Fred Kaplan Blog

John Zorn's Book of Angels Posted Mon Sep 6, 2010, 11:02 AM ET

John Zorn’s rep as the angry bad boy of the downtown avant-garde has always been a bit of a caricature. His music has long stressed wit and beauty as much as squeals and hollers. But in the last few years, he’s tapped into a buoyant, almost gentle lyricism while still sounding distinctively Zorn.

It may have started in 2005 with a new series of compositions that he called “Book of Angels: Masada Book Two.” Masada was the quartet he formed in the early ‘90s (one of that decade’s most exciting and signature jazz bands). More to the point here, it was a book of eventually over 300 compositions that he wrote—jazz heads, each written in one of the two “Jewish scales,” a major scale with the 2nd note flat or a minor scale with the 4th note sharp. Zorn didn’t specify instrumentation in this sheet music, so the tunes could be played by any sort of ensemble. First there was the quartet (with Zorn himself on alto sax); then there were the Masada String Trio, Bar Kokhba (a sextet with strings and percussion), Electric Masada, and others.

“Book of Angels” continued this tradition, but with more emphasis on the ethereal and lyrical than on the noisy and intense (though there is still some of the latter, just as the original series had plenty of the former).

His two latest CDs (both on his own label, Tzadik) are among the best in this new incarnation: Haborym: Book of Angels, Vol. 16 with the Masada String Trio (Mark Feldman, violin; Erik Friedlander, cello; Greg Cohen, bass) and Ipos: Book of Angels, Vol. 14 with the Dreamers (a much newer group with Marc Ribot, electric guitar; Kenny Wolleson, vibes; Jamie Saft, keyboards; Trevor Dunn, bass; Joey Baron, drums; Cyro Baptista, percussion).

All of these players are longtime staples of various Zorn ensembles.

The string trio has always been the most lyrical of the Masada groups, but that’s not to be read as “mellow.” The players plow fierce energy into even the loveliest ballads. And Haborym blossoms with lovely ballads.

Ipos is an oddball in the Zorn oeuvre but instantly and thoroughly appealing. The album’s star is Ribot, strumming and twanging his guitar in a Hawaiian style that sounds more like the hip-retro rock of the Lounge Lizards (no coincidence, as Ribot once played in that group), alternating with quasi-minimalist tunes that, unlike much in the genre, is genuinely riveting. It’s a record that will keep you dancing in your head and on the floor.

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PS: Fred Hersch's Whirl ON VINYL Posted Tue Aug 31, 2010, 5:04 PM ET

Soon after raving over Fred Hersch’s new piano-trio album, Whirl, I learned that it was also available on 180-gram vinyl. I’ve since obtained a pressing and can report that, good as the CD sounded, the LP sounds considerably better.

Hersch’s piano sounds airier, a bit more extended in the highs. More striking, Eric McPherson’s drums, while still somewhat compressed (the only serious sonic complaint I had about the CD), come off much more detailed. His rhythmic subtleties are clearer, and the individual pieces of the drum kit are more distinctive. At the opening of the first track, you can hear, practically feel, the skin of the bass drum.

Palmetto Records, which put out both the CD and the LP, is just beginning to dip into the vinyl market. Whirl is the second title in what may be a series (the first was Lonnie Smith’s Spiral, which I haven’t heard). Palmetto’s general manager, Pat Rustici, told me that he pressed 1,000, and has thus far sold about 400, copies of each.

A nice start, but the Hersch LP could have sounded better. A.T. Macdonald, who mastered the CD, told me in an email exchange that James Farber digitally recorded the session at a high resolution —32 bits and 88.2 kHz sampling. Macdonald then down-rez’d the results on a wav file at 16 bits and 44.1 kHz (as must be done to fit the CD format).

Rustici contracted a Czech company to press the LPs. (Stereophile’s Michael Fremer, who knows such things, tells me the company is quite good.) But, according to Rustici himself, he sent them the wav files to use as the source. Why didn’t he send the higher-resolution master files? Doing so wouldn’t have cost any more, and the resulting LP, it stands to reason, would have sounded better, maybe much better. (Macdonald confirms that the masters do sound better.)

Next time, Palmetto. We’re all eagerly waiting.

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Fred Hersch's Whirl Posted Fri Aug 20, 2010, 4:27 PM ET

Fred Hersch, one of the top handful of jazz pianists on the scene, spent several months in a coma last year, owing to complications from HIV, with which he’s been living for well over a decade. When he emerged, he had to teach himself how to play piano all over again—not the technique, but the reflexes, the timing, the coordination—but you wouldn’t know it from Whirl (on the Palmetto label), his first album since the return.

It doesn’t have quite the fluency or exuberance of Let Yourself Go or In Amsterdam, my two favorite Hersch albums (both recorded live, in 1998 and 2003, respectively), but Whirl is a lovely and riveting piece of work all the same.

His phrases are shorter, sometimes a bit more clipped, than in the past, but he still has his fleet touch, and his deep, if subtle, swing, which string the phrases together in a seamless stream. He navigates a knotty Paul Motian tune, “Blue Midnight,” with aplomb, and tackles his late mentor Jaki Byard’s boppish “Mrs. Parker of K.C.,” with wit and energy.

