Joe Williams Jazz Scholarship

Combo; Kodama and Mason, another

five-ensemble stalwart, are its featured

soloists. The Joe Williams sextet also

performs Wayne Shorter’s “Deluge,”

featuring Jake Yansen on alto sax and

singers Gary Fowler and Ira Hill. Hill

penned fresh relationship-inspired lyrics

to the classic early-’60s instrumental.

Disc two opens with the vibrant

Latin Jazz Ensemble, a 10-member

band enriched by layered percussion

and the violin artistry of Peter Goom-

royan. Paquito D’Rivera’s classic Irakere

composition “Chekére Son” and William

Cepeda’s “Washiba,” arranged by bassist

Jesus Munoz and LJE Director Uli Geis-

sendoerfer, respectively, precede Mason’s

elegant ballad “Saudade.” Jake Yansen

arranged Latin covers of two items not

usually heard in a jazz setting: Major Lazer

and DJ Snake’s electronic-dance-music hit

“Lean On” and Foreigner’s “Blue Morning,

Blue Day.” Both feature Yansen and Fowler.

Geissendoerfer’s raw and exuberant “5-67”

is highlighted by an alto sax/trombone

battle between Yansen and Jason Vasquez.

UNLV’s Jazz Guitar Ensemble digs into

Pat Metheny’s “Phase Dance” with a solo by

its director, faculty member Jake Langley.

Drummer Jeremy Klewicki wrote the

ballad “Memory,” which he performs with

Mason and Kodama as the Yoshi’s Trio.

Lead singers Fowler and Christina Matta

have great lyric and scat segments on the

11-member Vocal Jazz Ensemble’s take on

“Benny’s From Heaven,” Eddie Jefferson’s

clever update of “Pennies From Heaven.”

The Honors Trio features UNLV grad

students Otto Ehling on piano, Dave Os-

trem on bass and Angelo Stokes on drums,

performing doctoral student Ehling’s

impressionistic “False Hope” and Ostrem’s

wistful “Remember When” before con-

cluding the session with a high-energy

romp through “Softly, As in a Morning

Sunrise.” This is one splendid trio, whose

players understand the high art of a musi-

cal conversation as they dig deep inside

the songs.

UNIVERSITY OFNORTHERN COLORADOJAZZ LAB BAND ITHE ROMEO AND JULIET PROJECT (Artist Alliance)

This ambitious project uses

commissioned jazz comp-

ositions to tell the story of

star-crossed lovers Romeo

and Juliet. Director of Jazz

Studies Dana Landry drafted eight

different composers to work indepen-

dently on interpretations of the play’s major

themes and events, and on musical portraits

of its lead characters. He asked them to

avoid referencing existing music based on

Shakespeare’s most famous drama, the

majority of it found in the classical idiom.

The CD features three special guests.

COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY BANDS


They are trumpeter Greg Gisbert, a

UNC artist-in-residence last year, and

faculty members Kenyon Brenner on

tenor saxophone and Julia Dollison, who

adds wordless vocals. UNC jazz-studies

faculty members Erik Applegate, David

Caffey and Steve Kovalcheck contributed

compositions, as did grad student and

lab-band trombonist Mike Conrad. Other

pieces are credited to drummer-composer

John Hollenbeck, Boston-based jazz

composer Omar Thomas and jazz-studies

directors Chuck Dotas, of James Madison

University, and Steve Owen, of the Uni-

versity of Oregon.

Among the highlights: Brenner and

guitarist Matt Landon create much of

the inspired tension on Applegate’s “The

Feud.” Gisbert’s solos are exquisite, par-

ticularly on “Fortune’s Fool” and “Juliet.”

Dollison’s ethereal voice is featured on

Hollenbeck’s complex composition “This

Kiss,” as well as on “Union” and “Juliet.”

Adam Blakey’s soprano saxophone is

the guide through the poignant “Romeo

and Juliet: Death Scene.” This project is

breathtaking in scope and sound.

UNIVERSITY OFNORTH TEXASONE O’CLOCK LAB BANDLAB 2016 (UNT)

UNT Jazz graduate

students and undergrads

did smart, ambitious work

for the diverse Lab 2016,

writing or arranging nine

of the 10 compositions that showcase the

school’s premier jazz ensemble. Doctoral

candidate Brian Horton penned two

tunes, arranged another and is the

featured soloist on several tracks. The disc

opens with his vibrant New Orleans

homage “Southern Comfort,” a trombone

showcase blending lively shuffle-beat and

second-line feels. He also wrote the

dreamy waltz “Not Enough Sky,” featuring

Horton on tenor saxophone. He used two

distinct reggae rhythms to accentuate the

uplifting energy of Donald Brown’s

Malcolm X homage, “Theme for

Malcolm,” with Aaron Dutton contribut-

ing a superb alto saxophone solo.

Doctoral candidate Aaron Hedenstrom,

a frequent flyer on prior Lab Band record-

ings, wrote “Take Your Time,” a breezy

showcase for pianist Nicholas Olynciw.

Grad student Garrett Wingfield, the

band’s baritone saxophonist, wrote fresh

arrangements for three diverse jazz clas-

sics—Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman,”

Horace Silver’s “Quicksilver” and Thelonious

Monk’s “Trinkle, Tinkle.” They feature crisp

brass lines and rhythmic twists and turns,

especially on this ultra-quirky version of

the Monk tune. “Lonely Woman” alternates

between frenetic segments and moments of

sheer beauty, highlighted by Luke Wing-

field’s trumpet.

Grad student Brian Stark composed the

flamenco-based “Alegrías de Soleá,” which

underscores the relationship between the

Spanish music form and the blues. Horton

and trumpeter Joshua Kauffman harness

the tune’s passion in their solos. Undergrad

Gregory Santa Croce updated Wayne Shorter’s

Bud Powell tribute “This Is for Albert” into a

subtle gem that features trombonist Conner

Eisenmenger. The session closes with “Lemon

Juice,” a gospel-tinged gem by drummer Den-

nis Mackrel, who was UNT’s guest artist in

the fall of 2015. This version features excellent

contributions from guitarist Ethan Stalbaum

and drummer John Sturino.

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTOJAZZ STUDIES PROGRAMU OF T JAZZ ORCHESTRAAND 12TETSUITE RUBY SWEETTRILLIUM FALLS (U of T Jazz)

These two

newest CDs

from the

University of

Toronto’s jazz

performance program take very different

tacks. On Suite Ruby Sweet, the 18-member

U of T Jazz Orchestra performs the title

track and three other works, all composed

by late trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, a

Toronto native who was based in London

for most of his career. Trillium Falls features

the school’s 12-member contemporary-jazz

ensemble performing both classic and more

modern pieces.

Saxophonist Dave Liebman and British

singer Norma Winstone are special guests

on Suite Ruby Sweet. Winstone, a frequent

Wheeler collaborator over the years, wrote

and performs the lyrics and adds mood-

enhancing wordless vocals. The ambitious

and propulsive 29-minute title track is filled

with beautiful solos and intricate ensemble

passages. Trumpeter Brad Eaton and Lieb-

man turn in standout performances that set

its tone. Wheeler recorded the original ver-

sion in 2002, with Canada’s Maritime Jazz

Orchestra. Three shorter Wheeler pieces

follow. “W.W.” opens with teasing call-and-

response snippets by Liebman, Eaton on

flugelhorn and tenor saxophonist Patrick

Smith that are teased into full-blown solo

interplay. Winstone’s wordless vocals and a

spirited solo from pianist Josh Smiley keep

the momentum going with crisp ensemble

support. “Canter No. 1,” arranged by jazz

faculty member Terry Promane, features

interweaving solos from Winstone and

Liebman. They lead into the singer’s lyric

segment, all riding over the orchestra’s

propulsive groove. Winstone’s lyrics set

the affecting tone for “Winter Sweet,” with

tasty support from Smiley’s piano. It winds

down with complementary solos from

Marie Goudy on flugelhorn, Conrad Gluch

on alto sax and Liebman on soprano. The

ensemble, directed by Gordon Foote, is

strikingly dynamic.

The 12tet’s Trillium Falls features a wide

array of source material. Band director

Promane wrote the title track and “The

Icemaker’s Mistress.” Pianist Jon Cowherd

wrote “Crooked Creek,” and Swedish

saxophonist Nils Berg created “Hat Music”

for his quartet, the Stoner. The session’s

standards fare, enriched with contem-

porary rhythmic and harmonic twists,

includes Cy Coleman’s “Witchcraft,” Duke

Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s “The Star-

Crossed Lovers” and Strayhorn’s “Isfahan.”

“Crooked Creek,” first recorded by

the Brian Blade Fellowship, is a strong

opener, featuring a searing alto sax solo

from Anthony Argatoff and mood-set-

ting wordless vocals from Jacqueline Teh.

“The Star-Crossed Lovers,” arranged by

bassist Alex Lakusta and again featuring

Argatoff, showcases the 12Tet’s terrific

ensemble work. It sounds like a much

larger band. Pianist, composer and U of

T doctoral student Noam Lemish joins

the 12Tet on “Song for Lia,” an exuberant

piece he wrote to celebrate the birth of

his niece. It’s a strong feature for guitar-

ist Dan Pitt, whose solos twist around

ensemble passages.

Promane’s “The Icemaker’s Mistress”

is the disc’s tour de force. It contains the

kind of sweeping musical panoramas, full

of great depth and color, that we associ-

ate with jazz orchestra composers Maria

Schneider and Christine Jensen. It also fea-

tures pianist Jacob Thompson and Eaton,

while trumpeter Emily Denison and tenor

saxophonist Harrison Argatoff shine on the

title track. JT

CDROUNDUP

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2017-18 DIRECTORY OF

SCHOOLS & PROGRAMS


U.S. COLLEGES& UNIVERSITIESALABAMA

Auburn University217 Goodwin Hall, 320 W. SamfordAuburn, AL 36849Primary contact: Dr. Mike Pendowski,334-844-3164, [email protected]

Jacksonville State University700 Pelham Rd. NorthJacksonville, AL 36265http://music.jsu.edu/Jazz/Default.htmPrimary contact: Andy Nevala,303-859-3589, [email protected]

University of Alabama School of MusicPO Box 870366, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487http://music.ua.edu/departments/jazz-studies/Jazz contact: Chris Kozak,205-348-6333, [email protected]

Wallace State College801 Main St, Hanceville, AL 35077

www.wallacestatehanceville.eduPrimary contact: Ricky Burks,205-352-8277 X277

ARIZONA

Arizona State UniversitySchool of MusicPO Box 870405, Tempe, AZ 85287www.music.asu.edu/jazzJazz contact: Michael Kocour,480-965-5348,[email protected] ad, p.74

Chandler-GilbertCommunity College2626 E Pecos Rd., Chandler, AZ 85225www.cgc.maricopa.eduPrimary contact: Randy Wright,480-732-7290, [email protected] contact: Ted Goddard, [email protected]

Mesa Community CollegeMusic Dept.1833 W. Southern Ave., Mesa, AZ 85202

Primary contact: Fred Forney, 602-963-2032, [email protected]

Northern Arizona UniversityJazz Studies Office PO Box 6040, Flagstaff, AZ 86011Jazz contact: Joel Di Bartolo, 928-523-3496, [email protected]

University of Arizona School of Music, UA College of Fine ArtsTucson, AZ 85721; www.music.cfa.arizona.eduAdmissions contact: Ms. Ruth Szabo, 520-621-1454, [email protected] contact: Jeffrey Haskell, 520-621-1341, [email protected]

CALIFORNIA

American River College4700 College Oak Dr., Sacramento, CA 95841www.arc.losrios.edu/~music/Jazz contact: Dyne Eifertsen, 916-484-8676, [email protected]

Brubeck Institute3601 Pacific Avenue, Stockton, CA 95211www.brubeckinstitute.orgPrimary contact: Simon Rowe,209-946-3970, [email protected] ad, p.76

Cabrillo CollegeMusic Dept.6500 Soquel Dr., Aptos, CA 95003www.cabrillo.eduPrimary contact: Jon Nordgren,831-477-5653, [email protected] contact: Ray Brown, 831-479-6228

Cal Poly State UniversityMusic Dept., Jazz Studies1 Grand Ave., San Luis Obispo, CA 93407www.calpoly.eduJazz contact: Paul Rinzler,805-756-5792, [email protected]

California Institute of the Arts24700 McBean ParkwayValencia, CA 91355www.calarts.eduAdmissions contact: Kurt Isaacson,661-253-7841, [email protected] contact: David Roitstein,661-255-1050, X2235, [email protected] ad, p.73

California Jazz Conservatory2087 Addison Street,

DIRECTORY OF SCHOOLS & PROGRAMS

←

Jazz students from the Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts record their annual CD at Capitol Studios in Hollywood

RAFA

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AN

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CALA

RTS

“DePaul offers anout-of-the-classroom

experience that isreally essential to a

performing musician.”

LEARN FROM THE WORLD’S MOST

PROMINENT MUSICIANS.

