Patricia

Barber
A Breed Apart

www.jazziz.com FEBRUARY 2013

Digital Edition
February 2013

24 The Tall Cool One

Off the beaten path with Patricia Barber.
By John Frederick Moore

30 Lest We Forget
Yes, Virginia, there is a jazz Grammy.
By Neil Tesser

Patricia Barber

4 Febr uary 2013 jazziz Cover photo and this page by Jimmy Katz
Prelude 14 Van Morrison

Terri Lyne Carrington tackles Ellington’s Money Jungle;

Todd Barkan brings a taste of vintage San Francisco
to New York’s Iridium club; Marcos Valle gets reissued;
and Mostly Other People Do the Killing slip into
something smooth and uncomfortable.

Auditions 38
Reviewed: Chris Potter, Ran Blake and Sara Serpa, Van
Morrison, Florencia Gonzalez Big Band, Marc Johnson
and Eliane Elias, and Ron Miles.

8 Febr uary 2013 jazziz


The follow up to Six String Theory, this release
puts the spotlight on the rhythm section featuring: Clarke,
Colaiuta, Corea, Duke, East, Elling, Emory, Erskine,
Goldings, Grusin, and many more… PLUS The winners of
the 2012 International 6 String Theory Competition.
Master conguero Poncho Sanchez, celebrating his 30th
anniversary with Concord Picante, presents this exciting
collection which includes legendary jazz classics such as
“Afro Blue,” “Mambo Inn/On Green Dolphin Street,” and
more.
Bob James - Nathan East - Chuck Loeb - Harvey
Mason - Smooth jazz super group Fourplay returns with
Esprit de Four. Their latest release includes a
poignant and moving tribute to Japan’s Tsunami victims,
with a special guest appearance by Seiko Matsuda.
Available at
Amazon, Amazon.com and the Amazon.com logo are
registered trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.
Editor and Publisher Michael Fagien
Publisher Zakiya Fagien
Managing Editor David Pulizzi
Associate Editor Robert Weinberg
Editor-at-Large Larry Blumenfeld
Copy Editor Candace G. Nelson
Art Director Benjamin Rennells
Assistant to Publishers Gabrielle Dann
Webmaster Cesar Rengifo
Accountant Lisa Gainsborg
Certified
Public Accountant Melamed & Karp
Digital Media Jennifer Lima
Customer Service Renata Rivera
advertising: 561-910-7721
contributors : Hrayr Attarian, Louisa Bertman, Ross Boissoneau, Philip Booth,
Shaun Brady, Mars Breslow, Stuart Brinin, Julia Cocuzza, John Diliberto, Casey
Donahue, Ted Drozdowski, Enid Farber, Sascha Feinstein, Phil Freeman, Steve
Futterman, Cary Gillaspie, Ed Hazell, Mark Holston, Jeff Jackson, Ilana Khon, Ed
Kopp, Kara Manning, Bill Meredith, Bill Milkowski, John Frederick Moore, Alan
Nahigian, Daniel Nevins, Ted Panken, Michael J. Renner, Michael Roberts, James
Rozzi, Kirk Silsbee, Neil Tesser, Eric Waggoner, Jonathan Widran, Josef Woodard,
Scott Yanow, Linda Zacks.
JAZZIZ USPS# 015486 ISSN 074-5885 is published (in print and delivered by mail) quarterly
by JAZZIZ Publishing, LLC.
7223 Panache Way Boca Raton, FL 33433
Editorial phone number 561-893-6868.
Subscription rate is $59.95 per year for 1 year. Each subscription includes monthly Digital
Editions (via the web delivered by email). Allow 6 weeks for new subscriptions and address
corrections to take effect.
Periodicals postage paid at Boca Raton, FL and additional mailing offices.
POSTMASTER, send change of address to:
PO BOX 880189 Boca Raton, FL 33488
editorial, advertising sales, and production office:
jazziz
7223 Panache Way Boca Raton, FL 33433
All contents copyright 2012 by JAZZIZ Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. JAZZIZ is a
registered trademark of JAZZIZ Publishing, LLC. Direct non-subscription correspondence to
our production office.
Permissions: Nothing can be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission
of JAZZIZ Publishing, LLC. The North American edition of JAZZIZ is printed in the USA.
Editorial and photographic contributions must be accompanied by return postage and will
be handled with care. The publisher assumes no responsibility for the return postage or the
safety of the artwork, photography, or manuscripts. All rights in letters sent to JAZZIZ will
be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes, subject to
unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially.
voice : 561.893.6868, 9am -5 pm est
fax : 561.910.5535 email: mail@jazziz .com
w w w.jazziz.com
Prelude

