Back on the road, with love

When Japanese pianist Makoto Ozone last visited New York City, a not-so-funny thing happened. He was in the Big Apple in January 2020, planning to visit friends in advance of his next scheduled trip, an April 2020 appearance with his trio at Dizzy's Club.

“I was supposed to be there only for a few days, but I got COVID as soon as I got there. So I had to lock myself up for about 12 days. I had to cancel a gig in Germany because I couldn’t fly out,” Ozone emailed me. He couldn't return that April because his Dizzy's Club gig, and virtually all others in the jazz world, vanished thanks to the pandemic.

Shortly after his 2020 touring plans bit the dust, he started live-streaming solo piano concerts from his Tokyo home. He played every night for 53 consecutive nights. That initiative, “Welcome to Our Living Room,” drew more than thousands of viewers nightly. They included many musician friends and collaborators.

Jazz Profile: "The Nurturer"

Marcus Belgrave 

Hot House has just published my profile of Marcus Belgrave, the trumpet great who has called Detroit home for more than 50 years, and mentored an amazing array of jazz talents who have come out of the Motor City. 

In the July issue of the magazine, he also talks about the nurturing he received from Clifford Brown, when they were adolescents in a community band in Delaware, and his first road boss – Ray Charles, as well as his take on the fine art of jazz soloing. You can read it here. Belgrave and his band appear July 22-24 at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola.

Jazzy numbers

Much focus will be given this summer to this August’s arrival of the 60th anniversary edition of the Newport Jazz Festival (not the 60th festival mind you, just the fact that it’s been 60 years since the very first festival was held in Newport back in 1954). As mentioned in prior postings, this will be the 50th edition of the George Wein-produced festival to be held in Newport.

But there is another very admirable anniversary taking place 12 days earlier on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Jazz in July opens its 30th anniversary run (July 21-31) at the 92nd Street Y. 

Profiling jazz bassist Buster Williams

Buster Williams, Newport 1988

The March issue of Hot House magazine is out. Its features include my profile of bassist Buster Williams, who brings his quartet Something More into Manhattan’s Smoke jazz club at the end of the month. This extraordinary musician has worked with a very long list of jazz giants over the past 55 years. (Her went on the road with saxophonist Sonny Stitt at age 17). 

He talked extensively about the fine art of making jazz, which he described as “living in the realm of danger.” Not all of his perspective fit into the profile’s word limit. So here is a bit more to savor: 

Dave Glasser on carrying forward the grand traditions in jazz

New York-based Hot House magazine has published my profile of alto saxophonist Dave Glasser in its December issue. The bebopper who is keen on making sure new generations of players understand and appreciate the rich tradition of jazz as their musical voices evolve.

Jazz spotlight on Claudio Roditi

Hot House magazine has published my profile of trumpeter Claudio Roditi in its November issue. Chatting with this multi-faceted musician earlier this month was a wonderful chance to catch up on each other’s doings, having been out of touch over the past decade.  

 

Blending musical fire with deep feeling and precise articulation, two-time Grammy nominee Roditi has been a mainstay on the New York jazz scene for more than 35 years. He is spending a lot of time composing new music, teaching workshops and getting acquainted with his latest brass acquisition – a piccolo trumpet, which joins his arsenal of flugelhorn and rotary-valve trumpet..

Music from the cat in the hat

Gregory Porter

Think of all the jazz greats who have worn distinctive hats through the years. Count Basie, Lester Young, Abbey Lincoln, Jon Hendricks and Marcus Miller are but a few. Be sure to add rising vocal star Gregory Porter to the list. His ever-present style is a Kanga Summer Spiftfire cap worn over a head and neck wrap.

During my interview with Porter for a profile published in the August issue of Hot House, the singer-songwriter said the hat has become his “vibe” since he moved to the Big Apple eight years ago. Get his thoughts on his music – and the hat – here.

Benny Green pursues magical moments

Hot House has published my profile of pianist Benny Green in its February issue in conjunction with his Jazz Standard performance in Manhattan in late February, as well as his role in the 40-city Monterey Jazz Festival 55th Anniversary tour across the United States.