DANA HALL / Director of Jazz Studies;

drums and cymbals

SCOTT BURNS / saxophone

DENNIS CARROLL / bass

TIM COFFMAN / trombone

TYPHANIE COLLER / voice

BOB LARK / trumpet

TOM MATTA / arranging and composition

CHAD MCCULLOUGH / trumpet

BOB PALMIERI / guitar

JIM TROMPETER / piano

Go to music.depaul.edu/faculty-staff to

discover who will help you build your future.

music.depaul.edu 773-325-7444

[email protected]

depaulschoolofmusic

DePaulSOM

DePaulSOM

Todd Rosenberg Photography

Berkeley, CA 94704www.cjc.eduAdmissions contact: Jesse Rimler, 510-845-5373, [email protected] contact: Susan Muscarella, 510-845-5373

California State University at Bakersfield9001 Stockdale Hwy.,Bakersfield, CA 93311www.bakersfieldjazz.comPrimary contact: Doug Davis, 661-664-3093, [email protected]

California State University at ChicoMusic Department 2nd & Normal PAC #105, Chico, CA 95928Primary contact: Rick Winslow, 530-898-4655

California State University at Fullerton800 North State CollegeFullerton, CA 92834www.fullerton.eduPrimary contact: Marc Dickey, 714-278-3511, [email protected] contact: Nancy Dority, 657-278-2350, [email protected] contact: Chuck Tumlinson, Bill Cunliffe, 657- 278-5523, [email protected], [email protected] ad, p.141

California State University at Long Beach1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90840www.csulb.edu/~music/Primary contact: Beth Peregine, 562-985-4781, [email protected] contact: Jeff Jarvis, 562-233-9811, [email protected]

California State University at Los AngelesDepartment of Music5151 State University Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90032www.calstatela.eduAdmissions contact: Dr. William Belan, 323-343-4067, [email protected] contact: Dr. Jeffrey Benedict, 323-343-4099, [email protected]

California State University, East Bay at Hayward Music Department 25800 Carlos Bee Blvd. Hayward, CA 94542http://class.csueastbay.edu/music/Primary contact: Dann Zinn, 510-885-3135, [email protected]


Admissions contact: Mariko Abe, 510-885-3135, [email protected]

California State University Sacramento6000 J Street, Sacramento, CA 95819www.csus.edu/music/jazzAdmissions contact: Mark Allen, 916-278-6543, [email protected] contact: Steve Roach, 916-278-7987, [email protected]

California State University, Monterey Bay100 Campus Center, Bldg 30Seaside, CA 93955www.music.csumb.eduPrimary contact: Shirlene Campbell, 831-582-4085, [email protected] contact: Prof. Richard Bains, [email protected] or Prof. Ray Drummond, [email protected], 831-582-4085

California State University, Northridge Jazz Studies and Improvisational Music18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge, CA 91330www.csunjazz.comPrimary contact: Matt Harris [email protected] contact: Lea Clara [email protected] contact: Gary Pratt, 818-677-2743, [email protected]

Columbia CollegeJazz Studies 11600 Columbia College Dr.Sonora, CA 95370Primary contact: Dr. Rod Harris, 209-588-5211

Cuesta CollegeJazz Studies PO Box 8106, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401http://academic.cuesta.edu/ performingarts/Primary contact: Ron McCarley, 805-546-3195, [email protected]

Diablo Valley College321 Golf Club Road, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523www.dvc.eduPrimary contact: Glenn Appell, 925-685-1230, ext. 2510, [email protected]

Fresno City CollegeJazz Studies 1101 E. University Ave.,

Fresno, CA 93741www.fresnocitycollege.eduPrimary contact: Michael Dana, 559-442-4600 X8463, [email protected]

Fullerton College321 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton, CA 92832www.fullcoll.eduPrimary contact: Dr. Greg Woll, 714-992-7296, [email protected]

Harrison School of Music21777 Ventura Blvd. #263-265Woodland Hills, CA 91364Jazz contact: Mark Harrison, 800-828-MUSIC/783-2848

Idyllwild Arts Foundation52500 Temecula RoadPO Box 38 Idyllwild, CA 92549www.idyllwildarts.orgContact: [email protected], 951-468-7223See ad, p.71

Laney College Music Dept. 900 Fallon St, Oakland, CA 94607Primary contact: Jay Lehmann, 510-834-5740

Los Angeles College of Music (LACM)370 S. Fair Oaks Ave. Pasadena, CA 91105www.lacm.eduAdmissions contact: Marcos Villa, 626-568-8850 X205, [email protected] contact: Willie Murillo, 626-568-8850, [email protected]

Los Medanos College2700 E. Leland Road, Pittsburg, CA 94565www.losmedanos.netAdmissions contact: Gail Newman, 925-439-2185, ext. 3250Jazz contact: Dr. Michael Zilber, 925-439-2185, ext. 3284, [email protected]

MiraCosta CollegeOne Barnard Drive, Oceanside, CA 92056http://music.miracosta.eduPrimary contact: Matt Falker, 760-795-6679, [email protected] contact: Steve Torok, 760-757-2121 x6438, [email protected]

Monterey Peninsula College980 Fremont St, Monterey, CA 93940www.mpc.eduPrimary contact: Kathleen Baker, 831-645-1336, [email protected]

Mt. San Antonio CollegeWalnut, CA 91789

www.mtsac.edu/instruction/arts/music/Primary contact: Jeff Ellwood, 909-594-5611 ext. 4305, [email protected]

Musicians Institute1655 McCadden Pl., Hollywood, CA 90028www.mi.eduPrimary contact: Steve Lunn, 800-255-PLAY, [email protected]

Occidental College1600 Campus Rd., Los Angeles, CA 90041http://departments.oxy.edu/musicAdmissions contact: Tiffany Wright, 323-259-2700, [email protected] contact: Tim Emmons, 323-259-2785, [email protected]

San Bernardino Valley CollegeMusic Dept.701 S. Mt. Vernon Ave.San Bernardino, CA 92410www.sbvc.sbccd.cc.ca/musicPrimary contact: Paul Kardos, 909-888-6511 X1515, [email protected]

San Diego State University School of Music and Dance 5500 Campanile Dr., San Diego, CA 92182http://jazz.sdsu.eduAdmissions contact: Shirley Valencia Guitterez, 619-594-6032, [email protected] contact: Bill Yeager, 619-594-4680, [email protected]

San Francisco State University, School of Music and Dance1600 Holloway Ave. San Francisco, CA 94132www.sfsu.edu/~smdPrimary contact: Dee Spencer, 415-338-1566, [email protected] contact: School of Music and Dance, SFSU, 415-338-1431, [email protected] ad, p.128 San Joaquin Delta College5151 Pacific Avenue, Stockton, CA 95207www.deltacollege.eduAdmissions contact: Charles Jennings,[email protected] contact: Jon Nordgren, 209-954-5294, [email protected]

San Jose State University1 Washington Square, San Jose, CA 95192www.music.sjsu.eduAdmissions contact: Recruitment Office, 408-924-1377, [email protected] contact: Aaron Lington, 408-924-4636, [email protected]



COLLEGE OF MUSICUNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS

COMPOSITION | CONDUCTING | ETHNOMUSICOLOGYJAZZ STUDIES | MUSIC EDUCATION | MUSIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP

MUSIC HISTORY | MUSIC THEORY PERFORMANCE | PERFORMING ARTS HEALTH

For 70 years, we have trained the world’s top young jazz musicians. Our 40 large and small ensembles offer extensive opportunities to hone musical skills. Our 100 professionally-produced ensemble recordings showcase decades of exper-tise. Our alumni can be heard on over 90 Grammy-winning projects. We were the first jazz studies degree program in the nation and remain one of the best.

jazz.unt.edu

Sierra CollegeMusic Dept/Jazz5000 Rocklin Rd., Rocklin, CA 95677Primary contact: Greg McLaughlin, 916-789-2780

Simpson College2211 College View Dr., Redding, CA 96003Jazz contact: Dr. David Coy, 530-226-4717 Sonoma State University1801 East Cotati Ave. Rohnert Park, CA 94928www.sonoma.edu/music

Primary contact: Brian S. Wilson, 707-664-2468, [email protected] contact: Dr. Doug Leibinger, 707-664-4149, [email protected]

Stanford Jazz WorkshopBox 20454, Stanford, CA 94309650-736-0324; www.stanfordjazz.orgPrimary contact: Jim Nadel, 650-736-0324, [email protected] contact: Shen Weiss, 650-736-0324 x303 [email protected] ad, p.116

Thelonious Monk Institute of JazzUCLA Herb Alpert School of Music445 Charles E. Young Drive EastLos Angeles, CA 90095www.monkinstitute.orgPrimary contact: Daniel Seeff, 310-206-9700, [email protected]

University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA)2539 Schoenberg Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095www.schoolofmusic.ucla.eduPrimary contact: Erika Rycina,310-206-9593, [email protected]


650-736-0324 | stanfordjazz.org

• Week-long jazz immersion programsat Stanford University for middle school,high school, adults, and jazz educators

• Focus on improvisation and combo playing• Two-week packages available

• Recent faculty includes Ravi Coltrane,Chick Corea, Linda Oh, Joshua Redman,Larry Grenadier, Ingrid Jensen, Julian Lage,Ethan Iverson, Billy Hart, Tia Fuller,Fred Hersch, Allison Miller, Peter Erskine,and many others

SUMMER 2018 JAZZ IMMERSION PROGRAMS

SIGNUPS OPEN IN NOV!

Anat Cohen 2017 faculty

Admissions contact: Brenda Galvez, [email protected], 310-206-5002

University of California at Berkeley72 Cesar Chavez Centre #4280Berkeley, CA 94720www.ucjazz.berkeley.eduPrimary contact: Ted Moore, 510-642-5073, [email protected]

University of California at San Diego9500 Gilman Avenue, La Jolla, CA 92024Jazz contact: David Borgo, Ph.D., 858-534-3230, [email protected]

University of California at Santa Cruz1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064www.arts.ucsc.edu/musicJazz contact: Karlton Hester, [email protected]

University of La Verne1950 Third Street, La Verne, CA 91750www.ulv.edu/music

Admissions contact: Steven Biondo, 909-593-3511 ext. 4917, [email protected] contact: Reed Gratz, 909-593-3511 ext. 4915, [email protected]

University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music 3601 Pacific Ave., Stockton, CA 95211Jazz contact: Patrick Langham, 209-946-3222

University of Redlands School of MusicPO Box 3080, Redlands, CA 92373Primary contact: Dr. Dan Murphy, 909-793-2121

USC Thornton School of MusicJazz Studies Program3450 Watt Way, TMC 118Los Angeles, CA 90089-0851http://music.usc.edu/Admissions contact: USC Thornton Office of Admission, 800-872-2213 or 213-740-8986, [email protected]

Jazz contact: Thornton Jazz Studies Department, 213-740-3119, [email protected] ad, p.118

Yuba College2088 North Beale Road, Marysville, CA 95901www.yuba.cc.ca.usPrimary contact: Dr. Allan Miller, 530-741-6783, [email protected] COLORADO

Colorado Christian University8787 West Alameda Ave.Lakewood, CO 80226www.ccu.eduPrimary contact: Steven Taylor, 303-963-3138, [email protected] contact: Janet Serfoss, 303-963-3135, [email protected] contact: Mark Dorn, 303-963-3133, [email protected]



Naropa University2130 Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder, CO 80302www.naropa.eduPrimary contact: Mark Miller, 303-546-5282, [email protected]

University of Colorado Boulder, College of Music301 UCB, College of MusicBoulder, CO 80309http://music.colorado.edu/departments/jazzAdmissions contact: Fred Peterbark, 303-492-8468, [email protected] contact: Dr. John Gunther, 303-735-1492, [email protected]

University of Denver Lamont School of Music2344 E Iliff Ave, Denver, CO 80208www.du.edu/lamont/Primary contact: Lynn Baker, 303-871-6400, [email protected] contact: Stephen Campbell, 303-871-6973, [email protected] contact: Steve Wiest, 303-871-6400, [email protected] ad, p.122

University of Northern ColoradoJazz Studies Program501 20th St. Campus Box 28Greeley, CO 80639www.uncjazz.comPrimary contact: Kelsey Shiba, 970-351-2577, [email protected] contact: Dana Landry, 970-351-2577, [email protected]

CONNECTICUT

Fairfield University1073 N. Benson Road, Fairfield, CT 06824www.fairfielduniversity.eduJazz contact: Brian Torff, 203-254-4000 ext. 2458, [email protected]

The Hartt School, University of Hartford200 Bloomfield Avenue West Hartford, CT 06117www.hartford.edu/harttAdmissions contact: Office of Admissions, 860-768-4465, [email protected] contact: Javon Jackson, 860-768-5797, [email protected] ad, p.119

For more detailed information, visit JazzTimes.com/schools


“What we teach here:broad, open-minded music with no boundaries.”

music.usc.edu

Bob Mintzer, chairDavid Arnay

Ndugu Chancler

Peter Erskine

Russell Ferrante

Sara Gazarek

Jason Goldman

Kathleen Grace

Alphonso Johnson

Edwin Livingston

Andy Martin

Thom David Mason

Ronald C. McCurdy

Roy McCurdy

Vince Mendoza

Darek Oles

Alan Pasqua

Aaron Serfaty

Bob Sheppard

Michael Stever

John Thomas

JAZZ STUDIES FACULTY

Frank Potenza, chairAdam del Monte

Bruce Forman

Pat Kelley

STUDIO GUITAR FACULTYTim Kobza

Richard Smith

Nick Stoubis

Steve Trovato

— BOB MINTZERChair of Jazz Studies

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Hartford Conservatory834 Asylum Ave., Hartford, CT 06105www.hartfordconservatory.orgPrimary contact: Jerry Prell, 860-246-2588 ext. 12, [email protected]

University of ConnecticutDepartment of Music 1295 Storrs Road, Unit 1012Storrs, CT 06269www.music.uconn.eduAdmissions contact: Christina Quental, 860-486-3731, [email protected] contact: Earl MacDonald, 860-486-3728, [email protected]

Western Connecticut State UniversityDept. of Music 181 White Street Danbury, CT 06810www.wcsu.edu/musicPrimary contact: Debbie Pontelandolfo, 203-837-8350, [email protected] contact: 203-837-9000,

[email protected] contact: Jimmy Greene, 203-837-3931, [email protected]

