Tampa Jazz Notes: SPC Jazz Fest; Ira Sullivan; Wynton & the LCJO

It’s encouraging to see several good jazz shows on the calendar for the first quarter of 2012 around the Tampa Bay area (at the same time, there seems to be a steady shrinkage of regular  opportunities for local jazzers to play paid gigs at local venues).

On the way:

Jan. 26-28 — 4th Annual SPC Jazz Festival: St. Petersburg College prof and trombonist/composer David Manson has assembled another strong lineup, this time with an emphasis on Brazilian and Latin strains of jazz.

• Thursday, Jan. 26, 7:30 p.m. — Alfredo Rivero Trio (guitarist Rivero, left, bassist Yovanny Roque and drummer Patrick Hernly) & La Lucha (pianist John O’Leary, bassist Alejandro Arenas, drummer Mark Feinman) with singer Jun Bustamante
• Friday, Jan. 27, 7:30 p.m. — Singer Kathy Kosins with the Helios Jazz Orchestra
• Saturday, Jan. 28, 7:30 p.m.  — O Som do Jazz (Manson, Arenas, Feinman, Rivero, singer Andrea Moraes Manson, saxophonist Austin Vickrey, and David Kubillos) and pianist/composer Antonio Adolfo (pictured, left), a recipient of 5 Latin jazz awards from the Latin Jazz Corner for his new CD, Chora Baiao.
• Saturday, Jan. 28, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.  — Brazilian music workshop, led by Adolfo

All events will be held at the college’s  St. Petersburg/Gibbs Campus Music Center, 6605 Fifth Ave. N., St. Petersburg. Admission is $10 at the door for each event; for more information, visit the official site or call (727) 341-7984

Sunday, Feb. 12, 3 p.m. — Ira Sullivan (right, below; my video clip from the Bob Seymour tribute): The great trumpeter, saxophonist and flutist Ira Sullivan, making his 16th appearance in a concert presented by the Tampa Jazz Club, plays HCC’s Mainstage Theatre.

He’ll be joined by several of his favorite Tampa Bay area musicians — pianist Michael Royal, bassist Richard Dreler, and drummer John Jenkins. Admission is $25, $20 for Tampa Jazz Club members, and $10 for students with ID.  For more information, visit the Tampa Jazz Club site, or call (813) 253-7695. The Theatre is at the corner of Palm Avenue & 14th Street (Republica de Cuba) in Ybor.

Saturday, March 10, 8 p.m. — Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra: The trumpeter, composer, and bandleader, probably the world’s best-known jazz musician, brings his superb 15-piece big band to the Straz Center’s Carol Morsani Hall. In addition to Marsalis, the group may include the following musicians (subject to change): Ryan Kisor, Marcus Printup, Kenny Rampton, trumpets; Vincent Gardner, Elliot Mason, Chris Crenshaw, trombones; Sherman Irby, Ted Nash, Walter Blanding, Victor Goines, Joe Temperley, saxophones and woodwinds; Dan Nimmer, piano; Carlos Henriquez, bass; Ali Jackson, drums.

Tickets start at $33.50, The Straz is at 1010 North MacInnes Place in Tampa. For more information on the show, call (813) 229-7827 or click here.

Other notable jazz shows in the next few months:

Friday, Jan. 20, 7:30 p.m.  — Stan Hunter Group, Ruth Eckerd Hall’s Murray Theater, Clearwater, 7:30 p.m.

Feb. 14, 8 p.m. — Diana Krall, Ruth Eckerd Hall

Feb. 25, 8 p.m. — Jane Monheit, Ruth Eckerd Hall,

New NEA Jazz Masters: Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette, Sheila Jordan, Von Freeman, Jimmy Owens

Congrats to the class of 2012 NEA Jazz Masters: Bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Jack DeJohnette, singer Sheila Jordan, saxophonist Von Freeman, and trumpeter Jimmy Owens.