One of the many nuggets gleaned in our hour-long conversation this month: his view of what’s inside the music that a performer presents to his or her audience:

2012 - The Year in Jazz

The world of jazz officially went global in 2012, kicked the Grammy Awards in the shins, dealt with economic issues and Mother Nature, and found new ways to innovate in this social media and Internet-savvy age. That is the overview of my annual wrapup of significant goings on in the jazz world, and its continuing move of players to the celestial jazz band, which has been published by allaboutjazz.com.

The many losses in the jazz world ranged from pianist, composer and bandleader Dave Brubeck and composer Clare Fischer to drummer Pete “LaRoca” Sims, saxophonists Red Holloway, John Tchicai and David S. Ware, and singer Etta James. The list is frighteningly long again for 2012.

How to help musicians reeling from Sandy

Jazz angel Wendy Oxenhorn and her Jazz Foundation of America staff in New York have been put to the test once again, helping musicians who have been hit hard by the impact of superstorm Sandy.

"It's so much worse than one might have imagined,” Oxenhorn wrote in today's email. “Aside from the most obvious need of water, warmth, food and money, hundreds of musicians have lost gigs because of Sandy. Clubs are closed, and musicians haven't been able to travel out of town for work either. Lost gigs means no money for the rent. No money for the rent means the Jazz Foundation will be providing emergency assistance."

She tells it well, and shares a lot of heartfelt stories about the struggles here, and efforts that are underway by the Jazz Foundation  through its Jazz Musicians Emergency Fund.

There's also a link for those of you who care to join me in helping through donations from near and far at a serious time of need by musicians who have given so much to jazz throughout their careers.

Celebrating music and culture in the Big Easy

Amid the tragedy and devastation of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, many of us found an even deeper appreciation for New Orleans musical contributions – past, present and future. Quite simply, there is no other city like it. And it is important that seven years after Katrina, New Orleans survived, continues to rebuild its infrastructure and remains such a music incubator.

There is a lot of focus on that tradition this fall, as the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, founded and led by trumpeter Irvin Mayfield, is celebrating its 10^th anniversary. Mayfield, who lost his father to Katrina, is a modernist with a bright, swinging sound. He is also a busy fellow. Besides running the big band, he co-leads Los Hombres Calientes, runs two jazz clubs bearing his name, is an educator and New Orleans’ cultural ambassador. 

Ron Carter

 



The August issue of Hot House magazine is online and includes my profile of bassist Ron Carter (page 31). He's one of the most prolifically recorded musicians in jazz history. He'll be at Birdland with his Great Big Band for a six-night run that begins August 28. He's fresh off a European tour with his trio featuring guitarist Russell Malone and pianist Donald Vega.

A special day for jazz - globally

Naysayers who claim jazz is dead or dying will find a lot of contrarians today at Congo Square in New Orleans and the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

This is the first International Jazz Day, an official designation that was made last November by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for each April 30.

Catching up with Scott

I talked with Italy-based Scott Hamilton this month for a feature in Hot House magazine’s February issue. (He’s a guest artist with fellow tenor saxophonist Harry Allen at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency in New York on February 6.) 

 

Two tidbits that didn’t fit in the profile:

• Scott said he finds the audience for his brand of mainstream swing has changed over the past 35 years. “The audience I’m dealing with now is one that hasn’t heard much jazz. You have to start from scratch and draw them in."
• The phone call from London revealed that music runs in the family. His oldest son, Sho, who was born in New York but who now lives in Tokyo, is now 21 and is lead singer for Okamoto’s, a psychedelic garage rock band from the city’s Shinjuku district. You can check them out on YouTube.

Milestone month

Life’s milestones can result in momentous occasions. Such is the case with Chick Corea’s 70^th birthday, which was on June 12. The extended fanfare continues for the pianist, who tonight opens a four-week “birthday celebration” engagement at New York’s Blue Note.

Over 23 nights, ending on November 27, Corea will perform in 10 different musical contexts that reflect his diversified career. Check out the club’s website for full details, and you’ll find the range of participating musical partners to be fascinating. Acoustic Chick, electric Chick, a nod to Miles Davis, as well as an unplugged version of Return to Forever, duos, trios and three nights (November 18-20) billed as “Chick’s Flamenco Heart,” which will explore the pianist’s love of Spanish and Latin music with a new quintet.