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Georgetown UniversityMusic Department 37th and O Streets, NWWashington, DC 20007www.georgetown.edu/departments/AMT/music/index.htmAdmissions contact: Prof. Anthony Del Donna, 202-687-3838, Jazz contact: Prof. David Detwiler, 202-687-3838, [email protected]

Howard University2455 6th Street NWWashington, DC 20059www.howard.eduPrimary contact: Fred Irby III, 202-806-7066, [email protected]

Jazz contact: Connaitre Miller, 202 806-7097, [email protected]

University of the District of ColumbiaJazz Studies Program 4200 Connecticut Ave. NWWashington, DC 20008www.udc.edu/Primary contact: Judith Korey, 202-274-5803, [email protected] contact: Allyn Johnson, Director of Jazz Studies, 202-274-5811, [email protected]

FLORIDA

Broward Community College3501 S.W. Davie Rd., Davie, FL 33314www.broward.eduPrimary contact: Jason Hainsworth, 954-201-6696, [email protected]



MUSIC•DANCE•THEATRE

hartford.edu/hartt

Offering Bachelor of Music degrees in Jazz Studies,Music Management, Music Production and Technology,and Composition

Technical and artistic growth through mentorshipfrom world-renowned faculty

Master classes and access to a varietyof performance opportunities

PERFORM WITH THEMDON’T JUST LEARN FROM THE BEST

Florida Community College at Jacksonville11901 Beach Boulevard, Jacksonville, FL 32246www.fccj.eduPrimary contact: Matt Vance, 904-646-2113, [email protected]

Florida International UniversitySchool of Music 11200 SW 8th Street, WPAC 12Miami, FL 33199http://music.fiu.edu/Primary contact: Gary Campbell, 305-348-2896, [email protected]

Florida Southern College111 Lake Hollingsworth Rd.Lakeland, FL 33801www.flsouthern.eduJazz contact: Brian S. Brink, 863-680-4574

Florida State UniversitySchool of Music 122 North Copeland St., Tallahassee, FL 32306www.music.fsu.edu

Primary contact: Dr. Ted Stanley, 850-644-3424, [email protected] contact: Kristopher Watson, 850-644-6102, [email protected] contact: Leon Anderson, Jr., 850-644-1048, [email protected]

Miami Dade CollegeWolfson Campus, 300 NE 2nd AvenueMiami, FL 33132www.mdc.eduPrimary contact: Dr. Michael Di Liddo, 305-237-3930, [email protected]

New World School of the Arts300 Northeast 2nd AvenueMiami, FL 33132www.mdc.edu/nwsaPrimary contact: Dr. Jeffrey Hodgson, 305-237-3539, [email protected] contact: Pam Neumann, 305-237-7007, [email protected] contact: Jim Gasior, 305-237-7759, [email protected]

Seminole Community CollegeMusic Dept. 100 Weldon Blvd.Sanford, FL 32773Primary contact: Bill Hinkle, 407-328-2290, [email protected]

University of Central Florida4000 Central Florida Blvd.Orlando, FL 32816http://music.cah.ucf.edu/jazz.phpPrimary contact: Jeff Rupert, 407-823-5411, [email protected] contact: John Parker, 407-823-2869, [email protected]

University of Miami:Frost School of MusicPO Box 248165, Coral Gables, FL 33124www.music.miami.eduAdmissions contact: Karen Kerr, 305-284-6168, [email protected] contact: John Daversa, 305-284-5813, [email protected]


University of North FloridaMusic Flagship ProgramUNF Drive, Fine Arts Center, Building 45, Room 2004Jacksonville, FL 32224www.unf.edu/coas/musicContact: Lois Scott, Office Manager, 904-620-3834See ad, p.120

University of South FloridaSchool of Music, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., FAH 110Tampa, FL 33617www.music.arts.usf.edu/jazz/Admissions contact: Linda Honey, 813-974-2311, [email protected] contact: Associate Prof. Jack Wilkins, 813-974-4810, [email protected]

GEORGIA

Atlanta Institute of Music2875 Breckinridge Blvd., Suite 700,

Duluth, GA 30096www.atlantainstituteofmusic.comAdmissions contact: Erica Shantzeck, 800-886-6874, [email protected] contact: Nite Driscoll, 800-886-6874, [email protected]

Augusta State University2500 Walton Way, Augusta, GA 30904www.augusta.edu/pamplin/music/Admissions contact: Katherine Sweeney, 706-737-1632, [email protected] contact: Dr. Robert Foster, 706-667-4875, [email protected]

Clayton State UniversitySchool of Arts & Sciences, Department of MusicMorrow, GA 30260www.clayton.edu

Primary contact: Stacey Houghton, 770-961-3609 Jazz contact: Dr. John Schuster-Craig, [email protected]

Columbus State University4225 University Ave., Columbus, GA 31906www.colstate.eduAdmissions contact: Beverly Johnson, 706-568-2035, [email protected] contact: Paul J. Vander Gheynst, 706-649-7298, [email protected]

Georgia Regents University1120 15th Street, Augusta, GA 30912gru.edu/colleges/pamplin/musicPrimary contact: Dr. Angela Morgan, 706-737-1453, [email protected] contact: Scott Argo, 706-737-1524, [email protected] contact: Dr. Robert Foster, 706-737-1453, [email protected]



Wynton Marsalis, Director

Aaron Flagg, Chair and Associate Director

Developing musicians versed in the Jazz continuum and its American vernacular roots • Undergraduate and graduate degrees and

diplomas• World-renowned faculty• Performance opportunities in New York City

and abroad

Apply by December 1

www.juilliard.edu/jazzP

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Georgia State UniversitySchool of Music PO Box 4097, Atlanta, GA 30302www.music.gsu.eduPrimary contact: GSU School of Music, 404-413-5900, [email protected] contact: David Smart, 404-413-5900, [email protected] contact: Dr. Gordon Vernick, 404-413-5913, [email protected]

Kennesaw State University471 Bartow Ave NW, Kennesaw, GA 30144www.kennesaw.edu/musicJazz contact: Sam Skelton, 770-423-6554, [email protected]

University of Georgia School of MusicAthens, GA 30602www.uga.eduPrimary contact: Suzanne Caruso, 706-542-3737

Valdosta State University1500 N. Patterson St., Valdosta, GA 31698www.valdosta.edu/music/jazzPrimary contact: Dr. Doug Farwell, 229-333-5804, [email protected] contact: Walter Peacock, 229-333-5791, [email protected] contact: David Springfield, 229-333-5805, [email protected]

IDAHO

College of Southern IdahoMusic Dept. 315 Falls Avenue, Twin Falls, ID 83301www.csi.eduPrimary contact: George Halsell, 208-732-6767, [email protected] contact: CSI Admissions Office,208-732-6231, [email protected] contact: Brent Jensen, 208-732-6765, [email protected]

University of Idaho, Lionel Hampton School of MusicCorner of Blake & W. Sweet Ave. Moscow, ID 83844-4015www.uidaho.edu/class/musicJazz contact: Vern Sielert, 208-885-4955, [email protected]

ILLINOIS

Augustana College639 38th Street, Rock Island, IL 61201www.augustana.eduAdmissions contact: Margaret Ellis, 309-794-7333, [email protected] contact: Joseph Ott, 309-794-7233, [email protected]

Benedictine University5700 College Road, Lisle, IL 60532www.ben.eduPrimary contact: Luis E. Loubriel, D.M.A., 630-829-6000, [email protected] contact: Enrollment Center,


BrassCarillonChoral ConductingCompositionGuitarHarpJazz StudiesMusic TheoryMusicologyOrchestral ConductingOrganPercussionPianoPiano PedagogyRecording & ProductionStringsSuzuki PedagogyVoice/OperaWind ConductingWoodwinds

▶ Apply by January 15 ▶ Auditions in February for fall admission

www.du.edu/lamont

630-829-6300, [email protected] contact: Alicia Cordoba Tait, 630-829-6324, [email protected]

Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University430 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605www.ccpa.roosevelt.eduPrimary contact: Heather McCowen, 312-341-6735, [email protected] ad, p.68

College of Lake County19351 W. Washington St. Grayslake, IL 60030Primary contact: Bruce Mack, 847-543-2566

Columbia College Chicago600 South Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60605www.colum.edu/musicPrimary contact: Everlidys Cabrera, 312-369-6149, [email protected] contact: Scott Hall, Director of Jazz Studies, 312-369-6322, [email protected]

DePaul University School of Music804 W Belden Ave, Chicago, IL 60614http://music.depaul.eduAdmissions contact: Ross Beacraft, 773-325-7444, [email protected] contact: Dana Hall, 773-325-7260, [email protected] ad, p.113

Eastern Illinois UniversityDepartment of Music 600 Lincoln Ave., Charleston, IL 61920www.eiu.edu/~eiujazzPrimary contact: Sam Fagaly, 217-581-6628, [email protected]

Elmhurst College190 Prospect, Elmhurst, IL 60126www.elmhurst.eduAdmissions contact: Gayle Bisesi, 630-617-3524, [email protected] contact: Doug Beach, 630-617-3518, [email protected]

Illinois State UniversityCampus Box 5660, Normal, IL 61790www.cfa.ilstu.edu/music/Admissions contact: Janet Tulley, 309-438-3566, [email protected] contact: Tom Marko, 309-438-2541, [email protected]

Kennedy-King College688 S. Wentworth, Chicago, IL 60621Primary contact: Virgil Hemphill, 773-602-5541

Knox CollegeBox 44, Galesburg, IL 61401Primary contact: Nikki Whittaker, 309-341-7265, [email protected]

Millikin University1184 W. Main, Decauter, IL 62522www.millikin.eduAdmissions contact: Lin Stoner, 217-424-6210, [email protected] contact: Randall Reyman, 217-424-6319, [email protected]



STUDY JAZZ AT

BM: Jazz, Music Education, History,Performance & Theory/Composition

MM: Jazz Composition/Arranging,Conducting, Music Education,History, Performance & Theory

AUDITIONS FOR 2018 ADMISSIONJanuary 27, 2018February 3 & 17, 2018March 3, 2018

Information/Admissions: www.umass.edu/music

Contact: 413 545 6048 or [email protected]

North Central College30 N. Brainard Street, Naperville, IL 60540www.northcentralcollege.eduAdmissions contact: Ashley Chubirka, 630-637-5800, [email protected] contact: Jack Mouse, 630-416-3911, [email protected]

Northern Illinois University School of Music DeKalb, IL 60115www.niu.edu/musicAdmissions contact: Lynn Slater, 815-753-1546, [email protected] contact: Reggie Thomas, 815-753-0643, [email protected]

North Park University3225 W. Foster Avenue – Box 21Chicago, IL 60625-4895www.northpark.eduPrimary contact: Rebecca Ryan, 773-244-5623, [email protected] contact: Joe Lill, 773-244-5634, [email protected]

Northwestern UniversityBienen School of Music711 Elgin Road, Evanston, IL 60208music.northwestern.eduAdmissions contact: Marcus E. Turner, 847-491-3141, [email protected] contact: Victor Goines, 847-491-3141, [email protected]

Olive-Harvey College10001 S. Woodlawn, Chicago, IL 60628Primary contact: Joseph Scully, 773-291-6100

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale School of MusicCarbondale, IL 62901www.siu.eduPrimary contact: Robert Allison, 618-536-8742, [email protected]

Southern Illinois University at EdwardsvilleDept. of MusicBox 1771 SUIE, Edwardsville, IL 62026www.siue.edu/music

Primary contact: Brett Stamps, 618-650-2026, [email protected]

University of Illinois at ChicagoDepartment of Music 1040 W. Harrison, MC255Chicago, IL 60607www.uic.edu, Primary contact: Jordan Kamps312-355-1735, [email protected] contact: Andy Baker, 312-996-2368, [email protected]

University of Illinois School of Music1114 W. Nevada Street, Urbana, IL 61801www.music.illinois.eduAdmissions contact: Music Admissions, 217-244-7899, [email protected] contact: Chip McNeill, 217-333-9703, [email protected]

Western Illinois UniversityDept. of Music 122 Browne Hall, #1 Univ. PlazaMacomb, IL 61455www.wiu.edu/music


17-1

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6

tri-c.edu/creativearts

Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C®)in Cleveland offers world classinstruction and facilities plus aclear path to Berklee College ofMusic, the Hartt School and otherfour-year institutions.

Ignite YourPassion

Tri-C® Jazz StudiesContact Steve Enos at 216-987-4256 or [email protected]

Jazz contact: Dr. John Cooper, 309-298-2186, [email protected]

INDIANA

American Conservatory of Music252 Wildwood Road, Hammond, IN 46324www.americanconservatory.eduPrimary contact: Dr. Steven J. Reid, 219-931-6000, [email protected]

Ball State UniversityMuncie, IN 47306www.bsu.edu/musicPrimary contact: Rebecca Braun, 765-285-5501, [email protected] contact: Brian Meekin, 765-285-8300, [email protected] contact: Mark Buselli, 765-285-5436, [email protected]

Butler University4600 Sunset Ave., Indianapolis, IN 46208www.butler.edu

DePauw UniversitySchool of Music 605 S. College Ave. Greencastle, IN 46135www.depauw.edu/musicPrimary contact: Ms. Toni M. Robinson, 765-658-3118, [email protected] contact: Steve Snyder, 765-658-4382, [email protected]

Indiana University Jacobs School of Music1201 E. 3rd St., Bloomington, IN 47405music.indiana.edu/jazzAdmissions contact: Espen Jensen, 812-855-7998, [email protected] contact: Tom Walsh, 812-855-7560, [email protected] ad, p.70

Purdue University Bands & Orchestras712 Third Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907www.purdue.edu/bands/ Primary contact: Jaclyn Heinz, 765-496-6785, [email protected] contact: Dr. Mo Trout, 765-494-9110, [email protected]

University of EvansvilleDepartment of Music 1800 Lincoln Avenue, Evansville, IN 47722music.evansville.eduAdmissions contact: Eva Key, 812-479-2742, [email protected] contact: Dr. Edwin Lacy, 812-479-2252, [email protected]

University of Indianapolis1400 E. Hanna Ave. Indianapolis, IN 46227www.music.uindy.eduPrimary contact: Harry Miedema, 317-788-3385, [email protected]

Valparaiso University Department of Music1709 Chapel Drive, Valparaiso, IN 46383www.valpo.edu/musicPrimary contact: Chair Department of Music, 219-464-5454, [email protected] contact: Jeffrey C. Brown, 219-464-5479, [email protected]



UMKC JAZZ STUDIES

UMKC Conservatory: Celebrating America’s indigenous art form.