14 february 2013 jazziz

Back to the Future
With the same piercing blue eyes, tanned skin
and windblown blond hair that have been
his physical trademarks since he recorded his
first album in 1964 at the age of 21, Brazilian
composer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist
Marcos Valle remains very much the beach boy of
an eternal Rio summer. His music, always ahead of
its time, likewise has proven to be equally ageless.
The reissue in the United States for the first time of
four of Valle’s most critically acclaimed and hard-
to-track-down albums from the early ’70s offers a
rare opportunity to sample an alternate universe
of Brazilian sounds that remains largely unknown.
Sixteen years the junior of Brazil’s most famous
popular-music composer, the late Antônio Carlos
Jobim, Valle began his career in the bossa nova
mode but quickly moved to explore other styles.
His best-known composition, “Summer Samba”
(“Samba de Verão” or “So Nice,” as it is also known),
was a Top 40 U.S. hit in 1966 for Brazilian organist
Walter Wanderley and has been recorded more
than 100 times, by artists ranging from Johnny MAGNUS LINDGREN
Mathis to Connie Francis to, more recently, Bebel
Gilberto. The catchy bossa became an iconic pop-
culture reference point for the swingin’ ’60s, as
evidenced by its use in the Austin Powers film The
Spy Who Shagged Me and elsewhere.
A competent vocalist, keyboardist and guitar-
ist, Valle collaborated successfully with Milton
Nascimento, the samba-funk trio Azymuth, Eumir
Deodato, Sérgio Mendes, the rock group Chicago,
soul artist Leon Ware and many others. He teamed
with his lyricist brother, Paulo Sérgio, an airline
pilot, to form one of the most successful sibling Batucada Jazz
songwriting teams since George and Ira Gershwin.
A contemporary of other forward-thinking
musicians such as Edu Lobo, Dori Caymmi and
Nascimento, Valle’s penchant for sampling and
advancing other styles makes him unique among
his Brazilian peers. The 46 tracks contained on the
four reissues — 1970’s Marcos Valle, 1971’s Garra,
1972’s Vento Sul and 1973’s Previsão do Tempo —
find the composer in peak form. On these seminal
dates, Valle experimented with psychedelic
rock, R&B, funk, jazz fusion, updated bossa and
heavily orchestrated, European-influenced film- Fyra
soundtrack writing, which was used for Brazilian
movies and soap operas. Reissued by Light in the
Attic Records, the four CDs are enhanced by the
inclusion of extensive liner notes based on recent
interviews with Valle, who, at 69, continues to
record and perform. —Mark Holston www.magnuslindgren.com
International management & booking:
Mark van den Bergh vanbergh@wxs.nl
Revisiting
Duke’s Jungle
Duke Ellington’s Money Jungle is largely notable
for its heavyweight rhythm section of bassist
Charles Mingus and drummer Max Roach. But the
record’s title was also a comment on art and com-
merce. Jump cut 50 years later and drummer Terri Lyne
Carrington — with assistance from bassist Christian
McBride, pianist Gerald Clayton and a handful of
guests, including Clark Terry and Herbie Hancock —
revisits the music and its themes on her new disc
Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue (Concord Jazz).
Carrington replaces three Ellington classics —
“Solitude,” “Warm Valley” and “Caravan” — that
appeared on the 1963 album with two of her own
compositions and another written by Clayton. She
applies a contemporary sheen to the eight remaining
Ellington compositions, all of which were written
specifically for the original date. If anything, many of
the older pieces now sound current while the new orig-
inals sound as if they could have been performed 50
years ago. “I wanted to include the feeling of various
time periods in jazz and still make it sound like one
project,” Carrington says. “Changing something that
somebody so great did is a daunting task, yet I would
never attempt to do those songs in the same style and
format the way [Ellington] did, because I don’t think
that would make any sense either.”
Clayton’s “Cut Off” nods heavily toward Ellington’s
“Solitude,” both in its melodic and thematic allusions.
Carrington notes that the title refers to the themes of
“being in solitude, being cut off from others or society.”
The album’s larger message is more explicitly communicat-
ed in the audio clips scattered throughout the disc. Various
voices, including George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, provide a
running commentary on the role money plays in society.
“It’s hard for me to fully imagine what Duke
Ellington’s big band had been getting paid,” Carrington
says. “He certainly did not die a rich man, nor do most
jazz musicians. When you decide to do something that’s
not popular art, you’re already deciding to take the
harder road and to struggle on some level.”
Ultimately, the album deals with the triumph of art
over financial rewards — a message that’s made clear on
“Rem Blues/Music,” which features Shea Rose reciting a
poem that compares music to a seductive woman. “Being
obsessed with art is something that a lot of [musicians]
can relate to,” Carrington says. “Being obsessed with
money and making it, there’s this direct return. But you
can make great art and never get that return, so it’s a
more pure love.” —John Frederick Moore

