A Year Off? You'd Never Know It.

The Naples Philharmonic Jazz Orchestra capped its socially-distanced 2020-21 season at Artis-Naples on Wednesday, May 12 with a concert that featured singer Denise Donatelli. With strong support from the venue’s resident jazz sextet (with an added special guest), it showcased the Los Angeles-based singer’s superb no-frills vocal artistry.

Denise Donatelli

“Thanks for bringing me to Naples. Thanks for getting me out of the house,” Donatelli told the band and the masked audience scattered throughout Hayes Hall. This was her first live concert gig in more than a year, but there was no rust in evidence. None at all.

Donatelli sings in service to the song and the lyrics. No vocal gymnastics. No needless scatting. None of the artifice or theatrics sometimes found in the cabaret world. This is a good thing. Her timing, her phrasing and her innate sense of swing were on full display and fit hand-in-glove with the band’s instrumental support.

Donatelli, Hart, Del Gatto

The NPJO includes tenor saxophonist and artistic director Lew Del Gatto, trumpeter Dan Miller, violinist Glenn Basham, pianist Jerry Stawski, bassist Kevin Mauldin and drummer Mike Harvey. For this performance, because several of Donatelli’s recent recordings have included a guitarist, they were joined by John Hart. A New York jazz scene mainstay for several decades with extensive experience backing singers, Hart is now a guitar lecturer at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. He fit right in with this high-powered band.

CDs of Note - Short Takes

Taking a closer look at CDs by Greg Abate, Gabriel Alegria, Bruce Brown, and The 14 Jazz Orchestra....

La Lucha plus one

Ona Kirei

 

 

The last time La Lucha played Port Charlotte FL, on June 14, 2019, the Tampa Bay-area jazz trio tore up the house, so to speak, at JD's Bistro. Since then, the restaurant has changed ownership and its name, but its commitment to music excellence continues.

On Thursday, May 6, La Lucha returned to the venue, now the Grill at 1951, with a special guest in tow. Pianist John O'Leary. bassist Alejandro Arenas and drummer Mark Feinman were joined by Barcelona-born singer Ona Kirei. She works with La Lucha on a semi-regular basis - either as a group, or in collaboration with individual members as the need arises.

Their simpatico was on full display through a wide range of jazz and Latin jazz material.

Glimmers of hope, turning a corner

This 2021 edition of Jazz Appreciation Month underscored the notion that we can’t take the music or its makers for granted. Especially after the past year: clubs shuttered temporarily or permanently, or forced to present music to their supporters virtually via webcasts because of limited or no live audiences. Musicians without steady gigs or, in some cases, any gigs for over a year. Or others performing from their living rooms, stoops, driveways and public parks to keep their chops – and sanity – hoping for support from real or virtual tip jars. The tragic number of jazz musicians and industry figures felled by COVID-19 reached at least 90 and still counting.

But there are glimmers of hope, of turning the corner. Some concerts and restaurant gigs have returned with a clear focus on social distancing, masks and other pandemic protocols. 

One of those good news stories occurred this past weekend in Savannah GA, when the city’s premier venue, Good Times Jazz Bar & Restaurant, reopened after a total shutdown that lasted more than 12 months.

Owners Stephen and Danielle Moore opened Good Times in 2017. It offered dining and live Tuesday through Sunday nights, plus a gospel brunch on Sundays. That was before COVID-19 struck. Rather than risk any viral impact on guests, employees or their relatives, executive chef and jazz fan Joe Randall locked the doors of the downtown venue on busy West Broughton Street in late March 2020.

CDs of Note - Short Takes

Taking a closer look at CDs by Roderick Harper, Fred Hersch, Lisa Hilton, Dan Moretti, Omar Sosa and Veronica Swift ….

The worldly art of jazz

Pianist (and abstract painter) Bill Buchman brought his Art of Jazz Quintet to Venice FL on Wednesday, March 10 for a concert that touched on many of the global influences that have become central to jazz. From its inception, the genre has absorbed – and welcomed – elements of other styles, and turned that musical melting pot into a rich gumbo.

Bill Buchman

His band for this socially distanced, outdoor concert at Plantation Golf & Country Club included Rick Aaron on flute, Rob Fors on bass, Chuck Parr on drums and Gerardo Velez on congas. The event was sponsored by Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota as part of its 25^th anniversary season.

A hard-swinging reminder that Woody evolved with the times

The Stardust Memories Big Band paid tribute to the musical legacy of clarinetist and bandleader Woody Herman on Tuesday, March 2 at Riverside Park in Bonita Springs FL. For this evening, and the prior night at Cambier Park in neighboring Naples, bandleader Craig Christman turned the reins over to baritone saxophonist Mike Brignola, who joined the band this season.