Jazz Studies Program Directors and Co-ChairsBobby Watson and Dan Thomas

IOWA

Clarke University1550 Clarke Drive, Dubuque, IA 52001www.clarke.eduPrimary contact: Amy Dunker, 1-800-383-2345, [email protected] contact: David Resnick, [email protected] Coe College1220 First Ave. NE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402www.coe.edu/bandsPrimary contact: William Carson, 319-399-8521, [email protected] contact: Bob Benson, 319-399-8521, [email protected] contact: Steve Shanley, 319-399-8639, [email protected]

Indian Hills Community College525 Grandview Ave, Ottumwa, IA 52501www.indianhills.edu

Primary contact: David Sharp, 800-726-2585, ext. 1836, [email protected]

Iowa State University245 Music Hall, Ames, IA 50010www.music.iastate.eduJazz contact: Dr. Jim Bovinette, 515-233-2982, [email protected] Northwestern College101 7th St. SW, Orange City, IA 51041www.nwciowa.eduPrimary contact: Nora Verburg, 712-707-7062, [email protected] contact: Mark Bloemendaal, 712-707-7130, [email protected] contact: Timothy McGarvey, 712-707-7066, [email protected]

The School for Music Vocations at Southwestern Community College1501 W. Townline St., Creston, IA 50801

www.swcciowa.edu/academics/areas-of-study/professionalmusicPrimary contact: Jason Smith, 641-782-1466, [email protected]

University of Iowa1006 Voxman Music BuildingIowa City, IA 52242www.uiowa.eduAdmissions contact: Pauline Wieland, 319-335-1604, [email protected] contact: Professor John Rapson, 319-335-1662, [email protected]

University of Northern IowaSchool of MusicCedar Falls, IA 50604www.uni.edu/jazzstudiesAdmissions contact: Dennis Hendrickson, 319-273-2281, [email protected] contact: Chris Merz, 319-273-3077, [email protected]



MUSIC AND PERFORMING ARTS PROFESSIONS

David Schroeder, Director of Jazz Studies

NEW

YORK

UNIV

ERSITY

ISAN

AFFIR

MATIV

EACTIO

N/E

QUALOPPORTUNITY

INSTITUTIO

N.

JAZZ STUDIES AT NYU› Study in Greenwich Village, New York City

› Be mentored by internationally renownedjazz artists on faculty

› Dedicated jazz facility with state-of-the-art rehearsal and practice rooms

› Faculty and students play regularly atlandmark NYC jazz clubs

› Broad range of elective choices

› BM, MM, and PhD offered

Undergraduate Liberal Arts Education› Study abroad at NYU Parisand Prague

› Minor and double majors available

› Music industry internship

FACULTY

SaxophoneBilly Drewes

Ralph Lalama

Joe Lovano

Rich Perry

Lenny Pickett

Chris Potter

Dave Pietro

Mark Turner

TrumpetMichael Rodriguez

Alex Sipiagin

TromboneAlan Ferber

Elliot Mason

GuitarPeter Bernstein

Wayne Krantz

Adam Rogers

John Scofield

Brad Shepik

PianoAlan Broadbent

Gil Goldstein

Andy Milne

BassDrew Gress

Ron McClure

Mike Richmond

Martin Wind

CompositionAlan Broadbent

Alan Ferber

Gil Goldstein

Rich Shemaria

PercussionBilly Drummond

John Hadfield

Ari Hoenig

Tim Keiper

Tony Moreno

Adriano Santos

Lenny White

Visit steinhardt.nyu.edu/2017nyu-jazz, call 212 998 5446 or email [email protected].

CHRIS POTTERBILLY DRUMMOND JOHN SCOFIELD

Talent is everywhere,but opportunity is here!

KANSAS

Baker University406 8th Street, Baldwin City, KS 66006www.bakeru.edu

Primary contact: Susan Baker, [email protected] contact: Kevin Kopf, 800-876-4282, [email protected] contact: J.D. Parr, 785-594-4507, [email protected]

Bethany CollegeDept. of Music 335 E. Swensson, Lindsborg, KS 67456www.bethanylb.eduAdmissions contact: Tricia Hawk, 785-227-3380 ext. 8344, [email protected] contact: Prof. Doug Talbott, 785-227-3380 ext. 8135, [email protected]

Emporia State UniversityBox 29, Emporia, KS 66801Primary contact: James South, 316-343-5326

Hutchinson Community College1300 N. Plum Street, Hutchinson, KS 67501www.hutchcc.eduPrimary contact: Bryce Luty, 316-665-3500Jazz contact: Daryl Batchelor, [email protected]

Kansas City Kansas Community College7250 State Avenue, Kansas City, KS 66112www.kckcc.eduJazz contact: Jim Mair, 913-288-7149, [email protected]

Kansas State UniversityManhattan, KS 66506www.k-state.edu/Jazz contact: Wayne Goins, 785-532-3822, [email protected]

Pittsburg State UniversityMusic Department 1701 S. Broadway, Pittsburg, KS 66762www.pittstate.edu/music/Primary contact: Dr. Susan Marchant, 620-235-4466, [email protected] contact: 620-235-4251, [email protected] contact: Robert Kehle, 620-235-4474, [email protected]

Sterling College125 Cooper Road, Sterling, KS 67579www.sterling.edu/departments/musicAdmissions contact: Dennis Dutton, 620-278-4275, [email protected] contact: David Hodges, 620-278-4384, [email protected]

University of KansasDept. of Music & Dance 452 Murphy Hall, Lawrence, KS 66045Primary contact: Dan Gailey, 913-864-4389

Washburn University1700 SW College, Topeka, KS 66621



The jazz program at WEBSTER UNIVERSITY is headed by master teacher/composer/performers. You gain a wealth of solo experience in the primarysmall combos, in addition to recreating classic jazz charts in the JazzCollective. And you are part of the lively Saint Louis jazz scene!

Jazz ensembles include: Jazz Combos, Jazz Collective and Jazz Singers.Nurturing, friendly, real… these are words that describe music studyat Webster.

webster.edu/music

www.washburn.edu/cas/musicPrimary contact: Brad Merryman, 785-670-1511, [email protected] Admissions contact: [email protected] contact: Craig Treinen, 785-670-1520, [email protected]

Wichita State University1845 N. Fairmount, Wichita, KS 67260http://webs.wichita.eduPrimary contact: Geoffrey Deibel, 316-978-6273, [email protected] contact: Leann Karr, 316-978-7091, [email protected] contact: William Flynn, 316-978-6198, [email protected]

KENTUCKY

Cumberland College7525 College Station DriveWilliamsburg, KY 40769www.cumberlandcollege.eduPrimary contact: Jeff Smoak, 606-539-4332, [email protected] contact: Shelleigh Moses, 800-343-1609, [email protected] contact: David Threlkeld, 606-539-4334, [email protected]

Morehead State UniversityBaird Music Hall, 150 University Blvd.Morehead, KY 40351www.moreheadstate.edu/musicPrimary contact: Dr. Donald Grant, 606-783-2473, [email protected] contact: Jeffrey Liles, 606-783-2000, [email protected] contact: Glenn Ginn, 606-783-2499, [email protected]

Northern Kentucky UniversityHighland Heights, KY 41099www.music.nku.eduPrimary contact: Dr. Kurt Sander, 859-572-6922, [email protected] contact: Annette Pendery, 859-572-6399, [email protected] contact: William Brian Hogg, 859-572-5885, [email protected]

University of Kentucky School of Music 105 Fine Arts Building, Lexington, KY 40506www.uky.edu/finearts/music/Admissions contact: Dr. Joanne Filkins

(Graduate), 859-257-8181, [email protected] contact: Miles Osland, 859-257-8173, [email protected] ad, p.135

University of Louisville School of MusicJamey Aebersold Jazz Studies ProgramLouisville, KY 40292www.louisville.edu/music/jazzAdmissions contact: Laura Angermeier, 502-852-1623, [email protected] or


ROOTS, JAZZ,AND AMERICAN MUSIC

Bachelor’s Degree Program

800.899.SFCMsfcm.edu

SFJAZZ Collective

Join an elite group of young musicians and study with the award-winning SFJAZZ Collective, resident ensemble of SFJAZZ.

Now Accepting Applications for Fall 2018!

[email protected] contact: Mike Tracy, 502-852-6032, [email protected]

LOUISIANA

Grambling State UniversityConrad Hutchinson Jr. Performing Arts Center, PO Box 4238, Grambling, LA 71245Admissions contact: Dr. Larry Pannell, 318-274-2254Jazz contact: Leroy Hawthorne, Jr., 318-274-2166, [email protected]

Loyola UniversityMusic Dept.6363 St. Charles Ave. Box 8New Orleans, LA 70118www.music.loyno.eduAdmissions contact: Anthony Decuir, 504-865-3037, [email protected] contact: Gordon Towell, 504-865-2164, [email protected] ad, p.131

McNeese State UniversityPO Box 93175, Lake Charles, LA 70609www.mcneese.eduPrimary contact: Royce Tevis, 337-475-5000Jazz contact: Rick Condit, [email protected]

Southern University and A&M CollegeMusic Department PO Box 10215, Baton Rouge, LA 70813www.subr.eduPrimary contact: Frank White, 225-771-3440Admissions contact: Dr. Joyce W. O’Rourke, 225-771-3440, [email protected] contact: Herman Jackson, 225-771-3440, [email protected]

University of New OrleansDepartment of MusicNew Orleans, LA 70148www.uno.edu/~musicAdmissions contact: Ms. Roslyn Sheley, 800-256-5UNO, [email protected] contact: Edward Petersen, 504-280-7493, [email protected]

University of Southwestern LouisianaPO Drawer 41207, Lafayette, LA 70504www.usl.eduPrimary contact: Dr. Robert Lucky, 318-482-6016, [email protected]

MAINE

University of MaineCollege of Arts & Humanities 5788 Class of 1944 HallOrono, ME 04469www.umaine.edu/spaPrimary contact: Dan Barrett 207-581-1238

University of Maine at AugustaCollege of Arts & Humanities 46 University Drvie, Augusta, ME 04330http://uma.edu/jazz.htmlPrimary contact: Anita Jerosch, 207-621-3179, [email protected] Admissions contact: Sheri Fraser, 207-621-3185, [email protected]

University of Southern MaineSchool of Music 37 College Avenue, Gorham, ME 04038www.usm.maine.edu/music/Admissions contact: Chris Alden-Kinne, 207-780-5265, [email protected] contact: Chris Oberholtzer, 207-780-5126, [email protected]

MARYLAND

Community College of Baltimore, Catonsville CampusDept. of Music, 800 S. Rolling Rd.Catonsville, MD 21228www.ccbc.cc.md.usPrimary contact: Willis Keeling, 410-455-4109, [email protected]

Goucher College1021 Dulaney Valley Rd. Baltimore, MD 21204www.goucher.eduAdmissions contact: Mr. Corky Surbeck, 410-337-6100, 1-800-468-2437 ext. 6100, [email protected] contact: Dr. Lisa Weiss, 410-337-6148, 1-800-468-2437 ext. 6148, [email protected]

Montgomery CollegeDept. of Music 51 Mannakee St., Rockville, MD 20850



BM • BA • MM • MA • AD • DMA • PhDCOMPOSITION • CONDUCTING • JAZZ STUDIES

MUSIC EDUCATION • MUSICOLOGY

JAZZ FACULTY: Bass: Kenny Davis | Drums: Robby Ameen, Victor Lewis

Guitar: Vic Juris | Piano: Fred Hersch, Bill O’Connell, Eddie Palmieri, Marc StasioSaxophone: Ralph Bowen, Mark Gross | Baritone Saxophone: Gary Smulyan

Trombone: Conrad Herwig, Ed Neumeister | Trumpet: Joe Magnarelli, Joe Mosello

[email protected]

At the PEABODY CONSERVATORY,we are a community of artists —

cultivating excellence, embracing

new ideas, and committed to the

future of music in our world.

peabody.jhu.edu/jazztimes667-208-6600

Our world-class studio faculty includes:

Nasar Abadey, PercussionMiles Brown, BassBlake Meister, StringsPaul Meyers, Guitar

Alexander Norris, TrumpetTimothy Murphy, PianoJohn Thomas, Saxophone

www.montgomerycollege.orgPrimary contact: Rick Ensminger, 301-251-7552 Jazz contact: Ward Harris, [email protected]

Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University1 East Mount Vernon PlaceBaltimore, MD 21202www.peabody.jhu.edu/jazzAdmissions contact: David Lane, 410-234-4848, 800-368-2521, [email protected] contact: Gary Thomas, 410-234-4500, [email protected] ad, p.129

Towson University8000 York Road, Towson, MD 21252www.new.towson.edu/music/jazz/Admissions contact: Mary Ann Criss, 410-704-2143, [email protected] contact: Dave Ballou, 410-704-2831, [email protected]