As usual, he shines most richly with the romantic ballads, especially in this case two originals, “Snow Is Falling” and “Still Here,” the latter an elegiac piece that he wrote for Wayne Shorter but that resonates more shiveringly since, clearly, it’s also become a song about Hersch himself.

James Farber recorded and mixed the disc, so the sound is, as usual, very good: the piano percussive and liquid, the bass plucky and tuneful, the drums a little bit compressed but sizzly (in a good way) and deep on the soundstage.

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Blue Note 45s and the Sunday Times Posted Tue Aug 10, 2010, 1:32 PM ET

I have an article in the Arts & Leisure section of this past Sunday’s New York Times about vinyl reissues of Blue Note jazz albums mastered at 45 rpm.

Yes, you read that right: an article about such audiophile labels as Music Matters Jazz, Analogue Productions, and Classic Records was featured in the paper of record, and quite prominently so: 1,500 words, spread out on two pages, with four photos, including one of a Blue Note 45 spinning on my own VPI Classic.

Is it a sign that the MSM are beginning to take all this seriously—or just an editor who agrees that a narrative piece about obsessives is always a diverting Sunday-morning read? Either way, I’m thankful to the section’s editors for taking it and giving it good play.

And now a bonus for you fellow obsessives: a list of those Blue Note 45s (at least of those I’ve heard) that I can recommend most heartily for both their music and their sound.

Among the Music Matters Jazz LPs (which offer the most lavish packages and the quietest pressings): Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch; Sonny Clark, Cool Struttin’; Lee Morgan, Search for the New Land; Sonny Rollins, Vol. 1; and, coming next month (I’ve heard a test pressing), Andrew Hill, Point of Departure. I also wouldn’t pass up Clifford Brown, Memorial Album, which, though recorded in 1950 and ’53 (and not by the vaunted Rudy Van Gelder, though he remastered the sides for the late-‘50s LP), sounds amazing for its time, especially in the horns.

I haven’t heard many of Analogue Productions’ Blue Note 45 series, but Kenny Burrell, Midnight Blue is particularly tasty.

I don’t know if Classic’s Purity single-sided, 4-LP 45 rpm pressings are still available (Classic went out of business and was recently bought out by Analogue Productions), but if they are, rush to buy Cannonball Adderley, Somethin’ Else.

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Charlie Haden's Quartet West Goes East Posted Sat Jul 31, 2010, 2:18 PM ET

Charlie Haden has been playing this week at Birdland in New York with his group Quartet West or, as he calls this incarnation, “Quartet West Goes East,” with Ravi Coltrane filling in for Ernie Watts on tenor sax and Rodney Green taking Larance Marable’s chair on drums.

It may be the New Yorker in me, but I like this hybrid model better.

Haden, who’s lived in Los Angeles for 30 years, formed Quartet West in 1986, so that he could lead a working band without leaving home. Its playbook—documented on such albums as In Angel City, Haunted Heart, Always Say Goodbye, Now Is the Hour and Quartet West--is steeped in nostalgia for a mythic old L.A.: a mix of the bebop that he played on Central Avenue when he first came to town in ’57 and romantic, noir-ish ballads that evoke the hard-boiled style of Raymond Chandler detective novels.

My biggest problem with the group, to the extent I have one, is Watts, whose reedy tone and thick vibrato strikes me as too much Hollywood studio, not enough street-savvy blues. Ravi Coltrane (John’s son and sounding more and more like him these days) moves the mix in the right direction; his playing here is melodic and moody, but he adds a layer of soul. And on Thursday’s early set, when I saw the band, his solo on Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” was just stunning.

He’s the only horn player I’ve seen, besides Ornette himself, who has an idea of what to do on the song’s bridge. Coleman revolutionized jazz on that bridge: instead of playing variations on the chords, he took the song in a whole new direction—different tempo, changes, everything—while somehow preserving the structure. Ravi didn’t duplicate Ornette’s solo, but he did follow Ornette’s spirit, which is to say he navigated his own course and came out of it back on track. (He told me afterward that, when he studied jazz with Haden several years ago, one exercise he was given was to play that solo note for note—not in order to imitate it, but to discover for himself the song’s shape and thus be able to carve new paths on the shape of any song.)

Rodney Green, who is the band’s new drummer (not just a one-off replacement), has a different style from Marable’s: cooler, more insouciant, but no less virtuosic, especially with the brushes, where he scrambles around the trapset with a cascade of rhythms but so quietly. He reminds me of Philly Joe Jones.

Two bits of news I learned at the set. First, Quartet West has a new album, its first in a while, coming out next year. Second, and more exciting, Haden recorded a duet album with Hank Jones shortly before Jones died; their last one, Steal Away, made in 1996, was a masterpiece of spirituals and blues; this one, to be called Come Sunday, is already giving me the shivers, and I haven't even heard it. Alas, it’s not due out until late in 2011. Hey, Verve Records, give us a break; put it out sooner.