The latest inductees, each of whom will receive a $25,000 fellowship, were honored during ceremonies and a concert held Tuesday night at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center (the webcast of the event is here).

More good news: Despite reports that the 30-year-old program would be discontinued, the National Endowment for the Arts will continue awarding Jazz Masters fellowships in 2013 and — with luck — beyond.

For more information on the Jazz Masters program, which has honored 124 jazz greats since 1982, visit the official site. For videotaped interviews with the honorees, go here.

And for additional details on the near cancellation of the program, check out jazz critic Howard Mandel’s blog.

 

Sonny Rollins, Gretchen Parlato, Miguel Zenon Top 6th Annual Jazz Critics Poll (Rhapsody.com)

Sonny Rollins is getting lots of love from critics this year, yet again — and deservedly so. His live Road Shows, Vol.2 (Doxy/Emarcy) was just named Album of the Year in the 6th Annual Jazz Critics Poll.

The poll, formerly affiliated with the Village Voice, this year is sponsored by Rhapsody.com, where the complete results are posted. More than 120 critics (including me) participated in the poll.

The winners of the major awards:

• Album of the Year: Sonny  Rollins, Road Shows, Vol. 2 (Doxy/Emarcy)  Runner-Up: Ambrose Akinmusire, When the Heart Emerges Glistening (Blue Note)

•   Reissue: Miles Davis Quintet, Live in Europe 1967: Bootleg Series, Vol. 1 (Sony Legacy) Runner-Up: Julius Hemphill, Dogon A.D. (International Phonograph)

•   Vocal: Gretchen Parlato, The Lost and Found (ObliqSound) Runner-Up: Jen Shyu & Mark Dresser, Synastry (Pi)

•   Debut: Chris Dingman, Waking Dreams (Between Worlds)Runner-Up: Fabian Almazan Trio, Personalities (Palmetto)

•   Latin: Miguel Zenón, Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook (Marsalis Music) Runner-Up: David Murray Cuban Ensemble, Plays Nat Cole en Español (Motéma) 

Individual critics’ ballots are posted here.

Sonny Rollins, Joe Lovano, Ambrose Akinmusire top JazzTimes’ critics picks for 2011

New releases from two veteran saxophonists and a fast-rising young trumpeter topped the list of JazzTimes‘ critics picks for 2011.

Sonny Rollins‘ Road Shows Vol. 2 (Doxy/Emarcy), the Joe Lovano Us Five‘s Bird Songs (Blue Note),  and Ambrose Akinmusire‘s When the Heart Emerges Glistening (Blue Note)  occupied the top three positions on the poll, as selected by 37 of the magazine’s contributors (including me; my list for the mag is here)

Also in the Top 10:

4 Lee Konitz/Brad Mehldau/Charlie Haden/Paul Motian, Live at Birdland (ECM)

5 Miguel Zenon, Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook (Marsalis)

6 Charles Lloyd/Maria Farantouri, Athens Concert (ECM)

7 JD Allen Trio, Victory (Sunnyside)

8 Craig Taborn, Avenging Angel (ECM)

9 Keith Jarrett, Rio (ECM)

10 Roy Haynes, Roy-alty (Dreyfus Jazz)

The complete list is here

2011 Rewind: Avishai Cohen, “Seven Seas” (CD review)

(recently reviewed for JazzTimes; direct link)

Avishai Cohen, Seven Seas (Sunnyside)

There’s an attractive searching quality to the music heard on the latest collection of ambitious, atmospheric compositions from Avishai Cohen. The Israeli-born bassist, a one-time Chick Corea sideman who’s been leading his own sessions since the mid-’90s, returns on his 12th album to familiar musical terrain.

Seven Seas offers folk melodies from his homeland; Middle Eastern textures, including colourful contributions from oud and guitar player Amos Hoffman, a regular associate; feathery pop vocals from the leader and Karen Malka; and quick-shifting time signatures. Underneath it all lies a surging ocean of piano (Cohen, Shai Maestro), strings, mellow horns and, of course, Cohen’s pulsing, cascading, beautifully timbred basslines.

