Recorded live at the perennially excellent Guelph Jazz Festival in 1998, Vision Towards Essence finds Muhal Richard Abrams playing a solo, three part concert that gives the listener an unfiltered aural view of Mr. Abrams' musical approach. As far as I know, this is only his second solo recording, the first being the now out-of-print Afrisong, which was released in 1975 on the India Navigation label. I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Abrams perform solo here in Chicago in Millennium Park this summer. Unfortunately, I was a bit tired and couldn't give the music the attention it deserves and requires, so this solo recording is a welcome addition to his catalog so I can listen in a proper setting, mentally and physically.

So how can we talk about Mr. Abrams' piano playing in a meaningful manner? Certainly there are any number of past and present piano luminaries we could hear being processed as influence in his music, but personally I don't find that to be a particularly useful exercise  for distilling his musical Essence (Vision Towards). When I think of musicians like Muhal Richard Abrams, or any other musician I would put in the "pantheon" to which he certainly belongs, I really feel that there is indeed an essence that is refracted through their individual prism of musical consciousness. In Mr. Abrams' case, there is an intuitive unfolding and flow of his ideas and syntax that lends itself to a close listening experience of active passivity - a "letting go" so you can let Mr. Abrams "take you there," wherever "there" may be.

Am I being oblique enough? Good. I don't think a blow-by-blow account of this recording is productive, necessary, or even possible. What I can say in terms of specifities: Muhal Richard Abrams is a virtuoso pianist and displays a masterful command of melody, harmony, dynamics, as well as developing incredible arcs and contours that flow together seamlessly. The three "parts of the recording" don't come at defined breaks with applause; this is essentially an hour long piano recital with no pauses, which is what he played when he was in Chicago this summer. He builds a kinetic momentum that has more in common with tidal movements than with any musical analog I can think of.

In conclusion: do I recommend Vision Towards Essence? It depends if you like really good music. If you do, then by all means, make sure to pick it up. If you hate good music, then I would definitely stay away.

If only life were that simple.

CBGBs to reopen - but not as a music venue

Fashion! Turn to the left! Fashion! Turn to the right!

William Parker

Jackie DeShannon

A slew of interview links I've been hoarding

Paul Berliner, author of Thinking In Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation.  He's also an expert in the mbira music of the Shona of Zimbabwe. A lot of the interview relates jazz and mbira music to each other:

Despite the features that distinguish the languages of jazz and mbira music, there are similarities.  You might think that because the interlocking aesthetic of mbira music dictates a very tight mesh between the kushaura and kutsinhira parts, that that might inhibit improvisers, compared with the parameters jazz musicians typically work within. Paradoxically, when mbira players establish a powerful groove within the complementary interlocking relationship, it generates a great feeling of mutual support which inspires greater freedom of expression. At such moments, artists describe a flood of ideas coming to them, and they begin departing from their  pre-composed parts to experiment with developing new figures, trying out new cross-rhythms, taking harmonic liberties.

Ornette Coleman - "I just keep trying to find better notes. For me, better notes make my day." Ornette on the word jazz:

That's not a bad word. It's not the only word in English. And probably for sound, when you say jazz, that's a style. It doesn't represent sound. It just represents style. And that's the same for classical music. It represents a style. But sound itself doesn't really have to have a title for it to have meaning. I've heard "it sounds good" and "it sounds bad." You'll know if it sounds good or sounds bad because of how it makes you feel emotionally.

Ben Ratliff on his new Coltrane bio. Discussing the topic of Fear of Jazz:

I think because it’s serious, because it has a long history, because it has intellectual overtones, but also because it’s sort of earnest. Part of the reason jazz doesn’t fit within pop culture anymore is because it can’t really be self-consciously rebellious and shocking, which is very standard stuff now. And I guess that’s why there’s this cliché that you turn thirty and all of a sudden start to think, “Maybe I should learn about jazz, because now I’m old enough.”

