It'll make a pretty paperweight

Tomorrow night the 20th annual Boston Music Awards convenes tomorrow evening to, well, what exactly do they do? Globe critic Joan Anderman knocks the awards and the scene they represent around this morning, and I'm inclined to agree with most of her assessment. Her best line:

"(it is a) near-impossibility of building a world-class industry event in a town that calls itself the Hub but operates as an outpost."

I could spend ages elaborating on this assessment, because it's dead-on. There is a myopia that characterizes many elements of life in Boston, and while it can lend a quaint charm to our sports fans or how crowded the North End is on weekends, it can kill a music scene in no time flat.

There are vibrant scenes here, but they tend to be very self-contained- a great set of singer-songwriters that congregate around Club Passim and the Toad/Lizard Lounge pairing, a cool almost-seedy punk/bar band scene at O'Brien's and Middle East (We miss TT the Bear's badly), a little Afro-beat scene that has flourished at Matt Murphy's, a jazz scene based primarily around the schools- a blessing and a curse too big to get into here- and a small but strong hip-hop scene that survives where it can. But note that none of the venues that I mention (save the schools) are in Boston proper- the combination of high rent, Puritanical zoning and the early close of the Boston transit system make having a hopping live music club really tough. Is there a solution(s)? I'd love to know 'em. Maybe I'd gig more...

Back to the awards themselves- no one I've talked to seems to quite know how the whole thing works. Ric Stone, 1/4 of the Quartet of Happiness, nominated for "best jazz act", told me they're grateful for the (little bit of) attention it's brought, but has no idea how they were nominated. They're in with long-timers and badasses Dominique Eade, Club D'Elf, Jacques Chanier, a long-suffering and unappreciated local, the Blueprint Project, a cool project of Jared Sims and Eric Hofbauer, newcomer Leah Randazzo (who, I'd note, I've never, never heard of, and who lives on the other side of the state), and Hiromi, the John Mayer of this category. (She went to Berklee, hasn't lived here in years, and has no discernable connection to Boston beyond Berklee and some national pub) As Miles might say, "judge that, how the &$^# am I supposed to judge THAT?" Well, since voting was an online popularity contest, it doesn't really say much about the quality of the winner, only of their bots.

We also seem to have an innate ability to cannibalize what scene there is here... see this old post as an example. And this kind of nonsense happens all the time here. (sigh)

Steve Reich @ New England Conservatory tonight!

As part of the continuing celebration of Steve Reich's 70th birthday, New England Conservatory will present four concerts over two days, tonight and tomorrow at 5pm and 8pm. The highlight is tonight at 8pm, when the Callithumpian Consort will play the legendary Music for 18 Musicians. The word is that Reich himself will be there coaching the music. I have a gig, but am hoping to get there in time for the Music for 18. (played by twenty, of course)

side airbags

This spring, the long dormant Johnny Carcrash duo with Hwaen Chuqi (nee Jeff Tomlinson) will reunite for a few gigs. Details forthcoming. To celebrate that, and my 250th friend on Myspace, (If you can really count a production company and a yoga e-mail list as friends) I've posted one cut from our Knitting Factory concert in 2001 on the myspace page. And if you're not a friend yet, don't be shy.

Blogging will resume in earnest... soon.

Maria Schneider @ Berklee Performance Center, 11/17/04

There's very little I can say about Maria Schneider at this point that hasn't been said better by someone else. She is, almost without a doubt, the most important "jazz composer" in the past twenty years. The new album, Sky Blue, has catupoulted her critical assessment into a whole new category- BBC Music called her one of the important composers in her generation. Not jazz composer, just composer. A whole generation of players, writers and big band leaders are, or have been, in the business because they heard Evanessence, her first album.

In this day and age, it's always fascinating to hear an "art" big band live. Big band music is one of the few places in jazz or improvised music where a live show can feel like a "greatest hits" rock show- the band plays the charts as they are written (that's kind of the point), even if they're old, and it's possible to go in knowing every note of every chart, and consciously or subconsciously comparing what's happening to what you're used to hearing on your stereo. And, like most of my writing peers, I know most of Maria's records really well.