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New & Old Treasures by Maria Schneider Posted Thu Jul 22, 2010, 9:50 PM ET

Maria Schneider’s Jazz Orchestra plays at Birdland in midtown Manhattan this week, an unusual season and setting (usually they play at the Jazz Standard around Thanksgiving). The occasion is the premiere of a new, commissioned composition, and at Wednesday’s early set, it sounded as lovely as anything she’s written: joyful, melancholic, adventurous, pensive, with a samba swing.

She devoted much of the rest of the set to very early pieces, including an upbeat number she wrote for the (now-defunct) Carnegie Hall Jazz Band and an arrangement of the ballad standard “My Ideal” that she said she wrote in college. It was lush and gorgeous, in a Thad Jones sort of vibe, but also propulsive, with a flugelhorn solo by Tony Kadleck that sent shivers: so creamy I thought at first it was a flute, but also sinuous and fluent in its serpentine turns and twists, not at all “smooth” or schmaltzy.

A musician-composer that I went with said afterwards that Maria never makes a false move when it comes to voicings in the horn sections. True.

Scoop: Sometime this fall (it’s not clear exactly when), at Le Poisson Rouge, the eclectic club in Greenwich Village, the Kronos Quartet will play a string quartet that they commissioned her to write. They premiered it earlier this year at Duke. I heard them rehearse a movement of it in a practice room at Carnegie Hall a few weeks before then. It sounded terrific: not a scaled-down Maria Schneider orchestral piece but a full-blown string quartet, in the idiom of the genre, yet distinctively hers: alive with inventive rhythms and Technicolor harmonies.

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Jenny Scheinman's got it going on Posted Wed Jul 14, 2010, 10:49 AM ET

I’ve been following Jenny Scheinman for a few years now: her frequent Tuesday night sets at Barbes, a small Brooklyn bar and sometimes-jazzclub not far from my house; her side gigs with the likes of Bill Frisell, Jason Moran, and Ben Allison at various clubs in Manhattan; her wry CDs, most notably 12 Songs.

But I’ve never seen her so fiery, so fluent across so many musical styles, or just having so much damn fun as last night at the Village Vanguard, leading a quartet she calls Mayhem & Mischief.

Scheinman’s music has always blended jazz, folk, bluegrass, and blues, with the occasional hint of chamber and rock. But joined by a group that includes electric guitarist Nels Cline (who, of course, plays with Wilco as well as several avant-leaning jazz groups), drummer Jim Black (whose slapdash but disciplined polyrhythms egg everyone on), and bassist Todd Sickafoose (who lays down a tight, mean bassline, assuring his bandmates that they can fly far and high, knowing the tether to earth is secure)—well, it rocks, it’s just thrilling, I haven’t smiled so much at a jazz concert in ages.

This isn’t the usual sort of “fusion,” which blends jazz and rock (and perhaps another genre or two) into some homogenous soundscape. No, Scheinman & Co. retain each style’s distinctive idiom while somehow clanging, melding, sometimes even seamlessly weaving them together.

Sometimes for instance, Scheinman bows a lovely ballad, Cline wails or strums some slightly off-centered chords or twirls some electronic effects, Black klook-a-mops the trapset, Sickafoose lays down the law—and everybody in the packed Vanguard is tapping his foot and swaying his head (or her foot and head: lots of women in the house).

There’s no noise. This is composed music—all written by Scheinman, much of it in the last few months, intricate enough to demand a top-notch band to make it simmer and boil. This is such a band.

They play through Sunday. Good news for those who can’t make it: Scheinman told me after the set that she’s taking them into a recording studio at the end of the week. Watch out for that album!

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Jason Moran's Ten Posted Mon Jul 5, 2010, 6:53 PM ET

Jason Moran’s Ten (Blue Note) commemorates the 10th anniversary of his trio called Bandwagon (with Tarus Mateen on bass, Nasheet Waits on drums), and it’s by far the group’s best recording, maybe Moran’s best all told, which, if so, would mean it surpasses his 2002 solo disc, Modernistic, which is saying a lot. Whether it does or not (I’m still mulling), this is a great album, that much is certain.

This is also the trio’s first album that’s not geared to a concept. It flits across the musical map, from originals to pieces by Monk, Leonard Bernstein, the avant-garde classical composer Colin Nancarrow, and Moran’s late mentors, Jaki Byard and Andrew Hill.

Moran, just 32, plays in styles alternately bluesy, elegiac, balladic, funky—and at once adventurous, lyrical, and original throughout. I know of no jazz pianist since Don Pullen who stretches rhythm as elastically, or with such casual intensity, and with Pullen you could draw a line between the verses and his solo; Moran merges the two. Listen to “Blue Blocks” or “Big Stuff,” where he speeds up the tempo, alters the chords, and crafts a whole new melody, then cranks it back down, then sometimes back up again, seamlessly, at will, if not whim.

Meanwhile, his triomates have caught up with him. Previous Bandwagon albums and live concerts have struck me as sessions of Jason Moran with accompaniment. On Ten, we hear a coherent, nearly isosceles triangle, each player darting his own course, weaving in and out of each other’s path, yet never snapping or entangling the string connecting them. Waits seems to have learned a few tricks from Paul Motian, pushing and pulling with and against Moran’s rhythms; Mateen navigates between them, anchoring the two. It’s thrilling.

