CDs of note

Terrence Brewer, Groovin Wes, (Strong Brew Music)
The northern California (Bay area) guitarist pays tribute to modern jazz guitar icon Wes Montgomery on this fine project. It includes eight tunes that Montgomery wrote or covered. “Bumpin’ on Sunset” and “Yesterdays” are highlights, as are John Coltrane’s “Dearly Beloved” and a fresh take on Dave Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way.” In addition to Brewer’s clean, warm-toned sound, this classic guitar-organ-drums trio session is a superb showcase for Wil Blades on B3. Twenty-something Blades’ past affiliations have included the bands of John Lee Hooker, Stanton Moore and Idris Muhammed. He has also participated in organ summits with his B-3 mentor, Dr. Lonnie Smith. Micah McClain’s drumming is supportive and on the mark without being overbearing on this, his third CD session with Brewer.

Marc Copland, New York Trio Recordings, Vol. 3: Night Whispers, (Pirouet)
With the right combination of musicians, there can be extraordinary chemistry within the traditional piano-bass-drums trio. When they’re truly on, the magic is something to behold. Marc Copland’s trio with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Bill Stewart is climbing toward that rarified air. On this third volume of his trio recording series, Copland starts off with and then intersperses the trio work with three very different solo piano versions of “Emily” – one pensive and rather straight-forward, one busy and frenetic, one shimmering with bell-like tones. The bell-like theme to the first trio piece, “The Bell Tolls,” rather chant-like in its intensity. Copland’s title track, “Night Whispers” is more groove-like with interactive soloing. Exploration of the depths of possibilities within their interesting hornless version of “So What.” The Copeland-Gress-Stewart interplay is very fine throughout the trio pieces. Each of the players brought original music to this summit. Their collaborations on Copland’s “Scattered Leaves” and Stewart’s “Space Acres” (from his own 1995 release, Snide Remarks, stand out.

John Monllos, Shadow's Dance, (self-produced)
When you think Newport, it is natural to think jazz because of the granddaddy of all jazz festivals. But is also good to do so because of the Newport-based talent – players who work in and around the coastal resort city year-in, year-out. One such player is guitarist John Monllos, who built his chops in a Newport-based Navy Band, and decided to stick around these parts after his military days were done. Monllos is a versatile, high-energy guitarist whose sound has absorbed quality portions of rock, funk, Latin and contemporary jazz (a la Pat Metheny and Mike Stern, not the jazz smoothies or instrumental popsters). The title track is gorgeous, with very sensual samba-rhythm that blends his acoustic guitar sound with some very nice flute work by reed player Art Manchester, another local deserving wider recognition. There’s a wonderful and uncanny Carlos Santana sound on the Monllos original “CSW,” the best I’ve heard by someone other than Santana himself. Not surprising, CSW stands for Carlos Santana Wannabe.” Trumpeter Doug Woolverton turns in fine support on “Shadow’s Dance” and the funky ballad “Red Wine Girl.” Non-originals here include bassist Joe Potenza’s “Where the Buses Don’t Run,” a hot version of Miles Davis’s “Nardis” and a tribute to Michael Brecker – on Brecker’s composition “African Skies.”

John Scofield, Piety Street, (EmArcy)
This latest project from the versatile modern guitar master is a gem. It’s a project in which the bluesy side of gospel intersects with the funky, authentic sound of New Orleans. Scofield’s biting, stinging, singing guitar fits right in with his principally New Orleans-based bandmates – with Jon Cleary on keyboards and vocals, George Porter Jr. on bass and Ricky Fataar on drums. With this project recorded at New Orleans’ Piety Steet Studios, the unit became the Piety Street Band for a tour now supporting the CD. Crescent City local treasure John Boutté splits and shares vocal duties with Cleary. “Motherless Child,” “It’s a Big Army,” “The Angel of Death” and “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” are among the highlights. The singers blend nicely on “Something’s Got a Hold on Me,” while Boutté shines on “Never Turn Back” and “The Old Ship of Zion,” which becomes a very strong guitar-vocal duet of sorts. This is due for release on March 31.

Another golden celebration

Was there something in the water back in 1959 that made it such a very good year for jazz recordings? We’ve already seen tribute events celebrating the 50-year legacy of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s Giant Steps. The folks in his hometown of Stockton, California, aren’t about to let us forget Dave Brubeck’s classic (time-signature-stretching) Time Out.