That said, a live show of this music is also illuminating. The modern big band album (the modern orchestral record, and pop records too) is a completely artificial product, in that you can mix, master and tweak it to make a flute sound louder than a trumpet section. (Or make Fergie in tune...) While the sound engineer in a live setting can do wonders, and did- Maria listed him as the 19th member of the band- you get a truer sense of what a chart really sounds like, what the composer imagines and implements in real time. (The chance to play these charts, or sit inside a rehearsing band, affords a different but equally valuable experience. While you don't get the whole picture of a piece, you can hear relationships and a physical sense of things that no mixing board can capture. If you care about Maria's or really any big band music, I would beg, bribe or cajole my way into one of these experiences, even if only with a local college band. The amount I've learned sitting in the sax section playing Basie, or Bob, or Maria is invaluable.)

If none of this music had ever been recorded, this show would've knocked the audience's socks off. All of Maria's strengths- her amazing orchestration, her ability to completely integrate the soloist into a composition, and of her soloists to complement what she writes, her phenomenal (and possibly underrated) knack for counterpoint- shone here. (Obviously, it's not absolutely acoustically "pure"- Maria lists her sound engineer as the 19th member of her band, and he was spectacular.)

The concert spanned all six of her albums, including two numbers from the new "Sky Blue". The highlight of the show was "Cerulian Skies", a piece she wrote for Peter Sellers' recent Mozart festival. On the album I have to admit that the piece confused me- it builds beautifully on a tremendously simple theme from the opening through Donnie Macaslin's burning solo, then stops for an extended piano/accordian duo, which on the recording kills the momentum of the piece. But live, it seemed to flow better, building slowly again to the climactic alto solo by Charlie Pillow.

A standing ovation brought an encore, an arrangement of "My Ideal" that dates back more than twenty years to her Eastman days. It's a lovely, really really good college band arrangement, complete with shifts from ballad feel to double time to 3/4 and back, and a 5 flute(!) soli in for good measure. It was a fascinating close after an evening of phenomenally forward looking music, to be reminded of exactly how much ground Maria has covered, and really unearthed, in a fairly short span of time.

NOTE: Maria continues a weeklong run at the Jazz Standard in NYC tomorrow night. If you can, go- this venue seems to treat her really well, she has a larger version of her band, and it'll kill.

Red states don't swing?

(via War Room) The Norman Mailer Institute and Zogby's recent poll about politics and entertainment, summarized here, is an interesting read. Most notable for this space:

"Conservatives are the least likely group to listen to jazz (34% vs. 44% of moderates vs. 53% of liberals) and reggae (8% vs. 20% vs. 26%)." Why do I get the sense that "hip-hop" was not a choice on the poll- I can't imagine it scoring better than jazz. Makes me feel like I should give JB Spins more love than I do- his is a lonely post. (Seriously, he's a very good writer, and while I disagree with him a lot, musically and politically, he's worth reading.)

And... "Classical music: although moderates are less enamored with it, classical music barely nudged ahead of rock as the most popular music genre overall." While I think this may well be a case of people tailoring their tastes to a pollster, Alex Ross would still be thrilled.

So, if you really want a change next election, start inviting your conservative friends to jazz clubs and reggae dancehalls?

Searching for a Heart of Gold

Some stuff in real-time, some good (planning for '08 gigs), some less so (family health crisis) will cut into blogging for the next little bit. But before I go, I wanted to tie up a couple of things.

More gigs to see:

Jennifer Kimball, my favorite singer-songwriter, is playing for free(!) at the (correction) Lizard Lounge in Cambridge every Wednesday night this month. no cover! Go see her, please. You won't regret it.

The Boston Symphony, under James Levine is doing an amazing program of the Berg Violin Concerto and Mahler's 9th Symphony. The Berg is probably my favorite classical piece, and has the best saxophone part in the orchestral rep. (no coincidence there, surely) And the power of Mahler was discussed at length earlier this summer on this blog.