The sound quality is very fine: dynamic, well balanced, tonally true.

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Is Jazz a Young Person's Music After All? Posted Wed Jun 30, 2010, 8:41 PM ET

A week ago, I went to see Chris Potter lead a top-notch quintet at the Jazz Standard. It was a great set. Potter’s big tenor-sax sound keeps getting more swinging, more virtuosic, yet at the same time tonally subtler. Joining him were Steve Nelson on vibes, Paul Motian on drums, Craig Taborn on piano, and Scott Colley on bass. Potter was smiling a lot during their solos, as if he couldn’t quite believe that he’d assembled such a crew.

But that’s not what I want to write about. I want to write about the fact that the set was jam-packed, and with more young people—including young women, in their early to mid 20s—than I’ve ever seen at this or any of New York City’s other major jazz clubs. Some of these people were familiar with jazz, even with Potter; others clearly were not. But they all seemed to be enjoying it; they were quiet—as quiet as any jazz crowd I’ve been in lately—and very appreciative with their applause.

What was going on here? The answer: The cover charge was just $15, about half the Standard’s usual fare. The set was part of the CareFusion Jazz Festival, which was going on all over town, some of it at places like Carnegie Hall, some at places like the Standard. The festival’s organizer, George Wein, made a deal with the clubs: He would pay for the musicians; the clubs could keep all the door fees, as long as they charged no more than $15. A very good deal for all concerned.

As a result, young people flocked. Maybe it’s not true that the new generation doesn’t like jazz; maybe they just find it too expensive.

The critic Gary Giddins tells me that, when he took the Long Island Railroad into the city to go to the Village Vanguard as a teenager in the late ‘60s, the cover was $2.50. Adjusting for inflation, $2.50 in 1969 is the same as just a little under $15 in 2009.

I don’t know what to do about this. Obviously, George Wein (or some jazz-loving millionaire) can’t subsidize clubs like this all the time. But what if some clubs held a jam session, or a player’s or composer’s series, one late set, one night a week, for a much-reduced cover? (Barbes in Brooklyn, which holds 30 people, who each put $10 in a jar that’s passed around, attracts excellent musicians, who use the forum to try out new material.)

Maybe young people would find out that they like this thing called jazz and, once they had a bit more money, they’ll come back.

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Keith Jarrett Trio at Carnegie Hall (plus: Jazz Festival!) Posted Sat Jun 19, 2010, 12:49 PM ET

Keith Jarrett’s “Standards Trio” played Carnegie Hall Thursday night, to predictable glories.

The concert—which lasted over two-and-a-half hours, including an intermission and three encores—started with “It Could Happen to You” and ended with “I Thought About You,” bracketing, among others, an ethereal “My Funny Valentine,” maybe the most heartbraking take on “All the Sad Young Men” since Anita O’Day's, and a startlingly funky “God Bless the Child” with K-Jay laying down a fierce backbeat while still carving serpentine solos of vast sophistication.

This time, he didn’t yell at the audience (or say anything for that matter), except once, and justifiably, toward the very end, when someone in the balcony snapped a photo, despite the MC’s repeated implorings not to. Then someone else took a shot as the trio began to play, and it’s a testament to Jarrett’s relatively good mood perhaps that he didn’t walk out then and there. (Suggestion: Maybe he should let everyone take pictures for two minutes when he and his bandmates—Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette—walk onto the stage, and maybe a minute more while they pose at their instruments; and then that’s really, strictly, it.)

One other suggestion: Carnegie Hall, one of the great concert spaces for acoustic instruments, should hire some engineers who know what they’re doing when microphones and speakers come into play. In the first half, the piano sounded muffled, the bass indistinct, and the drums way too splashy. The mix was adjusted during intermission; the second half sounded just fine, as well-balanced as I’ve ever heard a miked concert at Carnegie.

This was the opening night of George Wein’s CareFusion Jazz Festival, which continues next week at various halls and clubs around the city, featuring such stalwarts as Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Sheila Jordan; next-generation masters like Jason Moran, Chris Potter, and Jason Lindner; and up-and-comers Anat Cohen, Esperanza Spaulding, Mostly Other People Do the Killing, and Darcy James Argue’s 18-piece “steampunk” big band, the Secret Society. The full schedule is here.

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Jazz Awards, 2009-10 Posted Mon Jun 14, 2010, 8:49 PM ET

The Jazz Journalists Association held its 2010 awards bash at City Winery, a warm, spacious eatery (with an excellent wine list) in the SoHo section of New York this evening. Below are most of the winners, followed by the musicians for whom I cast my ballot. The awards covered the period from April 15, 2009, to April 15, 2010.