At the 2009 Brubeck Festival (running March 28 to April 4) Brubeck will perform the album in its entirety. Organizers say it'll be the first time he's peformed all of the album's seven pieces in one concert. That April 3 concert is at the University of the Pacific in Stockton.

In addition to the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s performance of Time Out, the concert will include a performance of Dave and Iola Brubeck’s choral and orchestral work, “Earth Is Our Mother.” Also that week, the festival will premiere an orchestral composition, “Ansel Adams: America,” that was co-written by Dave Brubeck and his son Chris. The work, being performed by the Stockton Symphony, is based on photographs by another California treasure, the late Ansel Adams.

Dave and Iola Brubeck, 2004... > >>
Mark this one down as a festival that appeals greatly to my twin interests in jazz and photography.

Coryell Auger Sample Trio - in concert

Coryell Auger Sample Trio

(Narrows Center for the Arts, Fall River MA) Musical chops – and genes – were quite evident during the first East Coast tour of the southern California-based Coryell Auger Sample Trio, which consists of guitarist Julian Coryell, drummer Karma Auger and bassist Nicklas Sample. In a February 11 southern New England performance in support of its self-produced debut CD, Coolidge Returns, and preview of tunes written and recorded for the trio’s sophomore project, CAST (as they abbreviate their grouping) was impressive.

They have an affinity for improvisation and strong interaction. They say that was evident when the first sat down as a group in August 2007 – and developed the music for the project in four hours. They haven’t slowed a bit, describing their collaboration as prolific ever since. 

 It was only fitting that midway through the trio’s long set, they performed “Song For Our Fathers,” a tune from that not-yet-mixed, not-yet-named second CD. With very much the same intent and a bit of the feel of Horace Silver’s classic ”Song for My Father,” this piece is a tribute to guitarist Larry Coryell and keyboard players Brian Auger and Joe Sample. In the hands of his son’s exquisite soloing, the latter track and a tune called “Purple Panther” displayed a very strong Larry Coryell melodic influence. “Purple Panther” additionally underscored the strong interaction that gives this band a jazz-based jam band sort of propulsion. 

Auger’s solid drumming, alternating between delicacy and a firestorm, was an interesting contrast with his rather low-key demeanor. He and Sample provided interesting colors as they shared and shifted rhythms and melodies. The high energy of two vamp-based originals, “Walk of the Dragon” and “Rice Krispy Socrates,” also provided great improvising moments for all three players. Coryell Auger Sample Trio is well on the way to becoming one of the more interesting new fusion bands – able to draw both from its highly credentialed jazz roots, as well as modern rock.

A month of Marco, sort of

Keyboard player Marco Benevento is on the cutting edge of blending modern and classic rock with the art of jazz improvisation, often in an other-worldly sonic atmosphere. The intensity, gorgeous musical palette and his vivid imagination make it something to check out.

Bay Area fans are getting a month (sort of) to do so in a live context, with Benevento performing at Yoshi’s in Oakland, Calif., every Tuesday in February with a different set of special guests each week.

Those of us not on the Left Coast don't need to feel slighted. Benevento’s newest CD Me Not Me is out on his own new label, The Royal Potato Family. In addition to three originals, it includes covers of material ranging from Deerhoof, My Morning Jacket and Leonard Cohen to Beck, George Harrison and Led Zeppelin. His band includes ex-Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey bassist Reed Mathis, and Andrew Barr and Matt Chamberlain splitting the drum work. Benevento’s sonic arsenal includes piano, Optigan, Mellotron, tack piano and clavinet.

Benevento played a packed side stage at last August’s JVC Newport Jazz Festival, where saxophonist Chris Potter joined the trio for its rousing take on Led Zeppelin’s “Friends” and it is good to see that tune is superbly included here, albeit without sax. Chris Potter sits in with the Marco Benevento Trio, JVC Newport, August 2008 ... >
Me Not Me opens with Jim James’ My Morning Jacket hit “Golden.” As the CD features Leonard Cohen’s “Seems So Long Ago Nancy,” it isn’t surprising to hear Benevento dropping a few most-memorable bars of Cohen’s anthemic “Hallelujah” into his take on “Golden.”

The leader’s own material includes “Now They’re Writing Music,” a rather straight-ahead version of his catchy tune “Mephisto,” and his Beatles-reminiscent “Call Home.”