Stardust Memories Big Band in Bonita Springs

The highly regarded bari player was an integral member of Woody's band from 1981 until the leader's death in 1987. Since then, Fort Lauderdale--based Brignola has served as road manager and personnel director for the Woody Herman Orchestra under the leadership of tenor saxophonist Frank Tiberi.

His concert mix resulted in a hard-swinging reminder that Woody Herman evolved with the times over his band's 50-year run. Brignola had a lot from which to choose.Herman and his outfit recorded about 875 tunes between the late 1930s and his death in 1987.

Sharing some thoughts - and visuals - on Chick Corea

Has there been a more dominant, restlessly creative jazz explorer over the past 50 years than Chick Corea? I think not.

Chick Corea, Newport, 1998

The Clearwater FL-based pianist, composer, bandleader and educator passed away last Tuesday, February 9, from a rare form of cancer that his family said had only been diagnosed very recently. He was 79. Check out his Facebook posting, which includes a parting message.

The sheer variety of his compositions and band projects still astounds me. After he left trumpeter Miles Davis's band in 1970s to forge his own musical path, Corea's journey took many winding twists and turns. He continued exploring the electronic frontiers of jazz fusion with Return to Forever, and later, his Elektrik Band. 

Pasquale Grasso visits the other Naples

Italian guitarist Pasquale Grasso grew up in the mountain town of Ariano Irpino, just 49 miles  northeast of the nearest major city, Naples. He's been playing guitar since age 4 and has developed a jazz- and classical-influenced mastery of his chosen instrument that is something to behold.

That talent brought him to another Naples, in southwest Florida, on Wednesday, February 10 for a concert showcasing his swinging artistry. He was special guest with the Naples Philharmonic Jazz Orchestra as part of the sextet's All That Jazz series at Artis-Naples.

Pasquale Grasso

Guitar players were not the primary musical influence on young Grasso, who grew up in a southern Italy household that loved jazz. He was inspired by the sound of bebop pianists, including Bud Powell, Elmo Hope and Barry Harris. He won the Wes Montgomery International Jazz Guitar Competition in 2015, just three years after moving to New York City, where he has enjoyed a busy career as a performer and educator. Pat Metheny, a jazz guitar god for many, is one of Grasso's biggest fans.

Now 32, Grasso shows a command of his instrument well beyond his age. His warm sound, complex harmonic lines, dexterity and improvisational skills blend into a masterful musicality.

2021 - Jazz Musicians Felled By Coronavirus, Chapter 4 (updated 5-2-2022)

Here is part four of our chronological listing of jazz-related COVID-19 deaths from the novel coronavirus, updated as we receive them. Our profound sympathies to their families, friends and fans as we remember their musical legacies. Parts one, two and three contain 2020's 63 known losses.

• 
  Violinist, singer, arranger and educator Zoran Džorlev died January 2, 2021 in Skopje, Macedonia. He was 53. His music ranged from folk and pop to classical and jazz.
• Latin Grammy-winning bandoneon player and composer Raul Jaurena died January 5. He was 79. He was a master of the button squeezebox that is the quintessential tango instrument. His music was a hybrid of the traditional tango of South America and tango nuevo. He moved from Uruguay to the United States in the 1980s, settling in the New York City area.
• Trombonist, singer, bandleader and writer Burt Wilson died January 6 at age 87. Wilson started Sacramento’s Silver Dollar Jazz Band in 1949. The band helped incubate the area’s trad jazz scene, which led to formation of the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society and the Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee. Wilson also was a political activist, playwright, and former advertising executive. He moved from his native Sacramento to upstate New York in 2015. He died in a nursing home near Binghamton NY.

  