RECORD OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Joe Lovano, Folk Art.
My Pick: Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Infernal Machines. Lovano’s quintet album was excellent, but Argue’s debut approached the astonishing. (My choice in the first round of voting was Keith Jarrett’s Testament, but it didn’t make the cut-off of nominees.)
HISTORICAL RECORDING OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Ella Fitzgerald, Twelve Nights in Hollywood.
My Pick: Ditto. Nothing else came close.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN JAZZ:
Winner: James Moody.
My Pick: Paul Motian. Any of the nominees—Muhal Richard Abrams, Jimmy Heath, Wayne Shorter, Randy Weston, as well as Moody or Motian—would have been fine with me.
MUSICIAN OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Vijay Iyer.
My Pick: Joe Lovano. A strange one. Iyer’s a superb pianist, but, as you’ll see below, someone else won Best Pianist, and Lovano picked up not just Best Record but a bevy of other prizes. So go figure. Lovano was all over the map this year, blowing and composing at a career peak.
UP & COMING ARTIST OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Darcy James Argue.
My Pick: Ditto. See above.
COMPOSER OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Maria Schneider.
My Pick: Maria Schneider. She won Best Arranger, too, in my book and the Association’s.
LARGE ENSEMBLE OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society.
My Pick: Ditto. I would have picked Maria Schneider’s Jazz Orchestra (still the gold standard of modern big bands), but it put out no new albums this year. Schneider did compose a few things, though; hence my apparent inconsistency.
SMALL ENSEMBLE OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Joe Lovano’s Us Five.
My Pick: Ditto, though my first-ballot faves, Jason Moran’s Bandwagon and Fred Hersch’s Trio, weren’t among the final nominees.
TENOR SAXOPHONIST OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Joe Lovano.
My Pick: Joe Lovano. As I said, it’s been his year.
ALTO SAXOPHONIST OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Rudresh Mahanthappa.
My Pick: Rudresh Manhathappa. I would have picked Ornette Coleman, but he didn’t do much in the time span. RM has that rare thing: a truly original sound, and it cooks.
TRUMPETER OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Terence Blanchard.
My Pick: Dave Douglas, who to my mind is still the most versatile, lyrical, mind-bending one out there.
CLARINETIST OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Anat Cohen.
My Pick: I honestly can’t remember if I picked Cohen or Don Byron. Both are marvels.
TROMBONIST OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Roswell Rudd.
My Pick: Steve Davis.
PIANIST OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Kenny Barron.
My Pick: I forget whether I chose Keith Jarrett or Jason Moran, the former for Testament, the latter for his startling Monk tribute at Town Hall. Barron’s wonderful, too, but…
VIOLINIST OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Regina Carter.
My Pick: Jenny Scheinman.
BASSIST OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Dave Holland.
My Pick: Charlie Haden.
DRUMMER OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Paul Motian.
My Pick: Paul Motian. Mr. Magic.
PLAYER OF INSTRUMENTS RARE IN JAZZ:
Winner: Edmar Castaneda.
My Pick: Scott Robinson. I must say, though, I’m not familiar with Castaneda. Would his publicists care to enlighten me?

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Stan Getz & Kenny Barron Posted Thu Jun 10, 2010, 6:22 PM ET

A trend of sorts has taken hold the past few years: albums (in most cases, multi-disc boxed sets) capturing not just the highlights of a jazz concert but the whole concert—or a whole week’s worth of concerts, the entire run of a gig at a nightclub—every note of it.

High points in this trend include the Gillespie-Parker Quintet’s June 1945 concert at Town Hall, Monk and Coltrane’s ’57 concert at Carnegie Hall, Mingus’ ’64 concert at Cornell, Bill Evans’ final 1980 sets at the Keystone Korner, Miles Davis’ mid-‘60s quintet at the Plugged Nickel (to say nothing of the gargantuan 20-disc boxed set of every Miles Davis performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival), a slew of previously unissued concerts by Art Pepper in his final days…and on and on.

The best of these recordings give off a tingle of pleasure—a you-are-there adventure in time-traveling, a taste of jazz in its in-the-moment creation.

Add to this list People Time: The Complete Recordings (on the Sunnyside label), a 7-CD boxed set of duets by Stan Getz and Kenny Barron, taped at the Montmartre Club in Copenhagen over a four-night gig—every note, every between-song utterance—in March 1991, just three months before Getz died of cancer at the age of 64.

Getz was a famously volcanic human being, a heavy drinker, a cokehead, maybe a bit schizo; upon hearing his cancer diagnosis, he said, “I’m too evil to die.” Yet nobody could blow a ballad on the tenor sax with as much sheer beauty. He rarely composed his own music, nor was he particularly adept at the harmonic runs of bebop; he played mainly jazz standards, both the familiar and the little-known, and he tapped every drop of emotional power from these songs, across a wide range of feelings—smooth, gruff, assured, desperate, always romantic—without ever sounding sentimental. And he explored variations on themes and melodies with an inventiveness that maybe only Sonny Rollins surpasses on the horn.

One of my favorite Getz albums is Bossas and Ballads: The Lost Sessions, recorded in 1989 but stupidly unreleased and then buried in the vaults for another 14 years. It featured his last great quartet, which included Kenny Barron on piano (along with George Mraz, bass, and Victor Lewis, drums). But it turns out that Getz’s flame burned brightest when he played just with Barron.

Excerpts from the Montmartre sets were released in 1992 as a double album called People Time, but it only hinted at the treasures on the complete tapes.

