v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

On Roy Hargrove's Passing

 

 

The talented and forceful trumpet player Roy Hargrove has passed away due to a heart attack at the young age of 49. I had seen him in the early 90's at a small Greenwich Village bar at 1 in the morning at a fundraiser  for a waitress who had recently been diagnosed with cancer. We must of been five feet from him as he played standards with soul and a power I had not seen in years. He always impressed me with his ability to cross so called musical boundaries-his album with D'Angelo or better yet his album Habana in Havana with Chucho Valdez, Gary Bartz, and David Sanchez, a great example of what Latin Jazz can accomplish.

Here is an obituary that came out a couple of hours ago-I think the news is just percolating across the jazz community- from The Dallas News:

Dallas-raised Roy Hargrove, the young jazzer born with an old soul, died Friday at the age of 49, according to his Facebook page. National Public Radio reports that the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts graduate was felled by cardiac arrest following kidney failure, after years of dialysis.

The trumpet player whose discography in time would encompass the past and future of jazz, Latin music, funk and soul was born in Waco on Oct. 16, 1969, but educated here — at Arts Magnet, but also by the likes of David "Fathead" Newman, James Clay, Marchel Ivery and Dean Hill. The latter served as band director at Oliver Wendell Holmes Middle School in Oak Cliff, where Hargrove grew up. 

"He was always one to keep digging and reaching for all he could," Hill told this newspaper long ago. "We knew we had something special."

It was at Holmes where a young Roy first heard Newman, most famous for playing sax with Ray Charles in the 1950s. And it was at Holmes where he learned to mimic the solos of Maynard Ferguson and other idols.

He was, in the beginning, a straight-up bop kid. That's what caught the ear of Wynton Marsalis in 1987, during a visit to Arts Magnet in the midst of a long engagement at Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth. Marsalis was so smitten with Hargrove he invited him to share the stage — this Texas teen. Larry Clothier, who in time became Hargrove's manager and producer, told Texas Monthly nine years later Roy climbed onto the bandstand a scared kid and walked off a grown man: "When it came time, you could just see him draw himself up and expand."

Roy's recorded debut came in 1988 — on the Dallas "Arts" Jazz 1988 album, a Booker T. compilation on which he also handled some of the arrangements.

Hargrove attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston for but a single year following his graduation from Booker T. in 1988; that's how ready he was. At the age of 20 he had a record deal. He was sharing stages and studios with the likes of Sonny Rollins, Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock and the local lions whose own lineage could be traced back to John Coltrane, Red Garland, Miles Davis. He moved to New York, but came home constantly; in the day he played Sambuca in Deep Ellum so often they could have put him on the menu.

But in time the son of a record collector graduated from the old school: His bop merged into the Cuban, R&B and hip-hop lanes. His first of two Grammy Awards came in 1997, for the album Habana. He also performed with the likes of schoolmate and dear friend Erykah Badu, A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip, D'Angelo, Common, John Mayer. His fingerprints are all over such albums as Badu's Mama's Gun and Worldwide Underground, D'Angelo's Voodoo and Black Messiah.

The album Hard Groove, released in 2003 and recorded under the RH Factor moniker, was his nascent masterwork. But Hargrove's discography didn't grow much further: Five albums followed, none under his own name after 2009, though he sided on several others.

Former Star-Telegram critic Preston Jones, writing in 2016 for the Observer, said this of Hargrove's restlessness and desire to stake a claim as a musician unbound by definition:

"Fortunately for us as a culture, there are still happy warriors like Roy Hargrove," Jones wrote, "marching onto the battlefield, intent on articulating the full spectrum of feeling, one performance at a time."

But now, suddenly, unexpectedly, shockingly, those performances have come to an end.

"Everything that I do is from the creator," he once said, explaining that all his music is spiritual in some way. "All the music I play, I can't take credit for."