University of MarylandSchool of Music Clarice Smith Performing Arts CenterCollege Park, MD 20742www.music.umd.eduAdmissions contact: Jenny Lang/ David Powell, 301-405-1313; 301-405-5031, [email protected] contact: Chris Vadala, 301-405-5519, [email protected] ad, p.141

University of Maryland/ Baltimore County1000 Hilltop Circle, Catonsville, MD 21043www.umbc.edu/musicPrimary contact: Dr. Michael Richards, 410-455 2942, [email protected] contact: Connie Bailey, 410-455 2942, [email protected] contact: Matt Belzer, 410-455 2942, [email protected]

University of Maryland Eastern ShoreOne Backbone Rd. Princess Anne, MD 21853https://www.umes.edu/arts/musicAdmissions contact: Mr. Nicholas Boyd, 410-651-6180, [email protected] contact: Dr. Brian Perez, 410-651-6571, [email protected]



MASSACHUSETTS

Amherst CollegeAmherst, MA 01002www.amherst.eduAdmissions contact: Nancy Ratner,413-542-2328, [email protected] contact: Bruce Diehl, (413) [email protected]

Berklee College of Music1140 Boylston St., Boston, MA 02215www.berklee.eduPrimary contact: Damien Bracken,800-BERKLEE, 617-747-2222, 617-747-2650(international), [email protected]

Boston ConservatoryOffice of Admissions8 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02215Primary contact: 617-912-9153

Fitchburg State University Music160 Pearl St., Fitchburg, MA 01420http://www.fitchburgstate.edu/academics/academic-departments/humanities-dept/music/Jazz contact: Michele Caniato, 978-665-3278,[email protected]

Harvard UniversityCambridge, MA 02138www.harvardband.org

Primary contact: Yosvany Terry,[email protected]

Longy School of Music27 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138www.longy.eduAdmissions contact: Katherine Drago,617-831-1790, [email protected] contact: Peter Cassino,617-831-1788, [email protected] ad, p.139

New England Conservatory290 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115www.necmusic.eduPrimary contact: Alex Powell,617-585-1101, [email protected] contact: Ken Schaphorst,[email protected] ad, p.75

University of Massachusetts AmherstDepartment of Music & Dance267 Fine Arts Center, Amherst, MA, 01003www.umass.edu/musicAdmissions contact: John Huling,413-545-6048, [email protected] contact: Professor Jeffrey W. Holmes,413-545-6046, [email protected] ad, p.123

University of Massachusetts at LowellCollege of Fine Arts Durgin Hal, 35 Wilder StreetLowell, MA 01854www.uml.eduPrimary contact: Dan Lutz, 978-934-3850 Westfield State UniversityDepartment of Music 577 Western Ave.,Westfield, MA 01086www.westfield. ma.edu/music/Admissions contact: Katelyn Shea, 413-572-8534, [email protected] contact: Edward Orgill413-572-8196, [email protected]

Williams CollegeWilliamstown, MA 01267www.williamstownjazz.comAdmissions contact: Richard Nesbit, 413-597-2211, [email protected] contact: Andy Jaffe, 413-597-4049, [email protected]

Worcester Polytechnical Institute100 Institute Rd., Worcester, MA 01609www.wpi.eduPrimary contact: Professor Richard Falco,508-831-5794, [email protected]

MICHIGAN

C.S. Mott Community College1401 E. Court St., Flint, MI 48503Primary contact: 517-432-2880

Central Michigan UniversityMusic Building 162 Mt. Pleasant, MI 48858www.music.cmich.eduPrimary contact: Randi L’Hommedieu,[email protected] contact: Mary Beth Minnis,989-774-3519, [email protected]

Grand Rapids Junior College143 Bostwick NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503Jazz contact: Duane Davis,616-771-3945, [email protected]

Oakland UniversityDepartment of Music Theatre and Dance302 Varner, Rochester, MI 48309www.oakland.edu/jazzAdmissions contact: Muriel Mader,248-370-2030, [email protected] contact: Miles Brown,248-370-2805, [email protected]

Hope College127 E. 12th Street, Holland, MI 49423www.hope.edu


←

The New England Conservatory Jazz Orchestra honors Sun Ra in the year of his centennial, 2014

AN

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BOB MINTZER

Signed copies of Bob Mintzer Big Band CDGET UP!

available at bobmintzer.com

Please contact: MINTZER MUSIC CO.t: 914.469.5988 w: bobmintzer.com

Please visit the new bobmintzer.com for big bandarrangements, books, cd’s and an all new blog.

Professor ofJazz Studies at USC

GRAMMY award-winning big band leader

Member of YELLOWJACKETS

Available as soloist in quartet or with big band

Jazz contact: Brian Coyle, 616-395-7653, [email protected]

Michigan State University College of Music333 W Circle Dr, Rm 253East Lansing, MI 48824-1043www.music.msu.eduAdmissions contact: Benjamin Ebener, 517-355-2140, [email protected] contact: Rodney Whitaker, 517-432-2194, [email protected]

University of MichiganSchool of Music, Theatre and Dance1100 Baits Dr., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2085www.music.umich.eduAdmissions contact: Emily Perryman, 734-763-7558, [email protected] contact: Ellen Rowe, 734-647-6297, [email protected]

Western Michigan University1903 W. Michigan AvenueKalamazoo, MI 49008www.wmich.edu/jazzstudies/Admissions contact: Margaret Hamilton, 269-387-4672, [email protected] contact: Tom Knific, 269-387-4710, [email protected]

Wayne State University Department of Music4841 Cass Ave., Suite 1321, Detroit, MI 48202www.music.wayne.eduPrimary contact: Norah Duncan IV, 313-577-1775 Admissions contact: Danny DeRose, 313-577-1783, [email protected] contact: Christopher Collins, 313-577-1780, [email protected]

MINNESOTA

McNally Smith College of Music19 Exchange Street East, St Paul, MN 55101www.mcnallysmith.eduPrimary contact: Joe Elliot, 800-594-9500, [email protected] contact: Matt Edlund, 800-594-9500, [email protected] contact: Pete Whitman, 651-361-3600 [email protected]

Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota#1473 St. Mary’s University, 1700 Terrace Heights, Winona, ME 055987www.smumn.edu Admissions contact: Joanne Frahm,

507-457-1700, [email protected] contact: Dr. John C. Paulson, 507-457-1596, [email protected]

St. Olaf College1520 St. Olaf Avenue, Northfield, MN 55057www.stolaf.eduAdmissions contact: Mary Hakes, 507-786-3297, [email protected]

Jazz contact: Dave Hagedorn,507-786-3196, [email protected]

University of Minnesota – Duluth1201 Ordean Ct., Duluth, MN 55812www.d.umn.edu/musicPrimary contact: Ryan Frane, 218-726-8208, [email protected] contact: Kathy Neff, [email protected]



University of Minnesota – MinneapolisMusic Dept. 2106 4th Street, Minneapolis, MN 55455Primary contact: Dean Sorenson, 612-624-5093

University of Minnesota – Twin Cities2106 S. Fourth St. Room 100Minneapolis, MN 55455music.umn.edu Admissions contact: Anabel Njoes, 612-624-2747, [email protected] contact: Dean Sorenson, 612-624-2334, [email protected]

MISSISSIPPI

Alcorn State University1000 ASU Drive #29Alcorn State, MS 39096www.alcorn.edu/academics/schools/school-of-arts-and-science/finearts/ jazz-festival/index.aspxJazz contact: Dr. David C Miller, 601-877-6602, [email protected]

Jackson State UniversityDept. of MusicPO Box 17055, Jackson, MS 39217www.jsums.eduJazz contact: Dr. Russell Thomas, Jr., 601-979-2141, [email protected]

MISSOURI

University of Central MissouriDept. of Music, CMSUWarrensburg, MO 64093www.cmsu.edu/musicPrimary contact: David Aaberg, 660-543-4530, [email protected]

St. Charles County Community College4601 Mid Rivers Mall DriveSt. Peters, MO 63376Primary contact: Elke Overton, [email protected]

University of Missouri – Kansas CityUMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance4949 Cherry Street, Kansas City, MO 64110http://conservatory.umkc.edu/Admissions contact: Dr. James Elswick, 816-235-2900, [email protected] contact: Prof. Bobby Watson, 816-235-2900, [email protected] ad, p.125

University of MissouriSchool of Music135 Fine Arts Building, Columbia, MO 65211

https://music.missouri.edu/ensemble/jazz573-882-2604, [email protected]

University of Missouri – St. LouisOne University Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63121www.music.umsl.edu Jazz contact: Jim Widner, 314-516-4235, [email protected]

Webster University470 E. Lockwood Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63119http://www.webster.edu/musicPrimary contact: Dr. Jeffrey Carter, 314-968-7033, [email protected] contact: UG: Jennifer Andonoff, 314-968-7001, [email protected]; GRAD: Glen Bauer, 314-968-7037, [email protected] contact: Paul DeMarinis, 314-968-7039, [email protected] ad, p.127

MONTANA

University of MontanaMusic Department 32 Campus Drive, Missoula, MT 59812www.umt.edu/defrancojazzPrimary contact: Anne Marie Brinkman, 406-243-5071Admissions contact: Julie Cahill, 406-243-5844, [email protected] contact: Lance Boyd, 406-243-5071, [email protected]

NEBRASKA

Northeast Community College801 East Benjamin, Norfolk, NE 68702www.northeast.college.comPrimary contact: Jim Boullion, 402-644-2020 Jazz contact: Linda Boullion, [email protected]

University of Nebraska at OmahaUNO Dept. of MusicOmaha, NE 68182http://music.unomaha.edu/Primary contact: Pete Madsen, 402-554-2297, [email protected] University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Glenn Korff School of Music113 Westbrook Music Building, 1104 R St.Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0100http://music.unl.edu/jazzstudies/jazz-studiesAdmissions contact: Janet Sievert, 402-472-2503, [email protected] contact: Paul Haar, 402-472-5672, [email protected] ad, p.72

NEVADA

Community College of Southern Nevada3200 E. Cheyenne Ave.N. Las Vegas, NV 89030www.ccsn.nevada.eduPrimary contact: Dr. Tom Ferguson, 702-651-4110, [email protected]

University of Nevada, Las Vegas 4505 South Maryland PkwyLas Vegas, Nevada 89154www.unlv.eduAdmissions contact: Department of Music, 702-895-3332, [email protected] contact: David Loeb, 702-895-3739, [email protected] ad, p.117

University of Nevada, RenoDepartment of Music/226Reno, NV 89557www.unrjazz.orgPrimary contact: Louis Niebur, 775-784-6145, [email protected] contact: Peter Epstein, 775-784-1501, [email protected]

NEW HAMPSHIRE

University of New HampshireMusic Department Paul Creative Arts Center, 30 Academic Way, Durham, NH 03824www.unh.edu/musicAdmissions contact: Alexis Zaricki, 603-862-2418, [email protected] contact: Nathan Jorgensen, [email protected], 603-862-2404

NEW JERSEY

Montclair State University – Cali School of Music1 Normal Avenue, Montclair, NJ 07043www.montclair.edu/musicAdmissions contact: JaNeen Vinson, 973-655-7610, [email protected] contact: Dr. Jeffrey Kunkel, 973-655-7215, [email protected]

New Jersey City UniversityDept. of Music 2039 Kennedy Blvd., Jersey City, NJ 07305www.njcu.edu/mdtJazz contact: Ed Joffe, [email protected]



Princeton UniversityDepartment of Music Woolworth Center of Musical StudiesPrinceton, NJ 08544www.princeton.edu/jazzprogramAdmissions contact: Greg Smith, 609-258-6078, [email protected] contact: Dr. Anthony D.J. Branker, 609-258-2219, [email protected]

Rowan UniversityMusic Dept., Lab BandGlassboro, NJ 08028www.rowan.eduAdmissions contact: Robert Rawlins, 856-256-4500 ext. 4557, [email protected] contact: Denis DiBlasio, 856-256-4500 ext. 3528, [email protected]

Rutgers UniversityMason Gross School of the Arts, Music Department Marryott Music Bldg, 81 George St., New Brunswick, NJ 08901www.masongross.rutgers.eduPrimary contact: Peggy Barbarite, 732-932-9190, [email protected] contact: Mandy Feiler, 848-932-5208, [email protected] contact: Marc Stasio, 848-932-1894, [email protected] ad, p.129

William Paterson UniversityShea Performing Arts Center 300 Pompton Rd, Wayne, NJ 07470www.wpunj.eduAdmissions contact: Carlos Cano, 973-720-3466, [email protected] contact: David Demsey, 973-720-2268, [email protected]

NEW YORK

Audrey Cohen College75 Varrick Street, New York, NY 10013www.audreycohen.eduPrimary contact: Pazit Levitan, 212-343-1234, ext. 3412, [email protected]

Brooklyn Conservatory of Music – Brooklyn Campus58 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217www.brooklynconservatory.comPrimary contact: Jennifer Newell,

718-622-3300, [email protected] contact: Earl McIntyre, 718-622-3300

Brooklyn Conservatory of Music Queens Campus42-76 Main Street, Flushing, NY 11355www.brooklynconservatory.comPrimary contact: Kenneth Murphy, 718-461-8910

City College of the City University of New York Music Dept. 138th St. & Convent Ave. New York, NY 10031www.ccny.cuny.eduPrimary contact: Marla Alexandre, 212-650-5411, [email protected] contact: Alan Sabal, 212-650-6554



Jazz contact: Steve Wilson, 212-650-5411,[email protected]

City University of New YorkLehman College, MD250 Bedford Park West, Bronx, NY 10468Primary contact: Bernard Shockett,718-960-8247