The duos are particularly fascinating, teaming Corea at various points with singer Bobby McFerrin and pianists Marcus Roberts and Herbie Hancock (the latter a generational peer at age 71). There’s also a duo collaboration of sorts with vibes player Gary Burton (augmented by the Harlem String Quartet. [photo: Chick Corea at Newport, 2010]

Each night, indeed each set, should be fascinating. There will be no coasting for Corea. Not that there ever is.

Update on a master bebopper

My profile/update on pianist Hod O'Brien is included in the October issue of Hot House, which is now posted online.

O'Brien, influenced for many years by the late Dave McKenna, is now in the solo and duo piano comfort zone after many years of trio and quartet work.

The profile was prompted by his October 8 two-piano gig with Gerald Clayton at Klavierhaus in midtown Manhattan.

Splendid and diverse offerings and venues with Care

Impresario George Wein hasn’t lost his touch. In fact, a year off from producing a full blown jazz festival in the Big Apple, seems to have enhanced that touch.

Wein’s New Festival Productions, LLC organization and his new corporate benefactor, CareFusion, have rolled out the details for the CareFusion Jazz Festival, which runs June 17 to 26 throughout New York City.

“Throughout” is the significant word here. The festival has expanded its venues – perhaps a blessing that came from the regrouping that followed Festival Network LLC’s financial demise in late 2008/early 2009.

As a result, Wein came out of semi-retirement, got back into the jazz production business – and in the process found a new Newport and New York sponsor – the medical technology company CareFusion. For full festival details, check out http://www.nycjazzfestival.com/.

Here’s what stands out most in the 10-day schedule:


Many of the venues for the festival’s 45 concerts are all over the city. Manhattan, Harlem, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens (including the Louis Armstrong House) - and also a tad north in Westchester County. There's also a diverse stylistic array of multigenerational talent. And Wein is also partnering in a new way on festival programming at many of the year-round jazz clubs. He’s booking the talent and paying the bands, letting the clubs keep the door proceeds. Now how’s that for synergy?


The highlight of a slimmed-down Carnegie Hall series figures to be the June 24 Herbie Hancock, “Seven Decades: The Birthday Celebration” the pianist with Terence Blanchard, Bill Cosby, Joe Lovano, Wayne Shorter and others. There’s a free outdoor concert June 23 at Central Park’s SummerStage featuring the McCoy Tyner Quartet featuring Ravi Coltrane, Esperanza Spalding and Francisco Mela plus the Stanley Clarke Band featuring firecracker pianist Hiromi (pictured).


Tickets for Carnegie Hall and Town Hall concerts go on sale March 22.

Welcome back, George. New York certainly will be abuzz and vibrant, just as Newport was last August.

Go Newport

Going into 2009, we wondered whether the Newport Jazz Festival as we’ve known it all these years, would ever be back - given the financial straits of the Festival Network LLC, the upstart company that in 2007 bought George Wein’s highly respected, well-oiled Festival Productions Inc. machine.

Well, it’s back, compliments of Wein’s refusal to see his Newport legacy muddied, calling together many members of his longtime production team - from Newport to New Orleans and elsewhere, reforming a new company - New Festival Productions, and having a new corporate sponsor sign on for both Newport and, starting in 2010, in New York.

So “George Wein’s CareFusion Jazz Festival 55 “ opens tomorrow night at historic Newport Casino (home of The International Tennis Hall of Fame), which was the site of the very first Newport Jazz Festival back in July 1954. The Anat Cohen-Howard Alden Quartet opens for singer Chaka Khan and the George Duke Trio.

The swirl of activity shifts Saturday and Sunday to Fort Adams State Park overlooking picturesque Newport harbor, where the music on three stages will be diverse and plentiful. Mainstream, bop, Latin jazz, and the avant-garde all are represented.

(Aside: Wein has also begun exploring ways to create a nonprofit foundation that can ensure the jazz and folk festivals continue in Newport in perpetuity, and is taking steps to bus inner-city youths from Providence RI and Bridgeport CT to the festival this weekend to expose them to jazz.)