Celebrating two seminal recordings with golden updates

The music will be golden, no matter how its sounds, this month when Jazz at Lincoln Center presents the latest installment in its Hall of Fame concert series. The February 12 to 14 event will mark this year’s 50th anniversaries of the recording of two seminal albums: Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s Giant Steps.

In part one of the evening, saxophonist Ted Nash will debut newly arranged solos from Giant Steps, in which he will be joined on stage by tenor saxophonist George Garzone and fellow Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra saxophonists Walter Blanding and Sherman Irby. In the second half, pianist Mulgrew Miller’s trio will be joined by the a capella group Take 6 for a new interpretation of Kind of Blue.

Drummer Jimmy Cobb, the only surviving player from the recording sessions, is scheduled to perform in each set of the concerts at the Rose Theater at Frederick P. Rose Hall. Giant Steps was recorded between April 1 and December 2, 1959. Kind of Blue was recorded between March 2 and April 22, 1959. Cobb was on both albums.
< < < Jimmy Cobb, Newport, August 2008

CDs of note heard in January:

Mike Clark, Blueprints Of Jazz Vol. 1 (Talking House)
This stunning new CD by ex-Headhunters drummer Mike Clark shows off his straight-ahead jazz side than the fusion for which he is best known. The band smokes. It includes pianist Patrice Rushen, bassist Christian McBride, trumpeter Christian Scott, alto saxophonist Donald Harrison and tenor saxophonist Jed Levy. This recording surfaced on several “Top 10” lists for 2008 - despite a February 3, 2009 release date.

Mark Rapp, Token Tales (Paved Earth)
The New York-based trumpeter was a pleasant surprise this past August with his band with a late morning on the JVC Newport Jazz Festival’s Pavilion Stage. This CD of primarily original, rhythmically strong material by the neo-traditionalist is a very strong debut recording. My favorites are the title track and the gorgeous ballad “Thank You.”

Joe Zawinul, 75 (Heads Up International)
At his best, and that usually meant before an audience, fusion pioneer Zawinul and his Zawinul Syndicate band produced music that feels brawny and ferocious. This two-CD set, recorded on his 75th birthday at a jazz festival in Lugano, Switzerland, captures that jazz-meets-world music intensity – just two months before Zawinul lost his battle with cancer.

One poignant track, recorded August 2, 2007 at a concert in Hungary, just five weeks before his death, reunited Zawinul with Weather Report co-founder Wayne Shorter on a extended version of Miles Davis’s “In a Silent Way.” The ferocious tracks include “Orient Express,” “Madagascar” and the medleys “Fast City”/”Two Lines” and “Badia”/”Boogie Woogie Waltz” (the latter pair from his Weather Report days.

The Bad Plus, For All I Care (Heads Up International)
As The Bad Plus, pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King have found notoriety for deconstructing and reconstructing principally rock tunes as improvisational progressive jazz pieces. In doing so, they have thrown out the notion that jazz needs a strong link to The Great American Songbook. Or perhaps they’ve been adding a new chapter.

This newest project is their first that brings aboard a vocalist. Minneapolis-based alternative rocker Wendy Lewis joins the trio for eight of the 12 racks on For All I Care.” The band’s often slowed or fractured tempos give Lewis space to stretch the lyrical possibilities amid the band’s improvisations. This time around they tackle Kurt Cobain’s “Lithium,” Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb,” Yes’s “Long Distance Runaround,” Wilco’s ”Radio Cure,” Oklahoma City alternative/indie-rock band The Flaming Lips’ “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate,” the Bee Gees’ “How Deep is Your Love,” Roger Miller’s "Lock, Stock and Teardrops" and Heart’s “Barracuda.”

This time, the band broadened its repertoire considerably, but Lewis sits out on the CD’s three classical reconstructions (plus one alternate take) of material by Igor Stravinsky, Milton Babbitt and Gyorgi Ligeti.

Big numbers in a January without IAJE

A jazz-related gathering in Boston next weekend will be a hang of sorts for thousands, but not on the wide range of levels as the gone-but-not-forgotten IAJE conferences.

Saturday, January 31 brings the Berklee College of Music's 41st annual High School Jazz Festival, with some 3,000 musicians in 200 bands competing for $175,000 in Berklee scholarships.