The title track, one of several occasions on the disc when Cohen drives his music as hard as he typically does in concert, opens with a fluttering bass-and-vocal figure, trailed by Maestro’s hyper piano and Itamar Doari’s urgent percussion, and offers ample space for the bassist’s zigzagging figures and unfettered solo improvisation. “Ani Aff,” similarly, moves at a trot, with Cohen doubling Maestro’s lines in support of breezy vocals and the pianist’s smartly turned horn arrangement.

The slowly shifting “Hayo Hayta” opens up for some emotive soprano playing by saxophonist Jimmy Greene. Cohen demonstrates his prodigious chops again on the rising-and-falling “Two Roses” (Shnei Shoshanim), and closes the album on a somber note, with the traditional Sephardic-Jewish Ladino song “Tres Hermanicas Eran.”

Cohen, who has returned to Israel, comfortably straddles several genres. It’s safe and probably accurate to think of his work as an appealing fusion of jazz and world music, with hints of pop, Third Stream and even New Age in the mix. It’s to his credit that the blend never comes off as less than organic.

 

Tedeschi Trucks Band, live at Ruth Eckerd Hall

(recently reviewed for Relix; direct link)

Tedeschi Trucks Band – Ruth Eckerd Hall, Dec. 29, 2011

(photo by Suzy Perler)

In all of jamband land, or the blues world for that matter, is there a band-fronting duo made for each other more than Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi?

Leaving aside the obvious — they’ve been a couple for a dozen years, and have two kids together — the two are possessed of talents that make a seemingly perfect match. His keening, soaring slide-guitar playing and penchant for musical exploration meet her hard-edged belting and, not incidentally, scorching six-string work firmly in the blues tradition.

They handily displayed those gifts during another of their annual holiday week shows in the Tampa Bay area, just a few hours’ drive from their home in Trucks’ native Jacksonville. Playing Ruth Eckerd Hall exactly a year from the date of their 2010 concert at the acoustically pristine venue, the two led the other nine instrumentalists and singers of the Tedeschi Trucks Band through two hours of practically nonstop music, partly drawn from the Grammy-nominated “Revelator” album.

The group opened strong with a low-slung, easy grooving version of 1969 Harry Nilsson hit “Everybody’s Talking,” a nod to the musical era most influential on the band, clearly an inheritor of the Allman Brothers’ jammy blues-rock approach (naturally, given the presence of Trucks and ABB bassist Oteil Burbridge). Riding the double-drums propulsion of Tyler Greenwell and J.J. Johnson, the tune wound down with a brief a cappella section, followed by Trucks’ atmospheric guitar work, a segue into “Midnight in Harlem.” The latter tune came off as a sonic calling card for this band, a combo of Tedeschi’s moody, powerhouse vocals and Trucks’ often eerie slide declarations, rising with ever greater intensity over the soft cushion of Kofi Burbridge’s organ and a three-piece horn section.

The show continued in a similar fashion, with peaks followed by more peaks, and a democratic sharing of the spotlight. The two Ts clearly were in charge, but they weren’t the whole show. Mike Mattison, lead singer in the old Derek Trucks Band, took center stage for gruff vocals on the ’70s funk of Dr. John’s “Qualified,” while Burbridge, appropriately enough, offered some Herbie Hancock-style jazz piano explorations on Hancock’s “Space Captain,” which he recorded with other TTB members for Hancock’s “The Imagine Project.” And on a tribute to late bluesman Hubert Sumlin, Tedeschi and Mattison shared lead vocals with backup singer Mark Rivers.