Zaccai Curtis

Vallejo Nocturno 2018 - From last night's concert at An die Musik Live, the talented Zaccai Curtis

From a recent interview with Zaccai by T.J. English at Skull fractures:

If you had to categorize your influences, where would you say your approach to the piano comes from?

I still consider myself a student, of course. I haven’t done my own writing, my own recording. I’ve been waiting until I feel comfortable with ideas that are my own, concepts that are my own, that I have, but I’ve been waiting to go in that direction yet because I’d like to make that a permanent thing. So I feel that I’m still in my discovery phase. A lot of the stuff that I’m playing is things that people that hire me want to hear.

Currently, my mentor, without a doubt, is Eddie Palmieri. Not only am I a student of all music, but I’m also clearly a student of his. I try to make sure I’m following that, to open myself up when I’m ready to play my own ideas. But right now, I‘m just trying to hone my skills. I’m still focusing on that.

Has Palmieri always been a primary influence of yours?

Oh yeah. Always has been. Since I was a kid. Now, when I go see Eddie, see what he’s doing in his 80s, it’s unreal. One of a kind. Genius. I’ve never seen anything like it. I wanna be like that.

Are there other influences that you can cite?

In the jazz world and the Latin jazz? Everything? That‘s a long list. Bud Powell, McCoy Tyner are tops on that list. Wynton Kelly. Charlie Palmieri, a very big influence. Peruchín. I don’t have anyone that I’m not influenced by, really. I mean, I’m throwing out these names, but there’s a ton more. Bobby Timmons. Was on my Bobby Timmons phase for a while. Absolutely love that guy. Bill Evans.

Of course, being here in New York there’s your salsa legends – Papo Lucca, Ruben Gonzalez. And I’ve always been listening to Arsenio Rodriguez and a lot of the older stuff. Because Andy Gonzalez [of the Fort Apache Band] was a mentor of mine and my brother’s when we were kids. He dropped off records on a regular basis. So we had a lot of homework every week. A lot of listening. We were lucky to be pointed in the right direction in that regard.

Leo Maxey Last Friday Night

Vallejo Nocturno 2018 - At An Die Musik with his new quartet

The Great Bluiett Dies

 

From Downbeat- I saw Bluiett at his best in the 70's with Roy Brooks, Mingus, and then with Saxophone Quartet-with Bluitt gone only Murray and Lake are left:

Baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett, a founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet, as well as the Black Artists Group, died Oct. 4 in St. Louis at the age of 78.

During a music career of more than five decades, Bluiett created a fresh, innovative approach to playing the baritone saxophone. With his five-octave range, circular-breathing technique and uncanny combination of power and precision, Bluiett reinvented the circumscribed role of the baritone saxophone in small group, large ensemble and solo settings. His discography includes about 50 albums as a member of WSQ and as leader of his own sessions.

Bluiett topped the Baritone Saxophone category in the DownBeat Critics Poll eight times. He won the award four consecutive times during two stints, first in 1990–’93 and then in 1996–’99.

Bluiett was born Sept. 16, 1940, in Brooklyn, Illinois, a town also known as Lovejoy and located north of East St. Louis. Bluiett was attracted to music from an early age, and while still in elementary school, he played clarinet with a local high school band under the tutelage of George Hudson, leader of a popular orchestra in nearby St. Louis.

Bluiett began playing baritone at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1961 and continued to play in bands after joining the service.

After his discharge, Bluiett returned to the St. Louis area and became a founding member of the Black Artists Group in 1967. He began playing with saxophonist Oliver Lake, and led the BAG big band before moving to New York in 1969.

With his innovative approach to the baritone, Bluiett soon found work with Sam Rivers, Tito Puente and Babatunde Olatunji before getting the call to join Charles Mingus in 1974.

A supposedly one-off New Orleans concert in late 1976—which featured Bluiett, Lake, Julius Hemphill and David Murray—led to the founding of WSQ a few months later. The group became an ideal setting for Bluiett’s playing and wide-ranging explorations.