In addition to the student competitions, the Hynes Convention Center event will feature concerts and clinics (free and open to the public), featuring brothers Delfeayo (trombone) and Jason Marsalis (vibes), and drummers Gregg Bissonnette, John Blackwell and Terri Lyne Carrington.
Berklee says the festival, originally called the New England High School Stage Band Festival, is the oldest and largest competition of its kind in the United States. That longevity is remarkable - and laudable.

Plaque on the wall honors the musical history and promise inside

Move over Faneuil Hall, Old South Meeting House and other designated historic sites in Boston. You have company. Company with a jazz connection that dates to the 1940s.

On January 30, Wally’s Café Jazz Club, originally known as Wally’s Paradise, will be recognized by the Boston Historical Society for its contributions to the city’s cultural fabric.

Among many other notables, Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday performed there, as did native son Roy Haynes in the 1940s and ‘50s. Haynes was back to sit in on occasion after Wally’s moved across the street to its current location at 427 Massachusetts Avenue and became a fertile performance space for young student players from the nearby Berklee College of Music, New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory and other area schools, many of whom became part of subsequent generations of jazz greats.

That mission continues today under the management if brothers Frank, Lloyd and Paul Poindexter, and their mother, Elynor. The Poindexters took the reins after Elynor’s father, Joseph “Wally” Walcott, died in 1998. Walcott was the first African American to own a nightclub in New England. The club still presents live music nightly.

A jazz impact to celebrate

Anyone with even the most casual interest in the impact jazz has had on society at-large should seek out the comprehensive essay that Nat Hentoff published on the Thursday, January 15 edition of The Wall Street Journal. It is a must-read.

His piece, How Jazz Helped Hasten the Civil-Rights Movement, traces the very strong role that the music and its makers played, as early as the 1920s and through the 1960s, in eroding the segregation that was so prevalent. Even in Boston, where there was no law against racial intermingling, "it was frowned upon in official circles,"in the early 1940s, Hentoff recalls, except for the city's Savoy Cafe.

That's just one of many reminders of another place and time that Hentoff recalls in this piece, which blends the two subject matters about which he is so passionate - jazz and civil liberties as they were intertwined in the battle agaainst Jim Crow.

In its own vivid way, it is a celebration of the milestone that the United States will pass on January 20 when Barack Obama takes the Oath of Office as the nation's new President.

Whisper My Name – CD Review

Steven Santoro is a hopeless romantic, at least on his newest CD, and we are the better for it.

On Whisper My Name (Red Lion Music), he sings and writes primarily of many forms of love - and the ups, downs and frustrations of romance - the ‘it will last forever’ puppy love, unrequited love, hopeful love, and the we-can-work-it-out kind of love. Also the love-of-mankind that will overcome issues and problems we face as individuals or as a people.

Santoro’s debut CD Moods and Grooves (produced by the late Ahmet Ertegun) came out in 1995 on Atlantic Records under the singer’s real name, Steven Kowalczyk. He now uses Santoro, which was the last name of his saxophone-playing grandfather, Libertore Santoro.

In addition singing and writing memorable songs, Massachusetts-born and Connecticut resident Santoro the Younger teaches at the Berklee College of Music and is the lyricist for a new musical, "Ivory Joe Cole," which is scheduled to open this summer at Alliance Theatre, a professional residence theater company in Atlanta.

Confident and hip with a pleasant and assured mid-range voice, Santoro opens his newest CD project with the swinging double-time message of "Whisper My Name" - a tune that conveys he’s prepared to go his own way but will be back in a flash if his former lover merely whispers his name. It’s subtle and clever in its lyrical construction - and a great introduction for listeners who may not be familiar with him.

Santoro wrote 10 of 11 tunes here, plus a bonus track called “Run Away” from his R&B-laced tandem project Where I Come From. The lone chestnut here is the Jimmy Van Heusen-Johnny Mercer classic, “I Thought About You” - another romance tune of course.

Another treat is his R&B-tinged “Waiting for Grace,” which is about another sort of love – salvation. (“Life is a slap in the face but I’m still waiting for grace.”)

There are many more such fine gems on this very pleasant and intriguing CD. Check it out. Santoro gets stunning support throughout from saxophonist Jon Childers, guitarist Marc Ciprut, pianist Jon Cowherd, bassist James Genus and drummer Clarence Penn.