That was just the first half of a show, kick-started with a set by Miami sacred-steel steel champs The Lee Boys, that was long on satisfying moments and short on breaks. In addition to a mid-song deconstruction of Mongo Santamaria’s “Afro Blue,” highlights included a soulful stroll through Lovin’ Spoonful ballad “Darling Be Home Soon”; the old-school R&B of “Bound for Glory,” and a stomping takedown of Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright),” with open space for Maurice Brown’s brash trumpet solo, bolstered by a bit of circular breathing.

The acid-washed “Love Has Something Else to Say” was followed by Bill Withers’ “When I’m Kissing My Love,” sung by Brown. On the encore, enduring spiritual “Wade in the Water,” with its shared vocals, call-and-response passages, breakdowns, build-ups and a long fade-out, made for a musical and emotional climax to a show with ‘nary a dull moment.

2011 Rewind: Kyle Eastwood, “Songs From the Chateau” (CD review)

(recently reviewed for JazzTimes; direct link)

Kyle Eastwood, Songs From the Chateau (Candid Records)

Listeners unexcited by the glossy, beat-heavy, smoothness of 2005’s Paris Blue and its two successors will be pleasantly surprised by the direction Kyle Eastwood takes on Songs From the Chateau, his fifth album as a leader.

The virtuoso bass doubler and his regular bandmates holed up on a 15th-century estate in the French countryside and emerged with a mostly acoustic recording that plugs into soulful grooves and moves from hard bop to modal territory to Caribbean rhythms. Throughout, Eastwood demonstrates monster bass chops.

The disc’s nine compositions, and their titles, point to Eastwood’s global musical and geographical influences, from the Art Blakey flavorings of opener “Marciac,” which gives rise to bracing solos by trumpeter Graeme Flowers and tenor saxophonist Graeme Blevins, to soul-jazz closer “Down at Ronnie’s,” which has the horn players sparring before turning things over to the leader for another impressive round on his five-string bass guitar. Hints of warmer climes, and Sonny Rollins tunes, emerge from “Café Calypso,” and “Andalucia” comes with Latin-tinged rhythms, a mournful melody and, courtesy of the leader’s upright bass, a droning figure and rubbery solo.

“Moon Over Couronneau,” named for the band’s recording digs, is a moody ballad, with Flowers’ flugelhorn, Blevins’ tenor and Andrew McCormack’s piano riding a pulsing groove supplied by Eastwood and drummer Martyn Kaine.

And the moody “Aperitif,” fronted with warm declarations by muted trumpet and burnished tenor, offers the leader another fruitful turn on upright—the sonics are woody and his technique is impeccable. Songs From the Chateau constitutes an altogether welcomed fresh start for a musician who no longer needs to be introduced as the son of the film star.

2011 Rewind: Human Element, “Human Element” (CD review)

(recently reviewed for JazzTimes; direct link)

Human Element, Human Element (Abstract Logix)

With the Zawinul Syndicate gone following the 2007 passing of its leader, and guitarist Fareed Haque exiting Garaj Mahal, who will carry the torch for the variety of fusion that blends organically with world music?

One candidate for the job is Human Element, a band essentially born as an outgrowth of pianist, synth wizard and vocoder manipulator Scott Kinsey’s 2006 album Kinesthetics (on which Zawinul served as executive producer). Rather than do a second recording with a cast of thousands, Kinsey put together a quartet with Armenian percussionist and singer Arto Tuncboyaciyan, who served a stint with the Zawinul Syndicate, electric bass monster Matthew Garrison and journeyman drummer Gary Novak.

The band’s self-titled debut pulsates with intoxicating rhythms; opens up for displays of instrumental virtuosity, particularly by Garrison; and, especially on the vocal tracks, hints at old-school prog rock. Funk is never very far away, either: “Shake It!” gets its kicks from synth blips and beeps, hyperactive drums and percussion, Garrison’s subdued popping and slapping, and Kinsey’s vocoder interjections. The tune is one of four penned by Kinsey, along with atmospheric opener “Introduction”; “The Human Element,” bubbling and hypnotic; and the searching “Essaouira,” one of the tracks most heavily influenced by the Zawinul school of world fusion.