An interview with producer Don Was. The Was (Not Was) album What Up Dog? still gets some play on my stereo. Sounds like Detroit was a happening place in the 60s, where Was grew up:

I remember going downtown [in Detroit] where there was a poet [and] cultural leader named Jon Sinclair in Detroit who had Pharaoh Saunders jamming with members of the MC5 on acid one night.  And it was a rich culture.  George Clinton played at my high school.  Biggie and The Stooges played at my high school.  All these guys were doing something that no one had ever done before.  So that’s the aesthetic that I come from.  My band, Was Not Was, is kind of an amalgamation of all those disparate elements, and we’re always looking to break down the barriers.

Yesterday was a great day of music here in Chicago, starting out at the Hyde Park Arts Center where I led a panel discussion about the realities of local musician run record labels. The panelists included Asian Improv Records co-founder Francis Wong (the other co-founder, Jon Jang didn't come out to Chicago for the festival this year), Tatsu Aoki, and co-owner/proprietors of Southport records, Bradley Parker-Sparrow and Joannie Palatto. There was a great crowd of around 75-100 people there, and it took place in a gallery enveloping us in visual art.

After talking about the history of their labels and how they came to be and interact, some interesting points came up in the ensuing conversation. One point made by Francis Wong was that they are not in the record business in the same way Columbia or Blue Note is. This might seem obvious, but his assertion tied into a recurring theme in the conversation, which was that these labels existed more to give these artists a voice than to make a lot of money. That point was hammered home by Tatsu Aoki, when asked about the role of the internet and technology in the label business, he noted that before they peddled records on the internet he sold about 10 copies a year of his solo bass album. Now that his records are all on the internet, he still sells about 10 copies a year.

Once we were done with our yapping, the first music of the day began. Billed as the Jeff Chan Trio Plus One Plus Two, it ended up being a reeds quintet featuring Jimmy Ellis on alto, Ed Wilkerson on tenor and clarinet, Jeff Chan on tenor and bass clarinet, Francis Wong on tenor and flute, and Lewis Jordan on alto and poetics.

Obvious comparisons to the WSQ aside, this was a great lineup that really took the music to a variety of interesting places. There were some very interesting compositions by Jeff Chan that added some structure while maintaining an improvisatory edge, and each member was featured at one point or another in the proceedings. One highlight was a solo montage by Jimmy Ellis who said he was going to paint a picture for the audience of a Sunday in his neighborhood growing up, where everyone would go to church in the morning and then the community would gather to spin jazz records in the afternoon, a trip to a different kind of church. Starting out slow with the sunrise and working through the church service, complete with a Come Sunday quote, once he got to the jazz portion he quoted a variety of standards in a fluid, unforced manner.

The evening festivities brought a reprise of a quartet that first got together last year for the Asian American Jazz Festival, playing two nights last year but only one this year. With Fred Anderson and Francis Wong on tenors, Tatsu Aoki on bass, and Chad Taylor in from New York on drums, I was anticipating the show since last year's music proved to be incendiary. While this year's set might not have reached the otherworldly highs that I recall from last year, it was still a superlative evening of music.

Tatsu Aoki and Chad Taylor are an incredible rhythm section, prone to locking into trance-like yet surprisingly malleable grooves that had many heads in the audience bobbing to the beat. There was one groove in the second set that any hip hop artist would have been proud to sample. It should be noted that Tatsu played incredibly well in spite of the fact that he has badly injured his back and had a full torso body cast on underneath his shirt, causing him considerable discomfort. Here's hoping he heals quickly and fully. Francis Wong and Fred Anderson both did their part, but there wasn't as much meshing of their musical sensibilities as I remember last year.

All in all, a fantastic day of music from all involved. I'm already looking forward to next year's fest.

Tomorrow is the closing day/night and biggest chunk of programming for the 12th Annual Chicago Asian American Jazz Festival.

Starting off at the Hyde Park Art Center at 1 PM, there's going to be a panel discussion moderated by yours truly on the subject of the 20th Anniversary of Asian Improv Records, with Tatsu Aoki, Francis Wong, Bradley Parker-Sparrow and Joannie Palatto. It should be a good time, and in my role as moderator I hope to bring up some issues about the state of recording, the internet, and technology today.