Hope amid New Orleans’ slower-than-slow recovery

Another glimmer of hope and positivity among turtle-slow efforts to bring New Orleans back from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina occurred in grand style on Thursday night, January 8.

It was the reopening of the Mahalia Jackson Theater of the Performing Arts in Armstrong Park. A $22 million renovation brought the theater back from the brink of ruin three years ago. The opening concert featured local musical fixtures (would anything else be appropriate?) including the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Rebirth Brass Band, Irma Thomas, Freddy Omar, Marva Wright, Philip Manuel, Michael Ward and Ingrid Lucia.

One other appropriate touch… tickets were free but were required since seating was limited.

For reopening details, check out Michelle Krupa’s reporting in The Times-Picayune, The curtain rises at Mahalia Jackson Theater.

Since President-elect Barack Obama has made it clear that an essential ingredient in America’s recovery from the current economic travail is rebuilding the country’s infrastructure as a way to put people back to work, he ought to make sure a lot of that effort is committed to rebuilding New Orleans. In that way, Obama can fulfill the promise that W. made but soon forgot as his presidency spiraled and sputtered out of control in so many ways.

Do you hear what I hear?

The easy answer is “not likely.” No two people hear things exactly the same. But what is it that draws we musicians and/or listeners to a particular instrument, grouping of instruments, or the specific sound of a player or singer over others? Why might our LP and/or CD collections be weighted more towards one instrument than another?

The subject came up last weekend at a regular brunch session with several friends. One is not keen on solo performance of any kind. He might tolerate a trio now and then, but prefers a quartet or quintet with horns. With certain exceptions like J. J. Johnson or Milt Jackson and Bobby Hutcherson, he doesn’t really care for trombone or vibes either. Yes, he’d buy in to some variation of the joke used for everything from lawyers to trombonists: “What do you call 1,000 (trombonists) (lawyers) at the bottom of the ocean?” Answer: “A good start.” BA DUM BUM.

But why do people choose, or like, particular instruments or instrumentalists or singers?

I listened later that afternoon to a new CD with a quartet whose leader plays bassoon (Daniel Smith, Blue Bassoon). To my ears, the low-pitched, double-reeded distant cousin to the clarinet sounds like a cross between bass clarinet and baritone sax – with the expressiveness of neither.

While best known in classical circles, the bassoon has a rather obscure place in jazz, with its best-known occasional players including saxophonists Frankie Trumbauer, Garvin Bushell, Yusef Lateef, Illinois Jacquet and Frank Tiberi.

Dan Smith likely wants to take his place as a generational successor. His CD is brimming with terrific jazz material. There’s not a tired tune among the 13 pieces by 13 of the greatest writers and performers in jazz and the blues. But there is a bassoon in the mix. And for that reason, it doesn’t make me groove to the music, despite many fine performances by the other instrumentalists.

So I ask again: Why do people choose, or like, particular instruments or instrumentalists or singers?

Please weigh in with your own thoughts.

Blue Note Records is doing it up big – again

The esteemed Blue Note jazz label loves milestone celebrations. And we are at the beginning of another.

It was 25 years ago this month that the label re-launched itself under the leadership of current President Bruce Lundvall, celebrating the revival a year later with a February 22, 1985 concert of historic proportions at Town Hall in midtown Manhattan that featured dozens of Blue Note artists past and future.

The who’s who in jazz that night included Art Blakey, Lou Donaldson, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Charles Lloyd, Jackie McLean, Woody Shaw, Jimmy Smith and Grover Washington Jr. The new voices included Stanley Jordan, Michel Petrucciani and Bennie Wallace. There were many more participating, including a solo performance by Cecil Taylor and a cameo walk-on by the ailing Hank Mobley. It was a stirring evening of musical moments to witness. Soon after, Sony released the concert on a two-volume video called One Night With Blue Note Preserved.

Grover Washington Jr., Jack DeJohnette, Jimmy Smith and Stanley Turrentine – One Night With Blue Note rehearsal, Feb. 21, 1985 ... >
Now, the label is marking the 25th anniversary of its rebirth as well as the 70th anniversary of its founding in 1939 by a pair of jazz-loving German immigrants, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, a musical commitment that spawned a historic catalog of music by many of the giants of jazz when the music was thriving.