Blogroll updates:
In this game a minute is the (relatively) new blog of Evan O'Reilly, guitarist, teacher and raconteur. Evan was an early contributor to No Sale Value, and is a good musician and interesting, contrarian thinker.

I also added the blog of Byron Katie to the "Shining Lights". Katie is a strange, remarkable story of enlightenment, for lack of a better word. I've found her method personally to be nothing less than life-changing, corny as that, or she, may sound.

Finally, thanks to Reid, Ethan and Dave (AKA The Bad Plus) for another hugely entertaining evening on music on Saturday. I thought the set started a little slow, then took off with the ABBA cover. I went with a friend who had never seen the band before, and they were knocked out. (particularly by the set's ending, which I won't spoil for those of you who get to see them soon)

Oh, it's election day in the states. Go vote. Thank you.

Gigs to see tonight!

I missed one good one in my listings yesterday, and I apologize- tonight at 8 The Brookline Tai Chi music series presents Jeremy Udden and the Tin Bag duo of Kris Tiner and Mike Bagetta. Blog junkies will know the latter from their illustrious blogs, Soul and the System and Blogetta.

Jeremy is one of my favorite living saxophonists (really), and since he moved to New York he hasn't been playing up here nearly as much, so this is a treat. Barring technical calamities (and I'm fixing toilets today, so they're very likely) I will either be at the Caetano Veloso concert or the Tai Chi.

Gigs to see in Boston in November

Or, gorge your gourd. It's a pretty good month.

Best bets: Caetano Veloso @ The Orpheum, tomorrow (11/2)
11/17 Maria Schneider Orchestra @ Berklee Performance Center (workshops during the week)

the rest:

11/1 (tonight) Dan Rosenthal Quartet @ Lily Pad
11/2-3 The Bad Plus @ The Regattabar
11/8 Aardvard Jazz Orchestra @ Scullers (anniversary concert)
11/15 music of Don Byron @ Jordan Hall, NEC (workshops during the week)
11/16 Bruno Raeburg Quartet @ Lily Pad
11/18 Andrew Rathburn w/Garzone @ Ryles
11/28-9 Music of Steve Reich @ NEC
11/30 Skycap Festival featuring Fully Celebrated Orchestra @ Lily Pad
11/30 Jackie Terrason solo @ The Regattabar

Did I mention the Red Sox won yet? Again!

Okay, now that we have that taken care of, I can pretend to think like a human again. (By happy coincidence, I wandered into a bar on Bowery after my Saturday evening engagement- see below- that was (gasp) a Red Sox bar. So I had friends right off the bat, who all cheered and groaned at the right times. While this post-season was nowhere near as nail-biting as 2004, it certainly had its moments.

Anyhoow, highlights, lowlights and otherlights of this weekend's jaunt to NYC:

The very good- spending time with my blog hero Darcy, hearing a fair bit of the indie-rock that has been so talked about in the blogosphere recently. The recent Arcade Fire disc jumped up my to-buy list as a result. I never run out of friends to see in New York, or leave having a bad time with them.
- lots of time to listen to records in transit, and read. Between train and bus rides I finished Ben Ratliff's new book on Coltrane. I recommend it, and will try to talk more about it soon. (review here, first chapter here)
- New York restaraunts. Dinner at Jellado, brunch at Gasgogne, fantastic coffee at a place in Carrol Gardens whose name I promptly forgot- something about leaves. One could get used to this.

The good- Michael Cain, who is mentioned here occasionally, wrote music for a play at the Public called The View from 151st Street, so I went to see it, naturally. It was a good play, with some exceptional acting and powerful, if uneven writing. The music, which this evening featured Liberty Ellman on guitar, was an interesting mix of live and recorded tracks and sounds, overall very effective. (There was a short, recorded solo piano piece in the middle of the first act that was amazing, reminded me of what took me about Michael's music in the first place) I often thought on the more hip-hop based material that the bass player could've played a fair bit less, but I find myself saying that a lot lately.