That will be followed at 2 PM by a performance by The Jeff Chan Trio plus One plus Two featuring Hyde Park's own Jimmy Ellis - saxophone, Jeff Chan - winds, Tatsu Aoki – contrabass, Ed Wilkerson - winds and special guests from the West Coast, Lewis Jordan and Francis Wong – winds.

That's the billed group, but I'm told that Tatsu Aoki won't be performing - he recently had an accident that slipped a disc in his back and actually is currently wearing a body cast. Send out some good thoughts to Mr. Aoki if you have a moment, a wonderful musician and person. He's not going to play the afternoon set because he wants to save his energy for the gig later in the day:

Fred Anderson – tenor saxophone and Tatsu Aoki – contrabass, New-York-resident-but-Chicago-native Chad Taylor – drums and San Francisco’s Francis Wong – saxophone.

Live at the Velvet Lounge. This is a reprise of the same group that played two nights at the Velvet last year for the AAJazz Fest, and I was in attendance for the second night. Nothing short of smoldering, incendiary playing from all four members of the band. I'm really looking forward to this hit - last year, Tatsu and Chad locked into these incredible grooves with Fred Anderson and Francis Wong providing tenor fireworks over the top.

If you're in Chicago, come on out. It's going to be a great day of music.

 ...There'd Be a Whole Load of Dead Copycats.

Photo Credit: Nancy Ann Lee

Adam Rudolph & Hu Vibrational

Vijay Iyer

Duke Ellington

The saxophone, especially in Chicago, is a very important instrument. The ladies like it. Of course, if you play somewhere and you're able to get a real good tone, you're assured of the ladies, and as long as you've got the ladies coming in, you have a job, to put it mildly. - Von Freeman

Today is the 85th birthday of the chairman of Chicago jazz, Von Freeman.

A founding member of the Chicago tenor school along with Gene Ammons and Johnny Griffin, Von is not only a local but a national treasure in my opinion.

Earl Lavon Freeman, or Vonski as he is known to his fans, was born October 3rd, 1922,  and grew up in a musical household that also produced his younger brothers George, a well-known Chicago guitarist, and drummer Bruz.

As a toddler, Von heard Louis Armstrong in his own living room, when Armstrong (a family friend of Von's father) would come to visit. Fats Waller also visited the Freeman household.

He was drafted into the Navy during World War II and played for a Navy band while in the service. After his return to Chicago he played with his brothers George on guitar and Bruz (Eldrige) on drums in the house band at the Pershing Hotel Ballroom. Luminaries such as Charlie Parker, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie played there with the Freeman's as the backing band, and to add to Von’s eclectic resume, in the early 50s he with Sun Ra's band.

Many people don’t know that in the 50s, when John Coltrane left his band, Miles Davis called Von to be his replacement. At the time Von was playing with a blues band that was quite successful, and had 4 kids and a wife and didn’t want to give up the steady gig with the blues band. Von acknowledges that probably would have been his big break if had accepted. 

Von is the sound of Chicago. When asked what the Chicago sound is, Von says:

Well, it's tough and it's windy, it's broad. It means getting down to business, so to me it's just a composite of Chicago, all four sides. Including the lakefront.

When I listen to Von I hear the whole history of the saxophone, from Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young and Don Byas all the way through John Coltrane, all of it filtered through Von's unique musical voice.

There's no one in the world I'd rather hear play a ballad than Von Freeman. His recent album Good Forever is full of them, gorgeous and heartbreakingly beautiful.

If you haven't heard Von, all of the releases that Mike Friedman at Premonition has put out are wonderful. He also just put out a Best of Von Freeman on Premonition that gives a great overview of his recordings on the label if you're into the compilation thing.

Happy Birthday Vonski - here's to many, many more.

photo credit: Nami Ogata

There is a fascinating and well written essay by Salim Washington called “All the Things You Could Be by Now…”: Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus and the Limits of Avant-Garde Jazz. It's well worth reading all the way through if you have the time or inclination, but there are a few areas of discussion I wanted to isolate and talk about.