The current Blue Note anniversaries celebration will feature a worldwide tour (with 50 U.S. concert dates) and a CD release Mosaic: A Celebration of Blue Note Records (2 CDs) [AMAZON EXCLUSIVE] by the Blue Note 7, a septet consisting of pianist and musical director Bill Charlap, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, alto saxophonist Steve Wilson, tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, guitarist Peter Bernstein, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash.

The year will also include book releases; jazz festival spotlights in Monterey, Montreal, Newport, New York and Portland, among others; a month-long Manhattan jazz club invasion by Blue Note artists that opens in late January, a Grammy salute in Los Angeles; a series of Blue Note reissues and a newline of clothing by the company Friend or Foe featuring classic Blue Note cover art.

It has the makings of a high-visibility year. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the effort brings more followers to – or back to – jazz.

A sad sign of the times

It’s no secret that with the economy in the toilet, and circulation and ad revenue at troubling lows, the newspaper industry has been reeling for more than a year. One of the most troubling effects, learned this week, was the year-end layoff of three Village Voice employees – one of them being the exteemed Nat Hentoff, a Voice fixture for 50 years. That’s right, Nat Hentoff, whom many would argue was the village voice in 20th century America.

His columns about jazz and civil liberties always have been on point, enlightening and solidly developed. And he has been a passionate advocate of support for musicians in financial need with his writings about the Jazz Musicians’ Emergency Fund.

The end of Hentoff’s tenure with the Village Voice was reported this week in the New York Times (see Village Voice Lays Off Nat Hentoff and 2 Others).

Fortunately for the world at-large, Hentoff’s syndicated columns and jazz writings will continue in other venues. The owners of the Village Voice have no idea what a large void they have created in their weekly publication.

2008: the jazz year in review

It was a time of jazz tumult, controversy and achievements. The demise of one of the world's premier jazz advocacy organizations topped the jazz world's headlines during 2008, a year that also saw several jazz festivals impacted by the worsening economy. Yet the music itself—and its makers—continue to survive if not thrive in many ways. That was the common thread for my extensive look back at the year, posted at allaboutjazz.com. It also includes a rundown of musicians and jazz-related individuals who passed on during the year.

The full year in review can be found at: 2008: A Year of Jazz Tumult, Controversy and Achievements.

Happy holidays to everyone, with the anticipation - or at least the hope - that 2009 will be much an improvement over 2008. May the economic, political, national and international healing be substantial and long lasting. -kf

And what of the music festival scene, Newport and beyond?

Will there be jazz and folk festivals in Newport next summer, and JVC Jazz Festivals elsewhere in the world? If so, who will be producing them? Those are valid questions these days. Questions without firm answers as of this writing.

Dave Brubeck & George Wein, backstage 2006

Two years ago, festival impresario George Wein sold his very successful Festival Productions Inc. to a newcomer on the entertainment scene, Festival Network LLC, for a handsome sum. The new company, which hired Wein and some of his longtime staff as contract employees, had a greater mission beyond merely running the eight JVC-sponsored festivals across the U.S. and around the world and other FPI staples, including the Playboy Jazz Festival in Los Angeles.

The new mission was to also create a series of “destination festivals” in exotic resort locations to lure large numbers of music fans to places like Martha’s Vineyard off Cape Cod or the mountain resort town of Whistler, British Columbia. The theory being – if we build it, they will come. Festival Network also invested in enhanced equipment and amenities for the existing festivals, including the place where Wein started it all in 1954 with the Newport Jazz Festival in coastal Rhode Island.

In the overall scheme of things, spending money willy-nilly on frills in venues new and old, and ignoring the sage advice of Wein’s lower-level staff may have backfired. The high overhead, higher expectations, ever-increasing talent costs and modest-at-best turnouts at its ”destination” events, proved costly in more ways than one.

At the end of 2008, word was out that Festival Network had closed its New York office, either furloughed or laid off employees, and had terminated the contracts of its “contract employees.” Some Newport vendors reported they still are awaiting payment for festival services provided last August. Word was also out that Festival Network’s executives were trying to raise more capital for the company by reaching out to new investors.

What a challenge, given that initial investors may not be thrilled the way their money seemed to go out the door the way water flows down the gutters in a rainstorm. If Festival Network can save itself, it needs to do soon despite the mess in the world economy. It likely will have to scale back on the newer festivals and stick with the tried-and-true festivals that enjoy corporate sponsorship, such as the JVC events in New York, Newport, Los Angeles and Concord, Calif., Chicago, Miami, Paris and The Netherlands (home of the North Sea Jazz Festival), as well as The Newport Folk Festival, which ran in extravagant fashion in 2008 without having a title sponsor.