Photos in the set’s booklet show Getz sitting down while playing; he wasn’t well, and he tired easily. But the remarkable thing is that he kept playing better and better. Gary Giddins, who wrote the sage liner notes, is right that the highlights are on the last three discs (i.e., from the sets on the last two nights).

Before the first set, on the first disc, he tells the audience that all the gigs are being recorded, so some of it will be good, some bad, some in between. It’s all very good, and quite a lot of it is great.

Verve’s French division released this boxed set a few years ago (but only in France). The US headquarters took a pass (what’s going on with that label?), so Sunnyside, a shrewd indie label, picked it up. Buy it. Reward them and yourself.

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Advertisement for Myself: The paperback edition Posted Tue Jun 8, 2010, 5:28 PM ET

As I’ve mused before (though only twice), what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t indulge in a little self-promotion?

So let me announce that my book, 1959: The Year Everything Changed, is now out in paperback from Wiley & Sons.

As the subtitle suggests, the book covers everything about the era’s transformations—in politics, society, culture, science, and sex. But readers of this space may be especially interested in the chapters on music: the origins of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, the rise of Ornette Coleman, the globalization of Dave Brubeck, the roots of Motown.

I won’t be so indulgent as to quote the raves and hosannas that greeted the book on its hardcover publication a year ago. But please go to my website, where you can read all about them, order copies with a click (and, incidentally, get linked to this blog, among other things).

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Geri Allen's Flying Toward the Sound Posted Thu Jun 3, 2010, 11:04 AM ET

Geri Allen’s new album, Flying Toward the Sound (Motema Music), is a stunner. She calls it “a solo piano excursion inspired by Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock.” In jazz pianists’ lingo, this is like Babe Ruth pointing to a spot in right-center field. And she slugs the ball out of the park.

Lots of “free” pianists have copied Hancock’s Ravelian tone-clusters, pounded out Tyner’s block chords, or mad-dashed about the keyboard like Taylor. But few (any?) have captured the balletic limber—the acrobatic joy—of this music, much less transmuted it into his or her own voice and rhythms.

Allen does this here. And her voice is at once adventurous and accessible.

I’ve been listening to Geri Allen since the mid-1980s, soon after she helped found the M-Base Collective, a group of Brooklyn-based musicians seeking to fuse jazz with urban rock and funk in new ways.

It didn’t take her long to move out from those roots. I first saw her live, playing a Mary Lou Williams solo-tribute concert at the Smithsonian. Soon after, she was co-leading record dates with the likes of Charlie Haden and Paul Motian (Etudes, Live at the Village Vanguard, Segments, and one of Haden’s Montreal Tapes sessions), Ron Carter and Tony Williams (Twenty One), and Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette (The Life of a Song, the best jazz album Telarc ever released). Ornette Coleman almost never plays with pianists, but on one of the few occasions when he did, he chose Allen to play along. (The resulting album, Sound Museum: Three Women, ranks among his half-dozen best.)

The point is, you can tell a lot about jazz musicians by who chooses to keep their company, and Allen, who’s now 53, has long attracted a fair number from the top echelon.

But soloing is something else, and she takes the art well beyond what many might expect of her. The sound quality is also superb: liquid and percussive. Get this, listen closely, and hang on tight.

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Keith Jarrett & Charlie Haden duets Posted Mon May 31, 2010, 3:18 PM ET

Let’s put the main point up front. The new duet album by Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden, Jasmine (on ECM), is a gorgeous piece of work: all standards, mainly ballads, nothing fancy (not overtly anyway), but such poignance and quiet passion; it’s a glimpse into the intimacy of the act of making art.

That is to say, it’s one of the best piano-bass duet albums since the ones that Haden made in the ‘90s with Kenny Barron (Night and the City) and Hank Jones (Steal Away)—which begs the question: What is it about Charlie Haden’s bass playing that takes pianists to a different level?

Not a higher level, necessarily—all of these pianists have done just fine on their own or with others—but their playing seems more relaxed when they’re with Haden: not more casual or lackadaisical, but more serene, more confident, maybe because they know that he’ll take up whatever slack they leave, so they can wander off, follow some whim or instinct, without scurrying to keep up the rhythm and the chord-changes.

Haden made his mark as the bassist in Ornette Coleman’s classic quartet of 1959-61, but it’s misleading to identify him as a “free jazz” musician. At heart, he’s a romantic, an explorer of beauty in songs. He fit so well with Coleman, whose music abandons conventional harmony, because he’d found that simply keeping time or plucking the chord’s root doesn’t tap into the emotion of the music; sometimes it’s enough, but sometimes he feels he has to play along with the melody, or pick out a countermelody or some other pattern—or just a cluster of notes—that enriches the mood.

Yet there’s nothing flamboyant about Haden’s playing. He is a model of economy, knowing just which note or two from a chord will convey the feeling he’s after; and he treats each note preciously, usually as a half-note, except when he plucks them as a dotted-quarter and eighth-note to stagger the rhythm, in unexpected places.

The duet may be the hardest, and purest, form of jazz: two musicians have to improvise, and keep improvising, after laying out the theme; there’s no place to hide, no one else who can step forward and solo while they fall back and coast.