Hiromi at Newport, 2006... >The weekend's Fort Adams lineup includes Dave Brubeck, Tony Bennett, Joshua Redman’s Double Trio, Joe Lovano, Branford Marsalis, Christian McBride, Hiromi, Claudia Acuna, Jane Monheit, Roy Haynes, Michel Camilo, The Bad Plus with alternative rock singer Wendy Lewis, The Brian Blade Fellowship, Ken Vandermark, James Carter, and many more.

With the scope of music and sometimes painful choices between groups to hear simultaneously or with a little overlap, you have to pick your spots. Any way you go, it is a win.

Just go.

No slowing down

June’s issue of Hot House includes my profile of tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts, who is on the road as special guest with the new tribute project Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings Coltrane/Hartman. (They’re at Birdland June 16 to 20, and the project's CD is due out June 23 on Concord Jazz.

Watts talked at great length from his West Coast home. And not everything could be squeezed into the lengthy article.

Here are some of his additional thoughts:

His bittersweet tone, a key ingredient in the film noire sound of Charlie Haden’s Quartet West – “It is a combination of all of those years of listening to everybody, then focusing on Coltrane. The physical aspect to the sound partly derives from body type. Some people are big strong people and approach the instrument differently. I think my sound developed from thinking of the saxophone as a singing tool. I do a lot of pop music and R&B, when you are playing that music, you have to play in a certain melodic style that keeps the music authentic. With the sax, I thought of it as being a voice. Everything you do is a melody. You focus on playing something that is beautiful and clear. I realized that I had this singing ability in my sound.”

Ernie Watts, Montreal, June 2008... >>>
Music reflects life – “Every day is a new beginning. You can play great one night and get up the next day and feel awful. Some days I get up and it is like I never saw a saxophone before in my life. I have a practice routine to keep everything in balance. That helps a lot. It is like training for the Olympics continually.”

The importance of passing on knowledge through college workshops or master classes (Watts says does about six a year) - “When you talk about what you do and you vocalize it, it gives you a different view of something that is hard-wired and you normally wouldn’t think about. Life is like that. Every experience is a teaching experience and a learning experience. I learn as much from them as they learn from me. It forces you to reflect on things we’ve been doing for 30 years without thinking about it. Little things like vibrato and tonguing. When you have to explain it, it gives you another view of it. The music is to share, and that is very important.”

I’ll provide a link to the Hot House profile as soon as it is posted online.

The home-court advantage

The basketball and hockey playoffs that are under way have proven once again that there is a home arena / hometown advantage. For proof, look no further than the Boston Celtics' epic first-round series with the Chicago Bulls.

That advantage also exists in music, as I was reminded when checking out the Blue Note 7 in performances two weeks apart in two different cities.

The all-star group’s show in Worcester, Mass. on April 1 was quite good, but the impact was numbed a bit by a half-empty house and the very large stage at historic Mechanics Hall.

I also caught them at Birdland in New York on April 16. I doubt the band coasted in any of its performances in its 50-city U.S. tour, but what a difference it makes to play at home in familiar surroundings, in front of critics and peers.

The band was tighter physically and emotionally, and the sound was top-notch. The resulting music was stunning from start to finish. A few times, when he wasn’t soloing, Nicholas Payton stood at the wall at the rear of the stage, and added some comping riffs - off mic, yet filling the room.

Nicholas Payton, Birdland, April 2009... > The evening was punctuated by the ultimate musicians’ compliment… musicians who weren’t elsewhere that night or that set were checking out the band. Those in the room that night included Bob Sheppard, Eric Alexander, Anat Cohen, Jim Ridl, Roni Ben-Hur and Bill Mays. When the BN7 played its update to Herbie Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance,” pianist Bill Charlap noted that saxophonist George Coleman, who played on the original Blue Note session, was in the house - sitting close to the stage, holding court at his own table.

I suspect the six-night Big Apple winddown of the spring tour was like that every night. Those in the house the prior night, for example, included Steve Kuhn and Mike LeDonne.