If Festival Network cannot save itself, one has to believe that George Wein, now 83, will find a way to marshal his loyalists, regain key festival ownership rights, and do his darnedest to make sure the major festivals continue to operate. It is difficult to think otherwise. Music festivals have been in his blood since 1954. Besides, the Newport Folk Festival began in 1959… and there is a 50th anniversary that is ripe for celebration this coming August.

Trust the music, not the hype

When Something for You: Eliane Elias Sings & Plays Bill Evans came out early in 2008 on Blue Note, considerable attention was paid to two tracks that Evans was working on before his death in 1980, but were not believed to have recorded by him.

One of them, to which pianist Elias added lyrics and titled “Here is Something for You,” became the source for the CD title.

Listening to Bill Evans’ The Complete Fantasy Recordings this fall, a friend with substantial musical ears concluded quite quickly that Evans indeed had recorded what was reborn as “Here is Something for You.”

However, Evans called the tune “The Opener.” It can be found on the Fantasy anthology set. The recording first appeared in 1977 as track 7 on Evans’ final Fantasy trio album I Will Say Goodbye.

Elias’s disc ends with a 2:13 segment of Evans playing the opening of the tune on a rehearsal cassette tape that Evans had given to bassist Marc Johnson, who is Elias’s husband. Johnson worked in Evans’ last trio from 1978-1980, after "The Opener" was recorded.

The other “new” Evans revelation is more likely to withstand the litmus test. That instrumental was completed and arranged by Elias and titled “Evansesque.”

If any of you discover otherwise, do let me know.

The best in jazz recordings in 2008

Here are one writer's choices for the top jazz recordings and reissues of 2008. Always keep in mind that top 10 listings of this sort reflect the reviewer's musical taste at the moment he/she does the evaluations. They only carry significant weight when the same recordings show up on many such lists. That being said, here we go:

The 10 best new jazz releases, listed alphabetically:
- Brian Blade, “Season of Changes” (Verve)
- Randy Brecker, “Randy in Brazil” (MAMA Records)
- Avishai Cohen Trio, “Gently Disturbed” (RazDaz)
- Donal Fox, “The Scarlatti Jazz Suite Project” (Leonellis Music)
- Melody Gardot, “Worrisome Heart” (Verve)
- Generations, “Tough Guys” (ICA)
- The Roy Hargrove Quintet, “Earfood” (Groovin’ High/EmArcy)
- Danilo Perez, “Across the Crystal Sea” (EmArcy)
- John Santos Quintet, “Perspectiva Fragmentada” (Machete)
- The Stein Brothers Quintet, “Quixotic,” (Jazzed Media)

The 10 best new songs of 2008, listed alphabetically:
- Brian Blade, “Stoner Hill” from “Season of Changes” (Verve)
- Jon Cowherd, “Return of the Prodigal Son” from Brian Blade Fellowship’s “Season of Changes” (Verve)
- Taylor Eigsti, “Let It Come to You” (Concord Jazz)
- Tigran Hamasyan, “Leaving Paris” from “New Era” (Plus Loin)
- Virginia Mayhew, “Toe Tickler” from Duke Ellington Legacy’s “Thank You, Uncle Edward” (Renma)
- Pete Malinverni, “Istanbul” from “Invisible Cities” (Reservoir)
- Dafnis Prieto, “Until the Last Minute” from “Taking the Soul for a Walk” (Dafnison Music)
- Marty Sheller, “The Route 40 Flyer” from “Why Deny” (PVR Records)
- Brooke Sofferman, “Da Bull Stops Here” from “Fine Whines” (Summit)
- Bobby Watson, “For Milt” from “From the Heart (Palmetto)

The best jazz boxed set or historic recordings of 2008, listed alphabetically:
- Dave Brubeck, “Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival 1958-2007” (Concord Jazz)
- Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, “Showtime at the Spotlite, 52nd Street, New York City, June 1946” (Uptown)
- Sonny Rollins, "Road Shows, Vol. 1" (Doxy)
- Horace Silver, “Live at Newport ‘58” (Blue Note)
- Nina Simone, “To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story (Legacy Recordings)