The less good- I got in early enough on Friday to trek down to The Stone on Friday night
to see Steve Bernstein and the Millennial Territory Orchestra. I'm not the world's biggest Bernstein or Sex Mob fan, but I've always left his shows entertained. Not tonight. The charts, such as they were, sounded like sloppier, less funky cutouts from Bill Frisell's Unspeakable albums. The one good chart was for a singer (didn't catch the name) who didn't have much of a voice or use the mike well. Some good players- Peter Apflebaum, Ben Allison, Ben Perowsky, Art Baron- were pretty much wasted.

I understand better than many the challenge that is putting a large ensemble show together in any context- there's never enough planning, or rehearsal, or promotion. But here I was embarrassed for the musicians, annoyed at paying even the modest $10 I did, and left before the set ended.

Don't mean to end on a down note, especially when there's so much to look forward to in Boston this week- and not just the Red Sox rolling rally. Caetano Veloso is here Friday, The Bad Plus Friday and Saturday. Full listings tomorrow.

Big Hits... just not here

I have to admit I'm a little distracted at present. A trip to NYC is in the offing, but can't even focus on that. Blogging will resume again as soon as I screw my head back on.

Pointless UPDATE: Did anyone else hear the national anthem before Game 1? When did John Williams add Charles Ives to his list of people to shamelessly rip off? The worst part is, I didn't even like it... I didn't get to hear James Taylor's version for game 2, which is a shame. I thought his reharmonization for the 2004 WS was one of the best versions of the Anthem I've ever heard. Damning with faint praise, perhaps, but... They could have Rosanne Barr sing the anthem if they keep playing like this.

Hwaen Ch'uqi @ Lily Pad piano festival tonight!

A last minute plug for the annual Lily Pad Piano Festival, always a good take. Among the dozens of good to great pianists playing is my friend and occasional collaborator Hwaen Ch'uqi (nee Jeff Tomlinson). Some of you may remember our occasional Johnny Carcrash duos, which we're talking about resurrecting. He'll be performing his first Piano Sonata tonight at 10, Jeff is a remarkable player with a touch to die for, and a great improviser, so I look forward to hearing what his composed music sounds like.

The Lily Pad is in Inman Square, Cambridge. Other highlights of the festival include Anthony Coleman, Joanne Brackeen, and George Garzone, all tomorrow.

The same old song (and the dance?)

Why aren't (m)any young black folks playing jazz, asks Greg Tate.

Indie-rock is way too white, says SFJ. And the blogosphere blows up at him.

I thought of these posts earlier this week as I had a long conversation with an old musician friend. (call him Z) Z has toured and recorded a lot, in jazz, in R&B, in hip-hop. We were talking about the "state of jazz" today, and he opined that jazz is a music without a context- why exactly are we making this music today, and does it have anything to do with the traditions of the music. Jazz originated as music to dance to, from New Orleans to the Cotton Club to the chitlin circuit, which Bird played for a lot of his career. He feels that that element has largely been lost in the music today, and music that doesn't have it (which is most of it, especially made by anyone, white, black or green, under 40) doesn't interest him at all. He thinks it has to do with class, not just race- he talked about Johnny Cash's "Folsolm Prison" album, and how much it grooves, really grooves in the same kind of way that James Brown or P-Funk groove. I feel that way about some of the traditional Irish music I've studied. Musicians, he believes, are better served when they apprentice in a truly functional music, where people applauding politely, or even enthusiastically, isn't enough to make a player. You have to be able to make people move without telling them to. And not just a dorm of hippie college kids, a skeptical crowd, who want to move but who won't go for just anybody's boogie-woogie.

I fired back that you could say what he's saying about the function of jazz about a lot of music- over the last thirty years, the only places in American culture where the function of music hasn't changed is opera houses and strip clubs. And I'm not in any rush to apprentice at either of those, and wouldn't want my students to either. But his point about movement bears some serious thought.