Every few years, Haden plays a week of duets at the Blue Note jazz club in New York, with a different pianist each night, and the best nights are with those who share his temperament, who listen as intensely as they play, and who can trade parts, move in and out of melody, harmony and rhythm, until there’s no distinction.

Keith Jarrett, of course, may be the most romantic (and analytical) jazz pianist out there, and so with Haden—who was the bassist in his great quartet of the ‘70s but with whom he hasn’t played at all in the decades since—he slows down, chills out, seems to feel at home in a way that’s different from the way he plays these sorts of songs with his “standards trio” (Gary Peacock on bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums), though still in a style that’s distinctively his.

The album was recorded over a four-day period in Jarrett’s home studio. The sound is dry but in a good way: very close, all the nuances very clear.

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John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet Posted Thu May 27, 2010, 6:06 PM ET

I’m late in coming to the drummer-composer John Hollenbeck. (These things happen: so many records, so little time…) It wasn’t until a few months ago that I stumbled upon Eternal Interlude (on the Sunnyside label), the latest CD by his 20-piece Large Ensemble, which, had I heard it earlier, would have made it on my 2009 Best 10 list. (Ditto, just to set the record straight, for Infernal Machines by Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, that other wondrous big band that escaped my attention.)

So I hasten to take note of The Royal Toast (on the Cuneiform label), the 5th and latest album by Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet.

Hollenbeck, who’s not quite 42, has said in interviews that the group is named after a woman named Claudia whom he met for a few minutes 15 years ago and that he called the album The Royal Toast because he likes toast, all of which suggests a Dada sensibility at work.

In any case, this is a remarkable album and nearly uncategorizable. The quintet, which has been around since the late 1990s, consists of Hollenbeck on drums, Ted Reichman on accordion, Chris Speed on clarinet and tenor sax, Matt Moran on vibes, and Drew Gress on bass—with the addition, here, of Gary Versace on piano.

It opens with a stirring elegy, teeming with romantic melancholy; then jumps to upbeat circus music, encrusted with a noir bassline; segues into an avant-garde howler, then a gentle piece of minimalism (though, at times, the bass and piano drift off in separate directions, then drift right back as if on cue); and that’s just the first few tracks.

None of it quite swings, but it’s hypnotic, what rich and varied textures he weaves from such simple elements. He’s studied with Bob Brookmeyer, collaborated with Meredith Monk, and played with several jazz musicians of a more conventional bent. Still, this doesn’t account for the kaleidoscope of influences on display—I hear bits of Carla Bley, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Philip Glass, a little Cage and Copland, maybe some South Asian rhythms—all fused in a distinct, original sound.

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Hank Jones, R.I.P. Posted Mon May 17, 2010, 11:09 AM ET

The pianist Hank Jones died on Sunday at age 91, ending one of the great jazz dynasties (his brothers were the drummer Elvin and the trumpeter-composer Thad) and taking out one more survivor of the generation that founded post-war jazz.

Jones was active till the end, and in fine form too. His style was mannered and sophisticated but never gentle or posh. He played mainly standards, always with swing, inventive harmonies, and a subtle undercurrent of blues.

He came up through the jazz ranks in Detroit, moved to New York in 1944, and fell in instantly with the be-bop elite on 52nd Street, as a sideman to Charlie Parker and the others.

But his years as dynamo leader didn’t come until the 1970s, when he started the Great Jazz Trio with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams. A later version, with the same moniker, included his brother Elvin (one of the few times they played together) and Richard Davis. (This latter group put out two albums, as CDs, SACDs, and LPs, on the Japanese label Eighty-eight, Autumn Leaves and Someday My Prince Will Come, and are worth searching out.)

My favorite Hank Jones albums are probably The Oracle, a stunning 1989 trio album with Dave Holland and Billy Higgins—all three masters performing at their peak—and Steal Away, a 1995 duet session of moody spirituals with bassist Charlie Haden that the word “gorgeous” doesn’t begin to describe. In 2006, he recorded a trio session called West of 5th, with Jimmy Cobb and Christian McBride, for the audiophile Chesky label, and it’s one of the best albums Chesky’s ever made.

More recently, he teamed up with the tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano for a few albums on Blue Note. The best of them, Kids, was recorded live at Dizzy’s, the small club in Jazz at Lincoln Center, and it’s full of verve and joy. I was present for one of those gigs. Jones was 88, seemed 20 years younger, and was clearly having a ball. That’s how I’ll remember him.

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Corea-Gomez-Motian Play Evans (sort of) Posted Fri May 7, 2010, 1:09 AM ET

Some risky business is going on at the Blue Note, the posh jazz club on West 3rd Street in Manhattan.

The gig is called “Further Explorations of Bill Evans” and features a trio of Chick Corea on piano, Eddie Gomez on bass, and Paul Motian on drums. The title is a play on Evans’ 1959 album Explorations, which also featured Motian on drums (as did his much-celebrated Village Vanguard sessions, recorded two years later). Gomez was Evans’ bassist from the mid-1960s through mid-‘70s. Corea’s a wilder card, capable of fusing or altering some of Evans’ lyricism with a Latin edge and a free-jazz reach.