16 february 2013 jazziz

Smooth Sailing
When it was announced that Mostly Other People Do the
Killing’s fifth studio album, Slippery Rock (Hot Cup Records),
was inspired by bassist/composer Moppa Elliott’s in-depth
study of smooth jazz, it was natural to assume that a joke was
being played. After all, with song titles that pay tongue-in-cheek
homage to the eccentric place names of Elliott’s native central
Pennsylvania and album covers that parody iconic images from
jazz classics, MOPDtK have become known as much for their
irreverent sense of humor as their playful, style-shifting sound.
But asked what exactly constituted his study of that most
disrespected of sub-genres, Elliott rattles off a list of titles from
a stack of CDs sitting in front of him. “I listened to a lot of Hank
Crawford and other CTI soul-jazz stuff — which I guess is the
roots of smooth jazz — followed by David Sanborn and Grover
Washington Jr.’s ’70s albums and ’80s stuff like Kenny G and the
Yellowjackets. And then you get into the really reviled stuff, like
Gerald Albright and Candy Dulfer and Rick Braun.”
So the question for a musician whose interests have pointed
more to the zig-zagging lineage leading from bop to the avant-
garde than to Quiet Storm radio fodder is: Did you find anything
18 february 2013 jazziz
to unironically appreciate in all of that so-called “reviled stuff”?
“No,” Elliott answers, breaking into laughter.
Still, he did find inspiration. The reason Elliott delved into
this previously unexplored territory was to find a new source of
ideas for his own writing. “I came at it from the standpoint that
the vast majority of this music is terrible,” he says. “But every
genre is made up of, being very generous, 80 percent crap and
20 percent good. The percentages are not quite that favorable
in latter-day smooth jazz, but even when the musicality gets
replaced by synthesizers and drum machines, what remains is
this weird vocabulary of gestures and ornaments and phrasing
that’s instantly identifiable. Take it out of context and that stuff
is really weird and interesting.”
On Slippery Rock, Elliott turns that vocabulary on its head.
Scraps of soul phrasing emerge from whirlpools of raucous
noise, riding on the back of brawny, jagged grooves. In the hands
of Elliott and his bandmates — chameleonic saxophonist Jon
Irabagon, acrobatic trumpeter Peter Evans and iconoclastic
drummer Kevin Shea — the result is something that definitely
roughens all those smooth edges. —Shaun Brady
 Keystone Redux
The Keystone Korner, a compact San Francisco venue now firmly tionalists such as Bucky Pizzarelli to more modern players like Vernon
entrenched in jazz history, glowed brightly from 1972 to 1983, present- Reid, Pee Wee Ellis and Dave Liebman. Certainly the series’ debut in early
ing first-rank artists including Miles Davis, Betty Carter, Rahsaan January heartily proved Barkan’s pledge that everything he presents
Roland Kirk, Dexter Gordon, Bill Evans and Earl Hines. The
owner and proprietor was impresario Todd Barkan, who spent
the three decades following the club’s demise cementing his
credentials as an acclaimed international concert promoter
and record producer. In 2000, Barkan accepted a position as
artistic administrator for Jazz at Lincoln Center. Four years later,
he became programming director and master of ceremonies at
JALC’s Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, a job he held until late last year.
Barkan now works for New York’s Iridium club, where, in
2013, he’ll stage nearly one hundred “Todd Barkan Presents
Keystone Korner Nights,” highlighting a panoply of artists,
both established and on-the-rise. “It’s another chance to make
musical dreams a reality — to mix jazz, blues, Latin jazz and
R&B in as many ways as I can,” Barkan says. “The openness of
the Iridium’s booking policies will allow me to be more progres-
sive. In a sense, it’s a return to my roots — putting it all together in the “will be swinging.” In keeping with the Iridium’s emphasis on guitar-
old Keystone Korner tradition.” (The club’s glory days are vividly recalled ists, Barkan pulled together a tribute to Wes Montgomery that skillfully
in the recently published oral history Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz mixed esteemed veterans Jimmy Cobb and Harold Mabern with such
Club, by photographer Kathy Sloane.) younger players as Peter Bernstein and Eric Alexander.
Although Barkan jokes that “I’m making the world safe for bebop, All told, it was an evening that exemplified Barkan’s oft-
that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life,” he plans on drawing from a repeated credo: “Take care of the music, and the music will take
broad palette of musicians. He cites possibilities ranging from tradi- care of you.” —Steve Futterman