In June of 1973, Charles Mingus wrote and published an article in Changes magazine entitled "An Open Letter to the Avant Garde."

In it, he gives an anecdote of talking to Duke Ellington about the avant garde:

I had to go to Yale recently for some kind of award they were giving away to different musicians for the Ellington Scholarship Fund, and I talked to Duke.

I said: "Duke, why don't you, me and Dizzy and Clark Terry and Thad Jones get together and make an avant-garde record?"

Duke's reply was very quick. He said: "Why should we go back that far? Let's not take music back that far, Mingus. Why not just make a modern record?"

And this to me appeared to be very funny, because he was saying just what I was thinking -- which I didn't have enough nerve to say. To hear musicians on the bandstand say: "Well they're playing in the avant-garde because they do anything they want to do" -- and most of the ones who do play avant-garde can't play a straight melody and solo on it with the approximate changes, with any approximate changes.

This is not a new critique of the avant-garde, but it's interesting to hear it coming from Mingus because he wasn't a traditionalist who entirely wrote off the contributions of free music, or the "new thing." It was just one tool in his musical language, which makes sense considering his dictum recounted in Sue Mingus' Tonight At Noon that "You don't do anything all the time" (p105, Sue Mingus).

He goes on to say:

"Music has to have some form, to come from some historical music created by a people. You can't just have guys making up different lines. If you study music you're able to do anything, to have variety in what you do. When every piece sounds just like the last one, that's no fun. I enjoy playing something where everybody's creating together and where there is some ensemble. I want to have different meters, different chord changes, or different music with no chord changes at all. But to just play free, to have no sense of where you're going or where you came from...I mean, if I'm going to have my appendix taken out, I want to be sure the doctor can retrace his steps" (ibid).

Going back to his Open Letter to the Avant Garde:

"I'm not trying to knock avant-garde. I'm just trying to say that it would be beautiful to hear -- if there were such a thing as avant-garde -- the best musicians play it. Because don't let anyone tell me that Clark Terry or Duke Ellington can't play avant-garde music, or incoherent music if they wanted to. It would be the most incoherent. It would be the most noisy. They would cut everybody playing bad. Because Duke could sit down at the piano and play a composition and it would sound like a symphony of Wrong, it would sound like he wrote it out with an introduction, interludes and recapitulations. The whole thing would be decided, if Duke was in the avant-garde. We'd all be crazy listening. If he should suddenly go avant-garde, I wouldn't know what to do except go crazy with him. I'm sure he's not, though. Mainly because he already is avant-garde in another way."

Salim Washington notes that the history of jazz is a history of avant-garde movements, from swing to the bebop revolution to the new thing of the 1960s. He also writes that the music that is identified as the avant-garde that blossomed during the 1960s has become a permanent avant-garde that is still practiced in similar ways today by many musicians. Mr. Washington also notes that what is conventionally referred to as the avant-garde is not only a reaction to the past but also a continued broadening of musical influence and perspective:

Some musicians tried to free themselves symbolically from the hegemony of Euro-America through such means as subverting the expectations of functional tonality, abandoning tempered intonation, improvising with free meter and free tonal structures, new instrumental techniques, etc. The non-Western emphasis was underscored by incorporating musical influences from various African, Latin American, and Asian cultures.

I don't have any broad sweeping conclusions or points to make right now, but I will continue this thread and line of thought in a couple more posts coming soon, with some musical examples I have in mind.

A new look for the fall here at Soundslope. Those of you who only read the RSS feed won't see the difference unless you click here to see the front page.

Other than the new visual look, I also added a couple of new features. Recent comments now show up in the right sidebar, and I also instituted a basic captcha for comments to weed out the humans from the robots who had been plaguing me with comment spam.

Let me know if you notice any snafus or oversights on my part in the redesign. There are a few posts that look funny due to some changes in the style sheets, but nothing that drastically affects readability.

More soon.