After returning to Lovejoy in 2002 to deal with health issues, Bluiett started teaching music to young people and began playing concerts again.

“My role is to get them straight to the core of what music is about,” he said in a 2012 interview with the St. Louis Beacon. “Knowing how to play the blues has to be there. And learning how to improvise—to move beyond the notes on the page—is essential, too.”

Bluiett returned to New York in 2012, and was active on the music scene for several years. But after suffering several strokes and seizures between 2014 and 2016, he retired from performing.

Over the course of his career, Bluiett contributed to albums by numerous artists, including Mingus, James Carter, Bobby Watson, Don Braden, Anthony Braxton, Larry Willis, Abdullah Ibrahim, Randy Weston, Gil Evans, Lester Bowie, Don Cherry, Eddie Jefferson and Arthur Blythe.

DownBeat Contributing Editor Ed Enright interviewed Bluiett backstage at the 1997 Montreal Jazz Festival. At the festival, Bluiett delivered a band performance that later would be released as the 1998 album Liberation For The Baritone Saxophone Nation (Justin Time), which was credited to Bluiett Baritone Nation. His collaborators on the project were fellow baritone saxophonists James Carter, Alex Harding and Patience Higgins, along with drummer Ronnie Burrage.

In Bluiett’s interview with Enright—a baritone saxophonist himself and then editor of DownBeat—he talked about how he was tired of the baritone being disrespected and consistently relegated to a supporting role. “This is my concept, and it’s all about the baritone, really,” Bluiett said. “The music has to change for us to really fit. I’m tired of trying to fit in with trumpet music, tenor music, alto music, soprano music. … We’ve got to play what this horn will sound like. … So, what I’m doing is redesigning the music to fit the horn. …

“It’s like being in the water. The baritone is not a catfish [or any of those] small fish. It’s more like a dolphin or a whale. And it needs to travel in a whole lot of water. We can’t work in no swimming pools.”

Bluiett continued: “The other horns will get a chance to join us. They’ve just got to change where they’re coming from and genuflect to us—instead of us to them.”

A funeral service for Bluiett is planned for 10 a.m. Oct. 12 at Lovejoy Temple Church of God, 511 Canal Street, Brooklyn, Illinois, followed by burial at 12:30 p.m. at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.

Bassist Gaston Joya

Vallejo Nocturno 2018 -Gaston at An die Musik

Harold Lopez-Nussa Trio in Boston

We just caught this amazing trio of super talented Cuban musicians at An die Musik and they displayed incredible musical energy and talent. Its obviously at the end of the tour that apparently started earlier this year in Boston. So lucky to have it recorded and available for all to see. What musical imagination!

The Beauty of Jerry

Newly Discovered Mingus Tapes from the 70"s

 

Just heard about music tapes from concerts that Mingus held in Detroit back in 1973. It's great news as this is the Mingus I heard when I was young. It was his quintets and sextets of this era that I heard with Dannie Richmond, Don Pullen, George Adams, Hammiet Bluit, and Jack Walrath at the Smithsonian and also in Baltimore at the Left Bank Jazz Society. It was a group that Mingus allowed to explore and further the limits of jazz. But the music that will be released only has Pullen, and features Detroit natives percussionist Roy Brooks and trumpeter Joe Gardner. Also on tenor the very versatile John Subblefield. It's a unique group and what I've heard of the tapes is high quality both in the sound and the improvisation. It's great that we have this as it was really an interesting time and group for Mingus.

Here's a recent article in Billboard on the upcoming release:

When Amir Abdullah first learned of a Charles Mingus Quintet performance at the tiny Strata Concert Gallery in Detroit during 1973, he never dreamed he'd be spearheading a release of the set. But it surfaces on Nov. 2 as Mingus -- Jazz in Detroit/Strata Concert Gallery/46 Selden -- including the track "Peggy's Blue Skylight," premiering exclusively below.