  Burt Wilson
  

• British pianist, singer and vintage jazz expert Keith Nichols died January 21 in a London hospital. He was 75. He contracted COVID-19 after going into the hospital for unrelated issues.
• Salt Lake City pianist, composer, singer and educator Courtney Isaiah Smith died January 25. He was 37. The prolific northern Utah musician’s career bridged the jazz, gospel and soul genres. He led his own quintet, worked in other bands and taught jazz piano at Utah State University, The University of Utah, Weber State and Westminster College.
• African guitarist, singer and songwriter Wambali Mkandawire died January 31 in Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawii. The jazz and afro-beat musician was 70.
• Czech composer, bandleader, multi-instrumentalist and singer Ladislav Štaidl died January 31 in a Prague hospital. He was 75. Štaidl wrote the music for 80 television and feature films, and composed some 200 songs. 
• Pianist, composer and educator Uli Rennert died February 5 at age 60. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Rennert had lived in Graz, Austria since 1987, and became an Austrian citizen in 1993. He taught at the Jazz Institute at the Arts University of Graz and was also an artist in residence at Basel University in Switzerland. 
• Trumpeter and bandleader Pauly Cohen died February 10 at home in Tamarac FL. He was 98,. Cohen played lead trumpet with the Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey and Count Basie orchestras. He led his own 18-piece big band in south Florida into his nineties.
• Austrian concert promoter, tour manager and DJ Erich Zawinul died February 12 in a Vienna hospital at age 55. He was the son of late jazz keyboardist and bandleader Joe Zawinul. He brought a wide range of jazz, pop, rock and country stars to perform in Austria over the years. 
• Saxophonist Richie Perez, a Bakersfield CA jazz fixture for 70 years, died February 16. He was 86. The Texas-born musician moved with his family to California at age 9. At 15, he auditioned for blues legend Muddy Waters in a Bakersfield motel room for a show that night at Rainbow Garden — and he got the gig. His parents wouldn’t let him go on the road after that singular performance.
• New Jersey-based saxophonist Sal Spicola died on February 22. He was 72. He started playing saxophone professionally at age 15 for Chuck Berry, and by 19 he was touring with Lionel Hampton’s band. He was an alumnus of the Boston Pops, Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd, and the Mike Treni Big Band. He made multiple Broadway shows and tours, including “Cats,” “Me and My Girl,” ”Miss Saigon” and “Starlight Express.”
• New York drummer, pianist, composer and educator Chuck Fertal died February 25 at age 72. He contracted COVID-19 while staying in a New York hospital with his wife as she battled cancer. Chuck worked with a wide range of jazz artists, including Mal Waldron, George Cables, Dorothy Donegan, Sonny Stitt, Steve Cohn, Sonny Fortune and Sir Charles Thompson. His recordings include Michael Moss’ Helix and the New York Free Quartet’s Free Play, Dreamtime and In Between Gigs … Can You Dig? 
  
• English singer, pianist and writer Jean Darke died March 4 at age 88. She was the driving force behind Oxford’s Jazz at St Giles concert series, which has raised more than ₤40,000 (approximately $55,000) for charity since she founded it 10 years ago. She also wrote about music for the Oxford Mail and The Oxford Times. Darke contracted Covid-19 in October. She recovered but the virus led to further complications. 
• Serbian pianist and composer Sanja Ilić died March 7 in Belgrade, 20 days shy of his 70^th birthday. Ilić was keyboardist in the Yugoslav band San in the early 1970s. He founded his world music group Balkanika in 1998. The band’s style combined elements of world, folk and medieval music with the strong rhythms of the Balkans into ethno jazz.
• Singer and pianist Jo Thompson died March 9 in Montclair NJ at age 92. The Detroit native performed well into her 80s in a career that brought her to top cabaret rooms, nightclubs and supper clubs across the U.S. and around the world, often breaking racial barriers in the 1950s. She once was described as the "piano-playing Lena Horne." 
• Trumpeter Elton Reyes died March 10 at his Okala FL home, where he had been quarantined with COVID-19. He was 43. Over his more than 20-year career, Reyes played lead trumpet in a variety of jazz groups in Central Florida. They included the Dan McMillion Jazz Orchestra, Phoenix Jazz Orchestra, the Space Coast Jazz Orchestra, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and the Maynard Ferguson Tribute Band. He also played in salsa bands. 
• Pianist, composer and bandleader Florentín Giménez died March 11 at age 95 in his native Paraguay. He learned to play the piano and joined Ramón Reyes’ Orchestra in 1945 at age 20. He stayed until 1947, when the Paraguayan Civil War forced him to flee to Argentina. He returned to Paraguay after the war and formed his first orchestra, “Ritmos de América” (America’s Rhythms). In 1950, he formed the 14-member orchestra “Florentín Giménez y su típica Moderna.” Because of his protests against the government, Giménez was labeled a communist and arrested in 1953. He was jailed for several months.  
• Italian singer, guitarist, bandleader, composer and actor Raoul Casadei died March 13 at Bufalini Hospital in Cesena, where he had been hospitalized since March 2. He was 83.
• Saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Eulalio Cervantes Galarza died March 14 at age 52 in Mexico City. He was a co-founder of the iconic Mexican rock band La Maldita Vecindad. His jazz collaborations included work with pianist Hector Infanzon, and guitarists Bill Laswell and Michael Brook. 
  