Colgate University13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346www.colgate.eduJazz contact: Glenn Cashman,315-228-6688,[email protected]

The Collective School of Music541 Avenue of the Americas, 4th FloorNew York, NY 10011www.thecollective.eduJazz contact: John Castellano,212-741-0091 ext. 103,[email protected]

College of Saint Rose432 Western Ave, Albany, NY 12203www.strose.eduAdmissions contact: Jeremy Bogan,800-637-8556, [email protected] contact: Paul Evoskevich,518-454-5195, [email protected]

Columbia UniversityMusic Department621 Dodge Hall, 2960 BroadwayNew York, NY 10027

www.columbia.eduPrimary contact: Beth Pratt,212-854-1257, [email protected] contact: Finn Figeland,212-854-1585, [email protected] contact: Dr. Chris Washburne,212-854-9862, [email protected]

Conservatory of Musicof Brooklyn College2900 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11209www.bcmusic.orgPrimary contact: Arturo O’Farrill,718-951-1176, [email protected] contact: Shanice Spear,718-951-1178,[email protected]

Cornell UniversityIthaca, NY 14853http://jazz.arts.cornell.edu/

The Eastman School of Music26 Gibbs Street, Rochester, NY 14604http://www.esm.rochester.edu/jazz/Primary contact: Jeff Campbell,585-274-1440 [email protected] contact: Dr. Matthew Ardizzone800-388-9596, 585-274-1060,[email protected]

Five Towns College305 N. Service Road, Dix Hills, NY 11746www.ftc.eduAdmissions contact: 631-656-2110,[email protected]

Jazz contact: Jeff Lipton or Jill Miller-Thorn, 631-656-2122 or 631-656-2142

Fredonia College, SUNYFredonia, NY 14063www.fredonia.eduPrimary contact: Harry Jacobson, 716-673-3248, [email protected]

Hunter College of CUNYDepartment of Music 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021www.hunter.cuny.edu/~musicAdmissions contact: Prof. Ruth Deford, 212-772-5537, [email protected], [email protected] contact: Ryan Keberle, 212-772-5020, [email protected]

Ithaca College School of Music 3322 Whalen Center for MusicIthaca, NY 14850http://faculty.ithaca.edu/mtitlebaum/Admissions contact: Townsend Plant,607-274-3366, [email protected] contact: Mike Titlebaum,607-274-1283, [email protected]

The Juilliard School60 Lincoln Center Plaza,New York, NY 10023www.juilliard.eduPrimary contact: Janet Kessin,212-799-5000, [email protected] contact: 212-799-5000 ext.223, [email protected] ad, p.121

LIU Brooklyn1 University Plaza, Brooklyn, NY 11201www.liu.edu/brooklyn/musicAdmissions contact: Danielle Mebert,718-488-1084, [email protected] contact: Dr. Gloria Cooper,718-488-1450, [email protected]

LIU PostDepartment of Music720 Northern Boulevard,Brookville, NY 11548www.liu.edu/svpa/susicPrimary contact: Dr. Gloria Cooper,516-299-2474, [email protected] contact: Michael Lockhart,516-229-2900Jazz contact: Prof. T.K. Blue,516-299-2930, [email protected]

Manhattan School of Music120 Claremont AvenueNew York, New York 10027917-493-4446

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The Juilliard Jazz Orchestra will perform six concerts in its 2017-18 season

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Christan Cassidy, Director of Admissionswww.msmnyc.edu/ Instruction-Faculty/ Academic-Departments/JazzSee ad, p.66

The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music55 West 13th Street, 5th floorNew York, NY 10011http://newschool.edu/jazz/Primary contact: 212-229-5896 ext.4589, [email protected] ad, p.91

New York University Steinhardt SchoolMusic and Performing Arts Professions35 West 4th Street, Suite 1077New York, NY 10012www.steinhardt.nyu.edu/ jazz-nyu2015Primary contact: Dr. Paul Horan, 212-998-5424, [email protected] contact: John Myers (Graduate Admissions), 212-998-5030, [email protected] contact: Dr. David Schroeder, 212-998-5446, [email protected] ad, p.126

Orange County Community College115 South St., Middletown, NY 10940www.sunyorange.eduPrimary contact: Chris Parker, 845-341-4791, [email protected]

Purchase College, SUNY735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10577www.purchase.edu/music/jazzPrimary contact: Beatriz Martin-ruiz, [email protected] contact: Lori Djivre, 914-251-6300, [email protected] Jazz contact: Pete Malinverni, 914-251-7985, [email protected]

Queens College – CUNYAaron Copland School of MusicFlushing, NY 11367www.qc.cuny.eduAdmissions contact:

University of Kentucky JAZZ STUDIESNational Awards from Downbeat, Elmhurst College

Invitational Performances from Montreux and North Sea Jazz Festivals, Jazz Educators Network, Midwest Band & Orchestra Clinic and more

“One of the best of its style”Jazziz

finearts.uky.edu/musicMiles Osland, Director859-257-8173, [email protected]

FestivalF

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SUMMER TOURS

(866) 499-3799 CulturalTourConsultants.comTOLLFREEContact us for Details Today!

Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy•Vitoria-Gaste

iz in Spain

Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland •Jazzaldia in Spain

Jazz a Juan on the French Riviera •

Jazz a Vienne in France

Netherlands North Sea Jazz Festival • Istanbul Jaz

z Festival

Mario Caruso, 718-997-5200, [email protected] contact: Michael Philip Mossman, 718-997-3823, [email protected]

Roberts Wesleyan College2301 Westside Drive, Rochester, NY 14624

www.roberts.edu/musicJazz contact: Mike Van Allen, [email protected]

SUNY – BinghamtonMusic Dept. PO Box 6000Binghamton, NY 13902Primary contact: April Lucas, 607-785-4346



SUNY College of FredoniaMason Hall, School of MusicFredonia, NY 14063www.fredonia.eduAdmissions contact: Barry Kilpatrick,[email protected] contact:Dr. Linda Neil Phillips,716-673-3151,[email protected]

Syracuse University200 Crouse College,Syracuse, NY 13244www.vpa.syr.eduAdmissions contact:Brade Ethington,315-443-5892,[email protected] contact: Joe Riposo,315-443-2191, [email protected]

NORTH CAROLINA

Brevard College400 N. Broad Street,Brevard, NC 28712www.brevard.eduPrimary contact: Todd Tucker,828-884-8116,[email protected] contact:Laura Franklin, 828-884-8112

Davidson CollegeMusic DepartmentP.O. Box 7131, Davidson, NC 28035www.davidson.eduPrimary contact: William Lawing,704-894-2354, [email protected]

Duke University105 Mary Duke Biddle Music BuildingDurham, NC 27708https://music.duke.edu/ensembles/jazz-programPrimary contact: John Brown,919-660-3385, [email protected]

East Carolina University School of MusicFletcher Music Center,Greenville, NC 27858www.ecu.edu/music/jazzAdmissions contact: Dr. Jeffrey Ward,252-328-6851, [email protected] contact: Dr. Jeff Bair,252-328-6851, [email protected]

Elon UniversityMusic Dept.Campus Box 2800Elon, NC 27244www.elon.edu/musicAdmissions contact: Kimberly Rippy,336-278-5600, [email protected] contact: Jon Metzger, 336-278-5683,[email protected]

Mars Hill CollegeDepartment of MusicMars Hill, NC 28754www.mhc.eduAdmissions contact: Susan Bryson,866-642-4968, [email protected] contact: Dr. Jim Sparrow,828-689-1433, [email protected]

North Carolina Central University1801 Fayetteville Street, c/o Jazz StudiesProgram, Department of MusicDurham, NC 27707Contact: Dr. Ira Wiggins,Director of Jazz Studies, 919-530-7214,[email protected] ad, p.145

North Carolina School for the Arts1533 S. Main St.Winston-Salem, NC 27127www.ncarts.eduAdmissions contact: Julie Hammarback,336-760-3260, [email protected] contact: Ronald Rudkin,336-770-3356, [email protected]

University of North Carolina AshevilleOne University HeightsAsheville, NC 28804-8510music.unca.eduJazz contact: Dr. William Bares,828-250-2312, [email protected]

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Marcus Miller (left) and Richard Bona (with Quincy Jones at back) play for student musicians in Cuba in April, during a program for International Jazz Day presented by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz and UNESCO

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University of North Carolina at Chapel HillDepartment of Music Hill Hall, CB#3320Chapel Hill, NC 27599www.unc.edu/depts/music/Admissions contact: Jeffrey Fuchs, 919-962-5695, [email protected] contact: James Ketch, 919-962-7560, [email protected]

University of North Carolina at Charlotte9201 University City BoulevardCharlotte, NC 29223Jazz contact: Dr. Will Campell, 704-687-4402, [email protected]

University of North Carolina at GreensboroMiles Davis Jazz Studies Program PO Box 26170, Greensboro, NC 27402http://jazz.uncg.eduAdmissions contact: Amanda Hughes, 336-334-5789, [email protected] contact: Steve Haines, 336-256-0105, [email protected]

University of North Carolina at PembrokeMusic Department 1 University Drive, Pembroke, NC 28372www.uncp.edu/music/Primary contact: Timothy Altman, 910-521-6230, [email protected] contact: Ms. Jackie Clark, 910-521-6264, [email protected] contact: Professor Aaron Vandermeet, 910-521-6404, [email protected] University of North Carolina at Wilmington Department of Music601 South College RoadWilmington, NC 28403http://www.uncw.edu/musicJazz contact: Frank Bongiorno, 910-962-3395, [email protected]

Western Carolina UniversityMusic Department 253 Coulter Building, Cullowhee, NC 28723www.music.wcu.eduAdmissions contact: Will Peebles, 828-227-7242, [email protected] contact: Pavel Wlosok, 828-227-3261, [email protected]

OHIO

Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music275 Eastland Rd., Berea, OH 44017www.bw.edu

Primary contact: Susan Van Vorst, 440-826-2362, [email protected] contact: Anita Evans, 440-826-2368, [email protected] contact: Greg Banaszak, 440-826-2097, [email protected]

Bowling Green State UniversityCollege of Musical ArtsRidge & Willard St.

BFA IN

JAZZ STUDIESMONTREAL

Big BandJazz Vocal EnsembleEclectic EnsembleImprovisationCompositionArrangingPrivate LessonsWorld class guest artists

Musicconcordia.ca/jazzbfa

Auditions for Spring 2018Nordan Young Artist Award*

January 13, 2018

January 27, 2018February 10, 2018February 24, 2018

If music is your passion,TCU is your school.

*Prescreening Video Required

SCHOOL OF MUSIC

Bowling Green, OH 43403www.bgsu.eduAdmissions contact: Dr. Kathleen Moss, 419-372-8577, [email protected] contact: Chris Buzzelli, 419-372-2181, [email protected]

Capital University Conservatory of Music 2199 E. Main St.,



Columbus, OH 43209www.capital.eduPrimary contact: Bob Breithaupt,614-236-6234,[email protected]

Cleveland State UniversityBlack Studies Program2121 Euclid Avenue, UC 103Cleveland, OH 44115www.csuohio.edu/blackstudiesPrimary contact: Ruth Reese-Carter216-687-5461,[email protected]

Cuyahoga Community College2900 Community College Ave.Cleveland, OH 44115www.tri-c.eduPrimary contact:Stephen Enos, 216-987-4256,[email protected] ad, p.124

Oberlin Conservatory of MusicCon Annex - 39 W. College St.Oberlin, OH 44074www.oberlin.edu/conAdmissions contact: Michael Manderen,440-775-8413,[email protected] contact: Bobby Ferrazza,440-775-6633,[email protected] ad, p.77

Ohio Northern University535 South Main Street, Ada, OH 45810www.onu.eduAdmissions contact: 419-772-2260, [email protected] contact: Dr. Edwin Williams, 419-772-2151, [email protected]

Ohio State University School of Music 1866 College Rd., Columbus, OH 43210www.arts.ohio-state.edu/musicJazz contact: Dr. Ted McDaniel, [email protected]

Ohio University School of Music 440 Glidden Hall, Athens, OH 45701www.finearts.ohio.edu/musicAdmissions contact:Andrew Trachsel,740-593-4244,[email protected] contact: Matt James,740-593-0957,[email protected]

Otterbein CollegeDepartment of Music1 Otterbein College,Westerville, OH 43081www.otterbein.edu/musicPrimary contact: 614-823-1508Admissions contact:Meghan Sparks,614-823-1279,[email protected] contact: Ben Huntoon,Gayle Walker, 614-823-1408,614-823-1318,[email protected]

University of AkronSchool of MusicGozzetta Hall, Akron, OH 44325www.uakron.eduPrimary contact: Roland Paolucci,330-972-6910,[email protected]

University of CincinnatiCollege-Conservatory of MusicCincinnati, OH 45221www.ccm.uc.edu/jazzAdmissions contact:Andrea Fitzgerald,513-556-9479, [email protected] contact: Scott Belck,513-556-9447, [email protected]

University of Dayton300 College Park, Dayton, OH 45469www.udayton.edu/ Jazz contact: Dr. Willie Morris III, 937-229-3994, [email protected]

University of ToledoDepartment of Music MS605Toledo, OH 43606www.utoledo.edu/comm-arts/music/ degrees/jazz_studies.htmlAdmissions contact: Norm Damschroder,419-530-2966, [email protected] contact: Gunnar Mossblad, 419-530-4555, [email protected]

Youngstown State University1 University Plaza, Youngstown, OH 44555www.ysu.eduAdmissions contact: Sue Davis, 330-941-2000, [email protected] contact: Dr. Kent J Engelhardt,330-941-3636,[email protected]