DJ and musicologist Abdullah saw a poster for Mingus' week-long residency at Strata during a visit to Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, where he was gathering materials for a Strata Records exhibition he was curating. Then, during the summer of 2017, Abdullah received an email from Strata owner Barbara Cox telling him that drummer Roy Brooks' widow Hermine had a recording of the Mingus concert, which had been broadcast on the local public radio station WDET. "Of course I said yes," Abdullah tells Billboard. He was living in Berlin at the time so sent producer/DJ friend John Morales to check out the reel-to-reel tapes. "We were all blown away at how stunning the recording sounded," Abdullah says. "You really feel like you're in the small but intimate Strata Concert Gallery, sitting in front (and) grooving to Mingus and the band." He subsequently brought the tapes to Mingus' widow, Sue, who gave her approval for the release.

The set stands out for a variety of reasons, according to Abdullah. "You get to hear Mingus in this intimate setting where he and the band are free to explore whatever musical territory that suits them," he explains. The recording also features Mingus working with a tenor saxophonist (John Stubblefield) for the first time. "Although he didn't last that long with Mingus this recording really highlights why Mingus invited him to be in the band," Abdullah says. The album also features the earliest known recording of "Noddin' Ya Head Blues," with Brooks playing musical saw, and the first official release of "Dizzy Profile," which Mingus never recorded in a studio.

"This recording adds more than just the chance to hear Mingus in a rare intimate setting but it also allows the listener to hear his process of arranging and improvisation combined with his ability to tell a story with his music," Abdullah says. "It also shows how Mingus was not above playing smaller venues and supporting local black-owned businesses. Strata was an artist-run and owned collective that spoke to the people of Detroit. You have to remember that 1973 was still a turbulent time in America, particularly after the riots of 1967 and 1968 in Detroit. Motown had already moved to L.A., and that left a huge vacuum in Detroit.

"So having someone like Mingus come to your neighborhood to do a week-long residence would have been mind-blowing for many in Detroit."

The Mingus set will be released as five-CD and five-LP packages and is available for pre-order. And the good news is that there are more treasures to come from the Strata Records and Strata Gallery archives.

"In fact," Abdullah says, "Herbie Hancock was the next artist to do a week long residence at the gallery followed eventually by Ornette Coleman, Elvin Jones, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett and Weather Report. I am working hard to secure these masters as they would even add more to historical legacy of jazz."

High Zero Festival

Vallejo Nocturno 2018- At the Theater Project (April Camlin, Rose Hammer Burt, Andrew Bernstein)

A welcome interruption into the political chaos that seems to afflict this country every day of the year. The High Zero festival has been going on for 20 years and though I didn't have the opportunity of attending these sonically disruptive concerts o na regular basis while I worked for a living, when I do go they are a great ear cleanser among other things. This year I attended only the first night but I was happy to learn that they also held the festival in Chicago and New York. It was well coordinated and the music was sufficiently varied to increase my interest and anticipation for next year's festival. Great job by the local organizers.

Vallejo Nocturno 2018 - At Theater Project ( Jeff Carey, Allison Clendaniel, Stewart Mostofsky)

Vallejo Nocturno 2018- At Theater Project (Shelly Blake-Plock, Stephanie Barber)

Vallejo Nocturno 2018 - At Theater Project (John Berndt, Wendel Patrick, Neil Feather)

Irene Schweizer's Sound

 

From the now defunct Village Voice, a good overview of the marvelous Irene Schweizer, pianist of our future:

Her dozens of recordings — most of them on Zurich’s phenomenal Intakt label, on whose board she resided until last year — make clear just how much she venerates the jazz tradition. In the midst of wide-ranging improvisations, you’ll catch flashes of the past, expertly deployed. Sometimes short flourishes will display the grounded rhythms of pre-war stylings like ragtime, boogie-woogie, or swing, but she’s just as likely to pound out block chords in the manner of McCoy Tyner or the delicate melodic flourishes of a Satie miniature.