I don't know enough about the indie scene to effectively contribute to the debate SFJ has started. But what resonates to me about his piece, based on what I hear of indie-rock, is that the bands he criticizes have lost touch on any level with the dance element of rock'n'roll ("you're old SadBastard music", Jack Black famously said in High Fidelity). The music lacks the kind of rhythmic drive- really any rhythmic drive- that made rock and roll so infectious since its birth, and so dangerous, especially in the eyes of moralists and classical critics.

(Intrestingly, now that I've listened to it a few times, the track on In Rainbows I keep returning to is "15-Step", to my ears the most rhythm driven track on the record.)

The fact is that rock bands, and jazz musicians for that matter, no longer have to play school dances or little chicken joints, replaced by DJs and the like. (wedding bands are not the same thing at all...) So does our music serve any function beyond self-expression or some sort of personal validation? I'm not saying those are bad or unimportant by any means, but given where the music comes from, given what so many of us say we're going for, are they enough? Is something crucial lost

Could that disconnect be why the young black musicians that were playing saxophones thirty years ago are now making beats with machines? Is that quality of dancing, which is not exclusively a black quality, really what Jones misses?

I don't know, I'm just asking... Z & I have had various discussions about the function of music for years now, often from this angle- it continues to perplex and fascinate both of us, and we'll certainly be returning to it again.

Riding in my Soul Spaceship

Of all the highly anticipated albums that hit in the past few weeks, the one I was most excited about was the new Meshell Ndegeocello album, the heavy mouthful "The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams". (Decca) As regular readers may know, Meshell is one of my great musical heroes- I was introduced to her music by her former keyboardist Michael Cain, and became a rabid fan. She is, I think, the funkiest woman alive, and her live gigs rank as some of the best live music I've seen in any genre.

Meshell seems to relish how difficult she is to categorize- she followed up her first two funk/soul albums with "Bitter", a primarily acoustic song-based effort. After the star-laden "Cookie" and reggae-drenched "Comfort Woman" (probably her most consistent effort) she put together "her jazz album", Dance of the Infidels, where she didn't sing and barely played. The buzz preceding "World" said it would be more "Afro-punk", whatever that means.

It is punkier- "Sloganeer" and "Article 3", with their hard one-note lines and edgy guitars, would've been right at home at CB's, and the guitar and bass tones are often heavily distorted and grungy. But what about the screaming, anthemic Pat Metheny solo (he should have a patent on this type of solo at this point), or the Prince-ish digitized voice of god on "Elliptical", or Robert Glaspar's appearance? Or the lovely "Shirk", a bleak guitar ballad seemingly redeemed by Malian singer...? To try to buttonhole this album is to sell your listening short.

Partially due to that almost defiant polyglot, the album is a challenging listen, part of the reason I'm so slow in reviewing it. The album's opening does the casual listener no favors either- it is a speech by Shiek talking about an Islamic (or Islamist? I couldn't quite make it out in this interview/performance on WNYC) view of apocalyptic signs, and many of the catchier tunes either begin or end with very abstract, heavily reverbed instrumentals. (see Oliver Lake's cameo on "Lovely Lovely", my favorite tune on the record) And I admit I often find myself fast-forwarding through the spoken testimony before "Solomon". And outside of two tunes "Soul Spaceship" and "Michelle Johnson", there is a lot less of the straight-up funk she is often equated with. And the lyrics probe questions of spirituality and sensuality, politics, religion and sex more overtly that anything prior. (didn't think that possible) But the lyrics are, to my ears, more oblique than in the past (no "Dead N*&%a Blvd" here

BUT, get over it- this is Meshell's most challenging and interesting album yet. It's some of her best singing, and the more puzzling music, with repeated listens, is tremendously rewarding. There is a short, mind-blowing interlude on "Evolution", maybe eight bars which never return, which I'll spend hours figuring out. Seemingly, just because. There are nuggets like that all over the album. The playing is brilliant top to bottom. Go check it.

UPDATE: NY Times reviews Meshell's NYC hit on Saturday here.