OKLAHOMA

Southwestern Oklahoma University100 Campus Drive, Weatherford, OK 73096www.swosu.edu/depts/music/Admissions contact: Mr. Bob Klaassen,580-774-3201, [email protected] contact: Dr. Terry Segress,580-774-3708, [email protected]

University of Central OklahomaSchool of Music & Jazz Lab100 North University DriveEdmond, OK 73034www.ucojazzlab.comAdmissions contact: Laurie Flewwellin,405-974-5004, [email protected] contact: Brian Gorrell,405-359-7989 ext. 278,[email protected]

University of OklahomaSchool of Music500 W. Boyd, Rm 138, Norman, OK 73019Primary contact: Jay Laging, 405-325-3803

OREGON

Mt. Hood Community College26000 S.E. Stark St.,Gresham, OR 97030www.mhcc.eduPrimary contact: Dave Barduhn,503-669-6969, [email protected]

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Oberlin faculty member Eddie Henderson performs with the school's Jazz Ensemble

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Admissions contact: Judy Froehlich, 503-491-7392 Jazz contact: Susie Jones, 503-491-7158, [email protected]

University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, Jazz Studies 1225 University of OregonEugene, OR 97403www.music.uoregon.eduAdmissions contact: SOMD Office of Admissions, 541-346-5268 [email protected] contact: Steve Owen, 541-346-2137 [email protected]

Western Oregon University345 N. Monmouth Ave, Monmouth, OR 97302wou.eduPrimary contact: Keller Coker, 503-838-8276 [email protected]

PENNSYLVANIA

Bucknell UniversityLewisburg, PA 17837www.bucknell.edu/music

California University of Pa.250 University Ave., California, PA 15419www.cup.eduPrimary contact: Max Gonano, 724-938-4242, [email protected]

Duquesne UniversityMary Pappert School of Music 600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15282www.duq.edu/musicPrimary contact: Troy Centofanto, 412-396-5983, [email protected] contact: Mike Tomaro, 412-396-5867, [email protected]; Mark Koch. 412-396-4939, [email protected]

East Stroudsburg University of PennsylvaniaMusic Department F&PAC 200 Prospect StreetEast Stroudsburg, PA 18301www.esu.eduAdmissions contact: Alan Chesterton, [email protected] contact: Patrick Dorian, 570-422-3171, [email protected]

Indiana University of PennsylvaniaMusic Dept.Indiana, PA 15705Primary contact: Gary Bird, 724-357-2899

Kutztown University of PennsylvaniaDepartment of MusicKutztown, PA 19530www.kutztown.edu/acad/music/Admissions contact: Christine Quinter, 610-683-4550, [email protected] contact: Kevin Kjos, 610-683-1583, [email protected] Lehigh UniversityMusic Department Zoellner Arts Center, 420 East Packer Ave.Bethlehem, PA 18018www.lehigh.edu/~inmsc/Primary contact: Gene Perla, 610-758-3835, [email protected] contact: Dana Stowe, 610-758-3000Jazz contact: William Warfield, 610-758-5192, [email protected]

Millersville UniversityPOB 1002, Music Dept., Millersville, PA 17551www.millersv.eduPrimary contact: Keith Wiley, 717-872-3460, [email protected]

Moravian College1200 Main St., Bethlehem, PA 18018www.moravian.edu/musicAdmissions contact: Erika Mondok, 610-861-1320, [email protected] contact: Neil Wetzel, 610-861-1621, [email protected]

Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania219 Swope Music HallSlippery Rock, PA 16057www.sru.eduAdmissions contact: Ms. Mimi Campbell,724-738-2110, [email protected] contact: Jason Kush, 724-738-2443, [email protected]

Temple UniversityBoyer College of Music & Dance2001 N. 13th StreetPhiladelphia, PA 19122www.temple.edu/boyer Admissions contact: James Short, 215-204-8598, [email protected] contact: Terell Stafford, 215-204-8301, [email protected] ad, p.69

University of the Arts School of Music250 South Broad St., Philadelphia, PA 19102www.uarts.eduAdmissions contact: Barbara Elliott, 215-717-6049, [email protected] contact: Marc Dicciani, 215-717-6342, [email protected]

Study new traditionsand techniques, spanning jazz and contemporary genres, in Longy’s Jazz and Contemporary Music program.

Begin your journey at

Longy.edu/apply

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West Chester UniversitySchool of Music Swope Hall, West Chester, PA 19383www.wcupa.edu/cvpaPrimary contact: Peter Paulsen, 610-436-2547, [email protected] contact: Dr. John Villella,610-436-2495, [email protected]

RHODE ISLAND

Community College of Rhode Island400 East Avenue, Warwick, RI 02886www.ccri.edu/musicPrimary contact: Steve Lajoie, 401-825-2168, [email protected]

University of Rhode IslandMusic Department 105 Upper College Road, Kingston, RI 02881www.uri.eduJazz contact: Professor Joe Parillo, 401-874-2431, [email protected]

SOUTH CAROLINA

College of Charleston54 St. Phillips St., Charleston, SC 29424www.cofc.eduJazz contact: Robert Lewis, 843-953-5169, [email protected]

Furman UniversityDepartment of Music, 3300 Pointsett Highway, Greenville, SC 29613www.furman.eduAdmissions contact: Marcella Frese 864-294-2086, [email protected] contact: Matt Olson, 864-294-3284, [email protected]

University of South CarolinaSchool of MusicColumbia, SC 29208www.music.sc.eduAdmissions contact: Jennifer Jablonski, 803-777-6614, [email protected] contact: Bert Ligon, 803-777-6565, [email protected]

University of South Carolina at Spartanburg800 University Way, Spartanburg, SC 29303Primary contact: Patrick Langham, 864-503-5263, [email protected] Winthrop UniversityDepartment of MusicRock Hill, SC 29733www.winthrop.edu/musicAdmissions contact: Donald Rogers, 803-323-2255, [email protected]

Jazz contact: Phil Thompson, 803-323-4515, [email protected]

SOUTH DAKOTA

Black Hills State University1200 University, Spearfish, SD 57799www.bhsu.eduPrimary contact: Dr. David Berberick, 605-644-2641, [email protected] contact: Beth Oaks, [email protected] contact: Dr. Christopher Hahn, [email protected]

TENNESSEE

Belmont University1900 Belmont Blvd., Nashville, TN 37212www.belmont.eduPrimary contact: Keith Mason, 615-460-6274, [email protected] contact: Maren Bishop, 615-460-8307, [email protected] contact: Dr. Jeff Kirk, 615-460-8107, [email protected]

LeMoyne-Owen College807 Walker Ave., Memphis, TN 38126www.loc.eduJazz contact: Dr. Jorge Sosa, 901-435-1310

Middle Tennessee State UniversityPO Box 47, Murfreesboro, TN 37132www.mtsumusic.comAdmissions contact: Connie Bowrey,615-898-2469, [email protected] contact: Jamey Simmons, 615-898-2724, [email protected]

University of MemphisRudi E. Scheidt School of Music,Jazz and Studio Music Division 129 Music Building, Memphis, TN 38152www.memphis.edu/music, [email protected] contact: Jack Cooper, 901-678-2547, [email protected]

University of TennesseeNatalie L. Haslam School of Music 1741 Volunteer Blvd., Knoxville, TN www.music.utk.edu/jazzAdmissions contact: Lori Brown, 865-974-3241, [email protected] contact: Mark Boling, 865-974-3241, [email protected]

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The Temple University Jazz Band performs at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in New York

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Degrees Offered:Masters in Jazz Studies - Instrumental Performance

Bachelor of Arts - Instrumental Jazz EmphasisBachelor of Music - Instrumental Jazz Studies

Music Education Degree - Instrumental Jazz Studies

Faculty:Chris Vadala - Director of Jazz Studies,

Saxophone/Woodwinds, Large EnsembleConductor, Improvisation

Gerry Kunkel - guitar, Improvisation, combosChuck Redd - drumset, vibes, percussion masterclasses

Jon Ozment - pianoChris Gekker - trumpet

Tom Baldwin - bass, combosTim Powell - Jazz Theory, Jazz Arranging /

Composition InstructorDave Perkel - trombone

Curriculum offerings: 3 Jazz Ensembles (Big Bands),4 Combos and Advanced Improvisation/Pedagogy/

Theory courses, Jazz Theory, Jazz History, Jazz Arranging/Composition, Independent Studies.

MM assistantships available

Recent and Upcoming Clinicians/Artists:Wayne Shorter • Roy Haynes • Dave Holland

Branford Marsalis • Christian McBrideBrad Meldau • Maria Schneider • Phil Woods

Terell Stafford (UM alum) • McCoy Tyner • JoshuaRedman Chick Corea/ Bobby Mc Ferrin • Kenny Garrett

[email protected]

TEXAS

Amarillo CollegePO Box 447, Amarillo, TX 79178www.actx.edu~musicPrimary contact: Jim Laughlin, 806-345-5572, [email protected]

Brazosport College500 College Dr., Lake Jackson, TX 77566www.brazosport.edu/programs/MusicPrimary contact: Rodney Mason, 979-230-3316,[email protected] contact: Richard Birk, 979-230-3272, [email protected]

Coastal Bend College – Beeville Campus3800 Charco Road, Beeville, TX, 78102http://coastalbend.edu/Beeville/Primary contact: Charles Davis, 512-358-3130 Jazz contact: Jim Lee, [email protected]

College of the Mainland1200 Amburn Road, Texas City, TX 77591www.com.edu/fine-arts/music.phpAdmissions contact: Kelly Musick, 409-933-8264, [email protected] contact: Sparky Koerner, 409-933-8347, [email protected]

Collin County Community College2800 E. Spring Creek Pkwy.Plano, TX 75074www.ccccd.eduJazz contact: Kris Berg, 972-881-5108, [email protected]

Houston Community CollegeWestchester Campus 901 Yorkchester, Houston, TX 77079www.hccs.cc.tx.usPrimary contact: Joe LoCascio, 713-718-5620

Lamar UniversityDepartment of Music, Theatre & DancePO Box 10044, Beaumont, TX 77710www.lamar.eduJazz contact: Dr. Wayne Dyess, [email protected]

Saint Mary’s University1 Camino Santa MariaSan Antonio, TX 78228www.stmarytx.eduAdmissions contact: Prof. John Moore, 210-436-3421, [email protected] contact: Prof. John Rankin,

210-436-3011 ext. 1386, [email protected]

Stephen F. Austin State UniversityDept. of MusicNacogdoches, TX 75962Primary contact: Ron Anderson, 409-468-4602

Texas A&M University, KingsvilleMusic Department, MSC 174Kingsville, TX 78363www.tamuk.edu/musicJazz contact: Paul Hageman, 361-593-2806, [email protected]

Texas Christian University School of MusicBox 297500, Fort Worth, TX 76129www.music.tcu.eduAdmissions contact: Karen Scott, 817-257-7490Jazz contact: Joe Eckert, 817-257-5576, [email protected] ad, p.137

Texas State University601 University Drive, San Marcos, TX 78666www.txstate.edu/jazzstudies/Admissions contact: Deborah Soward, 512-245-1932 [email protected] contact: Dr. Keith Winking, 512-245-2651, [email protected]

University of HoustonMoores School of Music Houston, TX 77204http://uhjazz.comPrimary contact: Noe Marmolejo, 713-743-3191Admissions contact: Kelly Ibarra, 713-743-5934, [email protected]

University of North TexasDivision of Jazz Studies 1155 Union Circle #305040Denton, TX 76203; www.jazz.unt.eduPrimary contact: John Murphy, 940-565-4344, [email protected] ad, p.115

University of Texas at ArlingtonMusic Dept. Box 19105, Arlington, TX 76019www.uta.edu/musicPrimary contact: Tim Ishii, 817-272-1205, [email protected] contact: Linda McQuaid, 817-272-2485, [email protected] contact: Dan Cavanagh, 817-272-1107, [email protected]


University of Texas at AustinSchool of MusicAustin, TX 78712www.music.utexas.eduAdmissions contact: Sarah Borshard, 512-471-0504, [email protected] (Undergraduate), Dan Seriff, 512-471-5496, [email protected] (Graduate)Jazz contact: Jeff Hellmer, 512-471-0744, [email protected]

Weatherford College225 College Park Dr.Weatherford, TX 76086Jazz contact: Cal Lewiston, 817-598-6338, [email protected]

UTAH

Brigham Young UniversitySchool of MusicC-550 Harris Fine Arts Ctr. Provo, UT 84602www.music.byu.eduPrimary contact: Mike Ohman, [email protected] contact: Mark Ammons, 801-422-4824,[email protected]

University of UtahAdmissions Office, 201 S 1460 E Room 250S, Salt Lake City, UT 84112www.music.utah.edu/index.htmlPrimary contact: Henry Wolking, 801-581-7281, [email protected]

Utah State University4015 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322http://music.usu.edu/ensembles/jazz/index.cfmAdmissions contact: Cary Youmans, 435-797-3015, [email protected] contact: Jon Gudmundson, 435-797-3003, [email protected]

VERMONT

Goddard CollegePlainfield, VT 05667www.goddard.eduPrimary contact: Don Glasgo, 800-468-4888, [email protected]

Johnson State College337 College HillJohnson, VT 05656-9464www.jsc.vsc.eduAdmissions contact: Drew Farrell, 800-635-2356, [email protected] contact: Steve Blair, 802-635-1314, [email protected]


University of VermontSouthwick Music ComplexBurlington, VT 05405www.uvm.edu/~music/Jazz contact: Patricia Julien,[email protected];Alex Stewart, [email protected];Ray Vega, [email protected]

VIRGINIA

Christopher Newport UniversityFerguson Center for the Arts1 Avenue for the ArtsNewport News, VA 23606www.fergusoncenter.org