Garrison’s tricky, stair-stepping lines underpin his “Izzy,” and his other contribution, “Cut.” With eight of the disc’s 14 tracks to his credit, Tuncboyaciyan’s compositions dominate. Particularly appealing are his “Speak With Your Eye,” with a sing-song vocal line attached to relentless, rubbery grooves, the call-and-response “Listen With Your Mouth,” and the pastoral “See With Your Ear.” If Human Element’s live shows are anything like their studio work, the sensory experience must be overwhelming.

2011 Rewind: Kenny Wheeler, “One of Many” (CD review)

(recently reviewed for JazzTimes; direct link)

Kenny Wheeler with John Taylor & Steve Swallow, One of Many (CAM Jazz)

Hard to believe, but Kenny Wheeler is officially an octogenarian: Has it really been that long since the Canadian-born brass man was breaking ground on the free-jazz scene?

His talents as a flugelhorn player, composer and arranger nevertheless remain potent, as he demonstrates on One of Many, an often-surprising three-way collaboration with longtime associate John Taylor on piano and bass guitarist Steve Swallow. Like much of Wheeler’s work, the music here is distinguished by layered subtleties and multiple moments of discovery. These are quietly powerful pieces masquerading as laidback chamber jazz.

Variously using long tones, slurs, low scoops and keening high notes, Wheeler offers a haunting melody and unpredictable solo before yielding to Taylor’s similarly searching lines and lush chording on “Now and Now Again.” Swallow, who wields a felt pick for a sound that’s resonant and clean in lower registers and bell-clear higher up, lays down a circular groove at the start of opener “Phrase 3.” Wheeler joins Swallow with a warm melody and Taylor enters for supportive colourings; following Taylor, Swallow offers pretty, unhurried curlicues that wind down the tune.

The aptly titled “Anticipation” has the flugelhornist and bassist engaging in contrapuntal conversations, while the stately “Old Ballad” indeed sounds like a classic of its kind, with Wheeler essaying a gorgeous theme and Swallow turning in a lyrical solo. And the pianist and bassist go it alone together on “Ever After (duo version),” a gem of intuitive interaction.

These 10 pieces sound decidedly forward-looking, like three journeymen players engaging in acts of artistic exploration.

 

 

2011 Rewind: John Scofield, “A Moment’s Peace” (CD review)

(recently reviewed for Jazz Times; direct link)

John Scofield, A Moment’s Peace (Emarcy)

Ballads can be the most challenging tunes to play, because they can’t be artificially energized by way of accelerated tempos or gratuitous displays of chops. Likewise, the absence of those elements keeps some listeners from warming to the form.

John Scofield, not surprisingly given his range of abilities and musical interests, makes ballad playing seem easy and sound irresistible on A Moment’s Peace. The collection of slow-tempo gems finds the guitarist joined by like-minded younger players: frequent collaborators Larry Goldings on piano and organ and Scott Colley on upright bass, and, recording with Scofield for the first time, well-traveled drummer Brian Blade.

The program is about evenly split between originals and intriguing interpretations of familiarities, including a lovely version of the Beatles’ “I Will.” Sco also takes on Carla Bley’s haunting “Lawns” and imbues “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You” with deep blues feeling, coloring inside and outside the lines and making listeners keen to hear where he’s going next. “You Don’t Know What Love Is” benefits from syncopated rhythm-section playing that hints at funk and reggae, and “I Loves You, Porgy” opens with spacey organ figures before the leader enters for a rubato reading.

The originals are similarly compelling, beginning with opening track “Simply Put,” its loping rhythms topped by a ringing, bleeding guitar figure—that familiar slightly overdriven burr—that evokes Americana. Other original standouts include the probing “Throw It Away” and the elegantly unhurried “Already September,” on which Scofield brings to mind Jim Hall. It’s all consistently laidback, yes, but those with discerning ears won’t find anything dull here. These musical currents move slowly but run deep.