Other random notes- the new Radiohead, "In Rainbows", is another album I didn't want to make a quick judgement on. I agree wholeheartedly with Darcy- the sound suffers for the bitrate compression, so I want to hear it on a real CD. But I love, love the first tune. Even if the rest was awful (which it isn't) that is worth the pay-what-you-will.

- I've been reluctant to buy "River", Herbie's Joni tribute, based on what I've heard on the radio and the web. Seems to lack fire. Anyone have any advice here?

- Joni's "Shine" I will buy, even if it sucks. I got one tune, "Night of the Iguana", free from Starbucks, and it's pretty good, similar sonically to "Turbulent Indigo", Joni's now near contralto sounds go, but the tune is not so memorable.

The whole world might be wrong

Apparently not everyone is thrilled with Radiohead's new gambit, which I will download this morning. (about $7 sounds right- that's a little more than I see when you buy No Sale Value's record on ITunes. Hint, hint) The bit, bitchy as it is, raises an good question- are we ready for a world where content only exists in an ephemeral form, where you don't have to go out and buy a box of something? That might be the height of post-modernism right there...

The Best of October

It's a much better month for concert-going here in town. Some highlights:

Tonight (10/3)- Dominique Eade @ Scullers
4-5 Danielo Perez Trio @ Scullers
7- Lukeimia/Lymphoma Benefit w/Esperanza Spaulding, Carmen Staaf, Khevre @ Lily Pad
9- Club D'Elf & Rudder @ Regattabar
12-13- Chris Potter's Underground @ Regattabar
15- Zing @ Lily-Pad
16- David Fiuczynski's KiF @ Regattabar
20-21 Lily Pad Piano Fest, feat. Joanne Brackeen, Anthony Coleman, and many others
25- Ezra Weiss w/Billy Hart at Ryles
27- Marty Ehrlich & Myra Melford @ Lily-Pad

Maybe the hokey pokey was taken...

I couldn't resist...

Like most Bostonians, I'm excited, and a little nervous, about the hometown team's trip into the baseball playoffs this year. We could win it all, we could be swept in the first round- it's one of those years. But I'm hoping they keep winning, if only to see our players dance like this. (via Extra Mustard)

Beantown Jazz Festival, Saturday 9/29

With the demise of the various newspaper jazz festivals (both the Globe and the Phoenix sponsored series as late as 2002), the Beantown Jazz Festival has emerged as Boston's sole big jazz event. It has more than held up its end, shifting from one stage and little smooth-jazz outfits to three full stages of music, local and national acts, and for the second year in a row, a blowout opening night full of jazz legends. (Globe review of friday night here) The weather cooperated as well- 70 degrees and sunny- and as a result the MC announced before the last act that the day had seen 70,000 people at the festival. I don't know if I trust that number, but there were a lot of folks, many more than last year. (It was set up almost identically to last year's festival, again to good effect.)

I missed the first set of acts in favor of (sigh) errands, and walked in to the sound of Greg Hopkins' big band. The band is a lot of grizzled Boston vets, playing Greg's straight-ahead, hard-swining Herman-ish charts. The band was strong and tight, but hampered by sound problems, a running theme of the day. Bill Pierce's feature on "Body and Soul" was lost in a haze of unintentional reverb and distortion.

I wandered over to hear Conrad Herwig's "Latin Side of Miles" Project. Their album got some play on jazz radio here, and I wasn't wowwed. "Sketches of Spain" aside, I've never heard much Latin in Miles' playing, and putting "Solar" and "So What" to montunos and other Latin grooves seems to me just a ploy to sell records. So I was skeptical walking in.