So, it could be inspired, could be a mess. Thursday’s late set, which is when I sat in witness, was inspired, plus some. Stunningly good is another way to put it.

The set began with a few minutes’ worth of loose rumblings, jagged cadences, a thicket of tension, but then the fragments coalesced into “Waltz for Debbie,” Evans’ anthem, and the air brightened. But this was no strait-laced Evans tribute; it was a Debbie dancing more loosely in time, the tempo stretched, then tightened, then altered altogether, the rhythm staggered, the harmonies widened and deepened well beyond the original’s chord changes.

Yet neither was this was some exercise in Cubism for its own sake. The music flowed, swung, sizzled, simmered. And so it went for the whole set, which included brief flutterings of “My Foolish Heart,” an ebb-and-cresting “My Ship,” some shards of Monk, and a couple pieces that I didn’t quite recognize but enjoyed very much.

Corea, who’s nearly 70, may be the most insouciant virtuoso in jazz piano; Gomez, 65, flips and spins the bass lines without losing his traction as anchor; and Motian—well, I’ve said enough about Motian in this space: at 79, he’s a magician, somehow subverting and solidifying the rhythm all at once.

It’s a magical mystery trio.

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Jazz Musician-Bloggers Posted Wed Mar 31, 2010, 3:37 PM ET

The Jazz Review was one of the most fascinating journals in the history of music-writing. Its editors were Nat Hentoff and Martin Williams, two of the most insightful critics of its day (the late 1950s and early ’60s). But its main distinction was that it consisted almost entirely of jazz musicians, writing articles and reviews about other jazz musicians.

In retrospect, the issues (which are now available online) contain as much parochialism as wisdom, which is to say they’re a reflection of their times. Art Farmer scolds Ornette Coleman for discarding chord-changes; at the same time, Gunther Schuller (in the first issue) parses Sonny Rollins’ style of improvisation so meticulously that, after reading it, Rollins is said to have lost his footing (as a centipede might upon hearing an entomologist explain precisely how he manages to walk with eight legs).

What’s interesting is that the musicians hold no bars when writing about one another. The reviews (often of albums now considered classics) are very detailed, sometimes quite technical, and occasionally disparaging.

The magazine lasted just three years, from 1958-61, but there’s something like it going on today in the blogosphere.

Countless jazz musicians have their own blogs, most of them to offer sound clips or to announce their upcoming albums and gigs. But some are using the medium in ways that echo, wittingly or not, The Jazz Review of yore.

Darcy James Argue takes deep, analytical dips into his own scores for his Secret Society big band, and sometimes touts other musicians’ works as well. Dave Douglas does the same with his. Steve Coleman uncorks massive musicological, occasionally mystical disquisitions on harmony and rhythm. Matana Roberts offers poetical ramblings on life, ideas, and music (her own and others’). Chris Kelsey has gone at it, with other musicians and critics, on the meaning and scope of “jazz form.”

But the jazz blog that I go to most eagerly is Ethan Iverson’s. The pianist for The Bad Plus, and quite the hip virtuoso on his own dime, Iverson lays out some of the most probing interviews with other musicians, and analyses of their work, by anyone anywhere. Iverson’s knowledge is encyclopedic (of jazz history, theory, and performance). I know from my own journalistic endeavors in other realms that interview-subjects open up when they’re faced with someone who’s on their wavelength, and Iverson’s subjects open up.

His blog leaves a lot of critics (myself included) in the dust.

It’s also a lot of fun.

Readers: I know I'm leaving out some jazz-musician bloggers. Who are your favorites?

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The Ryan Keberle Double Quartet's Heavy Dreaming Posted Thu Mar 25, 2010, 9:42 PM ET

The best new jazz album of 2010 so far: the Ryan Keberle Double Quartet’s Heavy Dreaming (on the Alternate Side Records label). I’ve played it a dozen or so times in the month since I received an advance copy. It’s infectiously joyous, except when it’s movingly melancholic, and it’s head-spinning, too.

At 29, Keberle (pronounced KEB-er-lee) plays trombone in two of the best big bands out there, Maria Schneider’s Jazz Orchestra and Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, and he seems to have picked up some pieces of technique from both: Argue’s knack for weaving rhythms within rhythms into a seamless web; Schneider’s way with lushly stacked harmonies and melodic lines that crest, flow, and (trickiest of all) develop.

The Double Quartet consists of a conventional trombone quartet (backed by piano, bass, and drums), augmented by a brass quartet (trumpet, a 2nd trombone, French horn, and tuba). It’s a rich, warm sound—and a tight ensemble too, including Frank Kimbrough on piano, John Clark on horn, and Marcus Rojas on tuba.

Keberle plays with an indigo tone and insouciantly sinuous phrasing. As Darcy James Argue writes in the liner notes, he’s the rare trombonist who doesn’t emulate a be-bop tenor saxophonist; he writes around the character of his own horn, deepening its resonances, molding its limits into strengths.

The album was recorded by Mike Marciano at Brooklyn’s Systems Two studios, and sounds as vivid and lively as most of his work.

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