• Czech pianist, composer and educator Antonin Bilý died March 17 in a Prague hospital at age 81. He taught at the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory in Prague and was a founding member of Traditional Jazz Studio, a New Orleans-style trad jazz and swing band. 
• Washington DC-based alto saxophonist Aaron Martin Jr. died March 18. He was 73. The free-jazz improviser was a pillar of the DC jazz community.
• Trumpeter Cristián Cuturrufo, one of Chile’s most prominent jazz musicians, died March 19 at the Las Condes Clinic in Santiago. He was 48. He was a passionate promoter of jazz, producing the Las Condes Jazz Festival, which presented its 15^th edition last month. The 2021 edition was presented online because of the pandemic. Cuturrufo also opened two Santiago jazz clubs, The Jazz Corner and Boliche Jazz.
• Drummer and educator Buddy Deppenschmidt died March 20 in a hospice near his Doylestown PA home. He was 85. Deppenschmidt co-conceived and performed on the landmark 1962 Charlie Byrd-Stan Getz album Jazz Samba that started America‘s fascination with the bossa nova. The Grammy-winning record was the only jazz album ever to reach No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart.
• Swedish alto saxophonist, music journalist and playwright Ingmar Glanzelius died March 28 at age 93. He played in a modern jazz quintet that accompanied Stan Getz and Lee Konitz on Sweden tours in the early 1950s. He wrote for Dagens Nyheter, a daily newspaper in Stockholm, until 2004. 
• Brazilian singer, songwriter and politician Agnaldo Timóteo died April 3 in Rio de Janeiro. He was 84. He sang and recorded in the bolero and bossa nova genres, and had several romantic hits in his more than 50 recordings.  
• Alto saxophonist Andy Fusco died April 5 in New York at age 73. His battle with COVID-19 last spring compromised his immune system, leading to serious health problems from which he couldn’t recover. The Buddy Rich Band alumnus (1978-1983) also played in the Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and Steve Smith’s Vital Information. He taught and directed the jazz ensemble at Kean University in Union NJ for 25 years.  
• Brazilian trumpeter, composer and educator Manassés Aragão died April 18, his 40^th birthday, in a hospital in Goiânia. He had been a member of Charanga Jazz, Chocolate Groove Band and Banda Pequi, as well as a guest musician with the Goiânia Symphony Orchestra.
• Bassist Joe Long died April 21 at age 88. The New Jersey musician, whose birth name was Joseph Louis LaBracio, played bass guitar and sang background vocals in the Four Seasons from 1965 to 1975. Long then started his own rock band, LaBracio, and later formed the jazz band Jersey Bounce. 
• Actor, singer, guitarist and bandleader Johnny Crawford died April 29 at age 75. He was one of Disney’s original Mousketeers, rose to prominence playing Mark McCain on the ABC-TV western The Rifleman, and was a teen idol pop singer in the 1960s. After a brief stint as the singer with Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, he formed the Johnny Crawford Dance Orchestra, an 11-member vintage dance band, in 1990. It recorded one album, 2008’s Sweepin’ the Clouds Away, and perfomed for more than 25 years. 
• Indian jurist and jazz lover Soli Sorabjee died April 30 at age 91 in a New Delhi hospital. The judge, constitutional law expert, free speech and human rights advocate, and two-time attorney general of India, was a clarinetist and the first president of the Jazz India association. 
• Arthur Pomposello, longtime host and cabaret/jazz talent manager at the Oak Room, the posh supper club in Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel, died May 6. He was 85. He started as a bartender at the Algonquin in 1980. By the mid-to-late ‘80s, he was running the Oak Room. He left in 2002 after a dispute with management.
• Promoter, writer and jazz historian Alexey Batashev died on May 14 at age 86. He wrote the groundbreaking book Soviet Jazz (Moscow, 1971), which S. Frederick Starr adapted and enhanced for the Western market as Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union. Batashev promoted American jazz artists visiting Russia in the 1970s and ‘80s, and Soviet jazz musicians visiting the United States in the late 1980s. He wrote dozens of articles for Jazz.Ru Magazine from its 1998 debut well into the 2000s. 
• Samba icon Nelson Sargento died May 27 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at age 96. The singer, songwriter, actor and writer had been fully vaccinated since late February, but was diagnosed with COVID-19 on May 21 after he was hospitalized in Rio.  
• Drummer Ken Swinkin died May 28 at age 46. The William Paterson College jazz studies graduate was a successful freelance musician who played for U.S. tours of “The Music Man,” “Stand By Your Man: The Tammy Wynette Story,” “A Christmas Carol” and “Miracle on 34th Street.” He also played on a European tour of “Grease.” 
• Namibian singer and songwriter Raymond Pande died June 28 at a hospital in Windhoek. He was 34. Pande was a former member of the Fu Jazz Band. The popular local Afro-jazz group has been credited with helping keep jazz alive in Namibia since 2007.  

Here are links to Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 and Chapter 5.