(Aside: There's an interesting theory that puts forth in Paul Tingin's good book Miles Beyond that- I'm paraphrasing- while Miles was omnivorous in his listening, and used instruments, grooves and ideas from all over music, he was interested in the sound, not the context. Unlike, say John McLaughlin, there's nothing particularly Indian about his use of the sitar other than the sitar itself. I think this is surely true of Miles' relationship with Latin music; while he used "Spanish modes" and Latin percussionists, he had very little interest in "Latinizing" his music. He wanted those sounds. Which is why I'm very skeptical of these kinds of concept albums)

I was less skeptical walking out- the rhythm section, anchored by drummer Robbie Amin and percussionist Pedro (insert Mets joke here) Martinez- was amazing. Solos would float seemlessly through half-time and double-time, various feels (I'm a dilletante when it comes to the nuts and bolts of Latin music, so I won't even try) and beats. The horn players- Herwig, trumpeter Brian Lynch and the underappreciated Craig Handy- in turns floated over and barreled through the grooves with clear, straightahead playing. Everyone sounded good- how could you not with those kinds of grooves? I still thought the Miles/montuno connections didn't especially work- Lynch wrote an arrangement of "Solar" with a great, grooving intro and interlude which made the actual melody of "Solar" seem superfluous. That said, the music as a whole strong, much better than I expected.

The next act was on paper the highlight of the day- the legendary vibrophonist Bobby Hutcherson and his quartet. Bobby looked sharp and energized, and sounded... I'm not really sure. The sound on this set was especially bad- no mikes were on for the first two tuned, and through the set you could only hear Bobby maybe a third of the time. I know it's outdoors, and I know vibes are notoriously hard instruments to mike, but c'mon guys! This was amateur hour. What I could make out was a set of old standards- "I Love You for Sentimental Reasons", "Old Devil Moon", etc. that swung elegantly.

Across the way you could really, really hear the Berklee Rainbow Band. The band looked the part- tremendously diverse racially, ethnically, and gender-wise. The music, though was something of a throwback to the Buddy Rich/Maynard Fergeson sound of the seventies, complete with Rich's unbelievably overwrought "Mercy Mercy Mercy" chart. The soloists, especially the lead alto and tenor players, were very solid.

A family party kept me from hearing all but a few minutes of the last bands, Charles Tolliver's big band and Mike Stern's quartet. Tolliver's big band suffered from the aforementioned sound problems, and a clear lack of rehearsal. Some of the charts were very notey and intricate, and much of the detail got lost. The band's character, both in it's playing and in the charts, reminded me of McCoy Tyner's big band of the 80's and 90's. A very pentatonic harmonic sensibility (Tolliver's own playing harkened back to Woddy Shaw), good writing at the edges, and a lot of solid blowing in the middle.

A couple of more asides- I've learned that at these free outdoor festivals, if you care at all about hearing what's actually being played, the best places to be are 1) right in front of the stage, where you can hear the real sounds, or 2) next to the sound booth, where you'll hear what the sound person hears. Not the #2 helped that much this weekend.

And Beantown Jazz planners, would it be too much to stagger the start times at the different stages a little bit, as many festivals do? Every band, on three stages, started at the same time, the whole day. Why? One of the nice things about these festivals is sampling different acts, which this program impedes.

By any reasonable measure- crowd size and enthusiasm, vendors, quantity and quality of music- the weekend was an unabashed success. Heck, they had one stage booked with nothing but big bands, a feat in and of itself. Here's hoping next year they keep up the quality of booking, and improve the quality of the sound crew.

Bean Counting

This weekend is Boston's largest, and only free jazz festival, the Beantown Jazz Festival (Globe article here). For one afternoon, three blocks by Northeastern give way to multiple stages featuring many local and national acts. While I thought last year's bill was a little better, there are certainly good things to see this year, and I plan to be there. Especially notable:

- The Charles Tolliver Big Band. I know Tolliver only by reputation, but he did win a couple of Downbeat Awards this year. NEC and Berklee will have big bands there as well, and one local pro big band of note, the Greg Hopkins Orchestra, will also play.

- The legendary Bobby Hutcherson's quartet. Nuff said.

- Mike Stern. Not usually my cup of tea, but the honey-voiced Richard Bona is on the bill with him, so it could be interesting.

- Not officially part of the festival, but very intriguing. Tomorrow night the Either/Orchestra plays at the Somerville Theatre with three Ethiopian musicians as part of the WorldMusic series. Russ Gershon, the E/O leader, has become borderline obsessed with this Ethiopian folk and pop music over the past few years, and the results have been interesting. (And a huge shift from the E/O I grew up with.)