The 76-year-old Schweizer, who in person projects warmth and self-effacement, even shyness, entered the jazz world in the early 1960s with three or four strikes against her: She veered, thanks to the influence first of Paul Bley and then of Cecil Taylor, into free jazz (polarizing at best, reviled at worst); she was a woman in one of the most male-dominated artistic arenas; she was a lesbian, something she was always open about; and she was from Switzerland (her last name literally means “Swiss”), a tough sell considering that the country, especially at the time, didn’t exactly strike up images of cool hard-boppers. Originally from Schaffhausen, north of Zurich, along the Rhine in the relative flatland near the German border, she took a steep, untraveled road, and just remained on it for more than fifty years. “It’s true,” says Schweizer of her journey. “I didn’t realize that: I’m a woman, and the only one.”

Schweizer’s single-minded artistic vision is apparent on her brand-new album, Live!, an improvised duo performance with New York–based drummer Joey Baron recorded two years ago at Rote Fabrik, Zurich’s alternative art space born out of the early-1980s student riots. Featuring a dynamic attack that can be ferocious and distinctly percussive (she plays drums herself, though not publicly anymore), then nimble and searching, it’s a testament to the subtle traditionalism that’s always lurked on the margins of her playing.

“I think the influence of real jazz tradition is very strong in Irene,” says Patrik Landolt, the founder and head of Intakt, in the label’s office across town in an industrial quarter. “She had an era of free playing, of emancipation, and today she’s so free she can combine both.”

Landolt started Intakt in 1986, in part to give Schweizer a platform since, he says, “Irene was completely underdocumented.” The label’s first record was Irène Schweizer Live at Taktlos, a Swiss festival she helped organize. The date included George Lewis, Paul Lovens, Günter Sommer, Maggie Nichols, and Joëlle Léandre, the latter two part of her semi-regular, all-female Dada-esqe trio, Les Diaboliques, which started back in the 1970s. When Landolt proudly pulls the original vinyl version from a shelf, he notes how the opening is on the wrong side. “We didn’t know how to do a record,” he says, laughing.

For this recording, she adds to her ongoing partnerships with drummers. (She’s previously recorded with Günter Sommer, Pierre Favre, Han Bennink, Andrew Cyrille, and Louis Moholo, who she first met in 1963 when he and other South African musicians, Abdullah Ibrahim included, lived in exile in Zurich.) This time she chose to collaborate with Baron, the longtime associate of John Zorn. They knew each other loosely through the free-jazz scene over the years, but she hadn’t seen him play live solo until early in 2015, at a small festival for improvised music in Biel, Switzerland. “He played 45 minutes,” says Schweizer from behind royal-blue-rimmed eyeglasses, “and I never heard such a nice concert. It was so great, and there were some people in the audience who knew me and they said, ‘Irène, this is the drummer you have to play with and do a CD with.’ I said, ‘Of course, I feel that.’ ”

When she approached him, Baron says by phone from Berlin, “It was a big yes. Irène is a legend, and she is a very important figure and I absolutely respect her, a lot. Who wouldn’t be flattered.… And she’s a very, very kind, wonderful human being, and that’s very important to me. And that’s not always the case.”

Given the often lonely path she’s traveled as a rare woman in jazz, it’s impossible to ignore the challenges she’s faced, which continue to this day. “The audiences love her, but not the business,” says Landolt of Schweizer’s limited recognition in New York. “The club owners don’t invite her. She never played the Blue Note, never the Vanguard, never the Jazz Standard.”

When asked if she felt shut out in any way, Schweizer pauses. “Not really,” she says. “I didn’t get this feeling. Sometimes yes, of course. There were machos everywhere at that time, it was normal, but it never bothered me. I was very lucky — all the musicians I played with always had a certain respect for what I did.” Though she does add: “I would be much better known if I was a guy.”