George Mason University4400 University Drive, MS 3E3Fairfax, VA 22030http://music.gmu.edu/jazz-studies/Primary contact: Dr. Darden Purcell,703-993-1380, [email protected]

Hampton UniversityDepartment of MusicHampton, VA 23668www.hamptonu.eduPrimary contact: Dr. Sheila Maye,757-727-5237, [email protected]

James Madison UniversitySchool of Music800 S. Main Street, MSC 7301Harrisonburg, VA 22807www.jmu.edu

Admissions contact: Dr. Michelle Kirkdorffer, 540-568-3851, [email protected] contact: Dr. Charles Dotas, 540-568-6180, [email protected]

Shenandoah Conservatory1460 University Dr., Winchester, VA 22655https://www.su.edu/conservatory/areas-of-study/bachelor-of-music-in-jazz-studies/ Admissions contact: Adam Schuster, 540-432-2266, [email protected] contact: Robert Larson, 540-665-4557, [email protected]

University of RichmondMusic Department Booker Hall, Richmond, VA 23173www.richmond.eduAdmissions contact: Pam Spence, 804-289-8640, [email protected] contact: Dr. Michael Davison,804-289-8281, [email protected]

University of VirginiaMcIntire Department of MusicP.O. Box 400176, Old Cabell HallCharlottesville, VA 22904www.virginia.edu/musicAdmissions contact: Arts SupplementCoordinator, 434-982-3200,[email protected] contact: John D’earth,[email protected]

Virginia Commonwealth UniversityDepartment of Music922 Park Ave., Richmond, VA, 23284-2004www.jazz.vcu.eduAdmissions contact: Erin Patterson,804-828-1167, [email protected] contact: Prof. Antonio J. Garcia,804-827-0699, [email protected]

Virginia TechMus.Dept., Jazz Studies,Squires Bldg., Blacksburg, VA 24061www.vt.eduAdmissions contact: Barbara Townley,540-231-5704, [email protected] contact: James Miley, 540-231-1879,[email protected]

Virginia Union University1819 Sunnyside Ave. Hopewell, VA 23860www.vuu.eduPrimary contact: Kevin Teasley,804-257-5665

WASHINGTON

Central Washington University400 E University Way, Ellensburg, WA 98926

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At a master class, Dave Holland jams with NEC alumna Bridget Kearney of Lake Street Dive

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www.cwu.edu/music/jazzPrimary contact: Chris Bruya, 509-963-1426, [email protected]

Cornish College of the Arts1000 Lenora Street, Seattle, WA 98121www.cornish.eduAdmissions contact: 206-726-ARTS, 206-726-5016, [email protected] contact: Tom Baker, 206-726-5030, [email protected]

Eastern Washington University119 MUS, Cheney, WA 99004www.ewu.edu/musicAdmissions contact: Colleen Hegney, 509-359-2241Jazz contact: Jenny Kellogg, 509-359-7421, [email protected]

Seattle Central Community College1701 Broadway, Seattle, WA 98122www.seattlecentral.eduAdmissions contact: 206 587-3800Jazz contact: Brian Kirk, 206-587-6338, [email protected]

Shoreline Community College16106 Greenwood Avenue NorthSeattle, WA 98133www.elmo.shore.ctc.edu/musicdept/Admissions contact: 206-546-4101, [email protected] contact: Doug Reid, 206-546-4759, [email protected]

University of Washington School of MusicBox 353450, Seattle, WA 98195www.music.washington.eduAdmissions contact: Julia Tobiska, [email protected] contact: Cuong Vu, [email protected]

Washington State UniversityJazz Studies Program PO Box 645300, Pullman, WA 99164http://libarts.wsu.edu/music/areainfo/jazz/index.htmAdmissions contact: Wendy Jo Peterson, 888-468-6978, http://about.wsu.edu/admission/Jazz contact: Brian Ward, [email protected]

Western Washington UniversityDept. of Music, Performing Arts Ctr. 273 Bellingham, WA 98225Primary contact: Chuck Israels, 360-650-3133 ext. 3130

Whitworth UniversityW. 300 Hawthorne, Spokane, WA 99251www.whitworth.edu

Jazz contact: Dr. Dan Keberle, 509-777-3280, [email protected]

WEST VIRGINIA

Marshall University1 John Marshall DriveHuntington, WV 25755marshall.edu/somt/music/jazz-studies/Admissions contact: Dr. Adam Dalton, 800-642-3499, 304-696-3117, [email protected] contact: Dr. Martin W. Saunders, 304-696-4316, [email protected] ad, p.133

Shepherd UniversityDepartment of Music & Theatre P.O. Box 3210Shepherdstown, WV 25443www.shepherd.edu/musicwebPrimary contact: Mark McCoy, 304-876-5555, [email protected] contact: Barbara Spicher, 304-876-5711, [email protected] contact: Dr. Mark Cook, 304-876-5115, [email protected]

West Virginia University School of Music 1 Fine Arts Dr., Morgantown, WV 26505http://community.wvu.edu/~pes002/Admissions contact: Jodie Lewis, [email protected] contact: Prof. Paul Scea, 304-293-4549, [email protected]

West Virginia Wesleyan College59 College Ave, Buckhannon, WV 26201www.wvwc.eduAdmissions contact: John Waltz, 304-473-8510, [email protected] contact: Prof. James H. Moore, 304-473-8052, [email protected]

WISCONSIN

Lawrence University Conservatory of Music711 E Boldt Way SPC 29, Appleton, WI 54911www.lawrence.eduAdmissions contact: Katie Seidel, 800-227-0982, [email protected] contact: Jose Encarnacion, 920-993-6629, [email protected]

University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire Music Department 121 Water Street, Eau Claire, WI 54702www.uwec.edu/mus-the/jazzstudies

Admissions contact: Mr. Robert Lopez, 715-836-5415, [email protected] contact: Robert Baca, 715-836-4371, [email protected]

University of Wisconsin – La Crosse1725 State St., La Crosse, WI 54601www.uwlax.edu/jazzstudiesAdmissions contact: 608-785-8939, [email protected] contact: Karyn Quinn, 608-785-6727, [email protected]

University of Wisconsin – MadisonSchool of Music 455 N. Park St., Madison, WI 53706www.music.wisc.edu/jazzAdmissions contact: Jared Jellison,608-263-5986, [email protected] contact: Johannes Wallmann, 917-992-9101, [email protected]

University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point1209 Fremont Street Stevens Point, WI 54481www.uwsp.edu/music/jazzstudiesAdmissions contact: Bill Jordan, 715-346-2441; [email protected] contact: Mathew Buchman, 715-346-4054, [email protected]

University of Wisconsin – Whitewater Music Department 800 West Main, Whitewater, WI 53190http://music.go.uww.edu/Admissions contact: Jeff Blahnik, 262-472-1440, [email protected] contact: Matt Sintchak, 262-472-5710, [email protected]

WYOMING

Casper College125 College Drive, Casper, WY 82601www.cc.whecn.eduPrimary contact: Tracy Pfau, 307-268-2100, [email protected]

Northwest CollegeMusic Dept. 231 W. 6th St., Powell, WY 82435 www.northwestmusic.orgAdmissions contact: West Hernandez, 307 754-6103, [email protected] contact: Neil Hansen, 307-754-6425, [email protected]



COU

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FINALEXAM

The trombonist, composer and oc-

casional vocalist Wycliffe Gordon

broke through in the 1990s as

a member of Wynton Marsalis’

septet, and has since become one of

the foremost players and bandleaders

on his instrument. His latest album, I

Give You Love, features his group the

International All Stars, and he’s recently

been performing with saxophonist David

Sanborn. He’s also an experienced

educator, through his regular clinics and

workshops and his teaching at Augusta

University. Gordon, 50, spoke with JT

publisher Lee Mergner about his mentors,

how technology has changed jazz educa-

tion, and what it takes to make a great

program. For the extended interview,

visit JazzTimes.com.

YOU GREW UP IN AUGUSTA, GEORGIA.HOW WERE YOU INTRODUCED TO JAZZ?It was through recordings. I had a great

aunt who had passed, and among the

items bequeathed to our family was a five-

record set called Jazz. It had everything

on it, from early styles like ragtime to

big band to even Sonny Rollins’ “Sonny-

moon for Two.” I gravitated to the New

Orleans music because I was playing

trombone and I was also playing tuba at

that time. Even though we as teenagers

were listening to a lot of pop music that

had electronic instruments, what I had

was that five-record collection. I loved that

jazz. My friends used to say, “We all love

jazz, but Wycliffe, he loves that deep jazz.”

When we were teenagers we would listen

to [Chuck Mangione’s] “Feels So Good”

[sings a few bars]. And, yeah man, that’s

jazz, but then I would go in my garage and

listen to Sonny Rollins, James P. Johnson

and a whole lot of Louis Armstrong.

WHO WERE SOME OF YOUR IMPORTANTTEACHERS AND MENTORS?First of all, there were my parents. My

dad introduced us to music. He played

classical piano and he played in the

church. My high school band direc-

tor, Mr. [Harkness H.] Butler, who was

always supportive of me, and of any other

student, for that matter, when it came

to trying out for the all-county band or

the all-state band or the McDonald’s All-

American High School Band, Mr. Butler

would always show me things and say,

“You can do it, Cliff.” That was something

that allowed me to try new things and

not be afraid.

Then, of course, there’s Wynton. You

get to play with the best. Being with

him I met a lot of musicians, like Dizzy

Gillespie and Miles Davis. Playing with

Wynton and those guys in the Wynton

Marsalis Septet, we kind of grew up

on the road together. They were really

phenomenal in terms of playing music

and traveling together; they were always

about the music.

YOU’VE BEEN VERY INVOLVED IN JAZZ EDUCATIONOVER THE YEARS, INCLUDING AT AUGUSTAUNIVERSITY, WHERE YOU CURRENTLY TEACH.I’m an artist-in-residence there. We’re

trying to start a jazz studies program

there. What we have now is the equiva-

lent of a certificate, where you graduate

and you get a [music] degree with an

emphasis on jazz studies. We don’t have

a full jazz studies program. I know what

my strengths are, and being an adminis-

trator is not one of them. That’s not what

I want to do. I don’t mind heading things

that I’m comfortable doing. I don’t want

to be in an administrative role.

WHAT WOULD YOU TELL THEM TO DO AS FAR ASBUILDING AN EXCELLENT JAZZ STUDIES PROGRAM?First of all, understanding that every-

thing is going to cost money. We need

to get proper funding. It’s like a busi-

ness. We’d need to hire enough faculty to

cover the basic instrumentation. I think

with the model of a big band, with brass,

woodwinds, piano, bass and drums, we

need to hire the right instructors. We also

need to put something in place to bring

attention to the program we’re starting.

In the dream situation, you hire the best

educators who also bring something to

the table as far as their performance, with

professional credentials.

ARE JAZZ STUDENTS DIFFERENT TODAY? CERTAINLY THEY HAVE ACCESS TO SO MUCH MORE INFORMATION, WITH THE INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY. YOU HAD TO DIG TO FIND OUT ABOUT THE MUSIC.I think the technology is a positive. It

depends on how you use it. The pros are

that the information is easy to access. The

cons? It makes a lot of people lazy. Be-

cause they can get information just like

that, sometimes they think that transfers

to being able to develop their ability to

play and to internalize that information.

I had a student ask me one time, “This is

good that we’re going to study melodious

etudes and we’re going to start transcrib-

ing these solos, but what’s the shortcut?”

I said, “Shortcut? The shortcut is the

straightest line between where you’re

standing and the practice room. There’s

no app for your ability. You have to actu-

ally do that work. You can’t Google that.

You have to practice.” JT

No Shortcuts in This MusicTrombonist Wycliffe Gordon on why hard work matters

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MONTEREYJAZZ FESTIVAL

MONTEREY COUNTY FAIRGROUNDSMONTEREY, CALIF.

Sept. 15-17, 2017

DETROIT JAZZ FESTIVALHART PLAZA | DETROIT, MICH. Sept. 1-4, 2017

EXCLUSIVEDIGITAL

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Joe Lovano pays tribute to Sonny Rollins

John Patitucci leads his Electric Guitar Quartet

JAZZTIMES | NOVEMBER 2017

Herbie Hancock on opening night

DETROIT JAZZ FESTIVAL

Hart Plaza | Detroit, Mich. | Sept. 1-4, 2017 Images by Marek Lazarski

Donny McCaslin

Theo Croker

Hart Plaza | Detroit, Mich. | Sept. 1-4, 2017 Images by Marek Lazarski

DETROIT JAZZ FESTIVAL

Danilo Pérez, Wayne Shorter, John Patitucci and Brian Blade (from left) on opening night

Regina Carter


Terrace Martin performs with Herbie Hancock

Benny Golson


Monterey ounty airgrounds Monterey, ali . ept. 15-17, 2017

MONTEREY JAZZ FESTIVAL

Dee Dee Bridgewater

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Jimmy Heath, Joshua Redman and Branford Marsalis (from left) in “A Tribute to Sonny Rollins”

Kenny Barron

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Monterey County Fairgrounds | Monterey, Calif. | Sept. 15-17, 2017

Roy Hargrove honors Dizzy Gillespie in his centennial year

John Clayton premieres his commissioned piece

“Stories of a Groove: Conception, Evolution, Celebration”

IMA

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JIM

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Chick Corea duets with Herbie Hancock JIM STONE


Monterey County Fairgrounds | Monterey, Calif. | Sept. 15-17, 2017


With his Honey and Salt band, Matt Wilson reimagines the poetry of Carl Sandburg

TOM

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louis hayes - magazinos.com

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