If you're over in the South End tomorrow and see me, please do say hello. Review to come. Full gigs of note for October- and there are quite a few- to come.

Every generation has a hero on the pop chart

The latest interweb dust-up about The Bad Plus and their covers has been well, er, covered at this point. I've blogged previously about Ethan, Reid and Dave, sometimes positively, sometimes less so. I stand by all of it. (And, pat self on back, I doubt I was first, but I called the prog angle two years ago...) A few thoughts anyway:

- I've thought, both as a player and as a critic, that the role of the critic was to judge what an artist does, not what the critic might prefer. My father likes to call that criticizing and ice cream soda for not being hot. Reading some of the (albiet selective) quotes TBP highlights, I think some of the critics would do well to remember that.

- One thing I like about TBP is that, if you played any of their records, but especially the last two, to someone who is musically literate but pop-culture clueless (like, say, my parents), I don't think they could tell the originals from the covers. There's an aesthetic unity to the work that I think undercuts some of the criticism they take for their covers.

- I won't touch the word irony, and I respect and thoroughly accept the what the band wrote, but I would say that, especially on a first listen, The Bad Plus' style can come across as quite, let's use the word glib. The last two bars of the A section of "Make Our Garden Grow" sound to me like a TV network audio logo, and I still find some of their cross cuts from crazy free to tight forms cuter than they need to be. Now that I know the band, both musically and socially, they make a lot more sense, and I like them more, but I understand why a critic wouldn't.

- Darcy asked the why TBP takes more flak for covers than, say, Jason Moran or Mehldau. I'd answer the question with a question- why are some pop tunes more acceptable for covering than others? Joni Mitchell, Radiohead, and Aaron Neville are okay, but Tears for Fears and Black Sabbath are out of bonds. Says who, and why? Lyrical quality- that never stopped us from covering "Miss Jones" or the much maligned "Surrey with a Fringe". I would, and do, think to cover Paul Simon or Curtis Mayfield, but not AC/DC or Blondie. That's due mostly to my own tastes and experiences, but I admit partially due to what I've been trained to expect "jazz" to be. Are musicians and/or critics projecting that out into a set of mores?

I would add that based on what I've heard so far of two much-balleyhooed new cover projects (and many before them), even picking "good, quality pop tunes" is no guarantee of making good music.

- finally, a tangent- one critic wrote: "…a slapstick version of E.S.T…". Would somebody explain the critical appeal of E.S.T. to me? (The popular appeal, as much as there is, I kind of get- It's pop-ish and approachable without looking like smooth jazz) I'm trying hard not to get to dark on other musicians, but... I've heard big chunks of two albums, and heard them live once, and hated every minute of it. The writing is thin on a good tune, the pianist hits the piano like it's a nail and he's a hammer, and I don't hear near the kind of interplay in that trio that I do in the bands they're often compared to. (Including TBP) I'd like to be wrong- can someone enlighten me?

Update: see Dave Douglas, another great advocate for covering newer music, and his especially cogent points on the topic.

Fringe Zones

If you've ever lived or studied in Boston, you know about the Fringe. The power trio of saxophonist George Garzone, bassist John Lockwood and drummer Bob Gulotti, who have been first calls for musicians from Buddy Rich to Luciana Souza to Phish, have had a weekly residence in a Boston club for more than twenty-five years, from the Somerville dive the Willow to several less memorable dives, now in the Lily Pad in Cambridge. But tomorrow night they go upscale to NEC's Jordan Hall. (Globe preview here)

The Fringe have become an institution here for musicians, and a trip to see the Fringe is as mandatory as a walk on the Freedom Trail. The music is often described as post-Coltrane free, but that sells it short. It's wild- one album cover has them in caveman outfits- and unusual. George has an unusual and fascinating intervallic approach to harmony that I still don't quite get, and the trio as a whole has that empathy that only comes with an longtime, intense farmiliarity. And it's free, in all senses of the word.