MAKAYA MCCRAVEN • SPLIT DECISION

MAKAYA MCCRAVEN - drums; ANDREW TOOMBS - piano; TIM SEISSER - bass
“This is music made by a 21st century man who sees no need to suppress his hip hop chops or rock spirit
in an effort to fit in and be dubbed a jazz drummer. McCraven marries his love for music other than jazz
with a more jazz-oriented spirit built around in-the-moment, improvisational cunning and driving grooves
throughout this program of original music.” - Dan Bilawsky, AllAboutJazz.com
“a fresh take on the age-old piano trio, catapulted by McCraven’s propulsive percussion into an orbit
that few first-time groups ever achieve.” - Neil Tesser

AARON KOPPEL QUARTET • MULTIVERSE

AARON KOPPEL - guitar; MATT NELSON - piano, Hammond B-3, Rhodes;
GRAHAM CZACH - upright & electric bass; ROBERT TUCKER - drums
One of Downbeat Magazine’s “Best CDs of 2012”!
HHHH “The band has been together since 2004 and knows
how and where to take chances... through time shifts, mood
changes and wide-branching tunes, the musicians stick
closely together...” – Jon Ross, Downbeat Magazine

Available at : CDBaby, iTunes, Bandcamp, ChicagoJazz.com & everywhere www.chicagosessions.com

MARGARITA ICE POP
10.99% ALCOHOL BY VOLUME | 4.8% PURE ALCOHOL CONTENT
MACK
AVENUE
RECORDS
on the way in 2013…
Aaron Diehl
Kevin Eubanks
Christian McBride
Danilo Pérez
Cécile McLorin Salvant
Yellowjackets
Mack Avenue Superband
plus some we can’t even mention right now

for the vinyl lovers in the house:

180gram Limited Edition Double LPs:
New Gary Burton Quartet - Common Ground
Christian McBride Big Band - The Good Feeling
Christian McBride & Inside Straight - Kind of Brown
more vinyl next year, too

mackavenue.com
 The
Tall
Cool
One
Off the beaten path with Patricia Barber.
By John Frederick Moore
Patricia Barber tends to stand out. It’s hard not to notice a
stylish, nearly six-foot-tall woman striding purposefully into a
sleek coffee shop, as she does on a mild early-December after-
noon in Chicago’s trendy Andersonville neighborhood. Even if
you didn’t know that an international jazz star had just entered
the room, you’d take a good look at her.
Her music is equally arresting, even if it’s not easy to grasp at
first. Packed with witty, intellectual lyrics, startling harmonic
twists and vocals that range from a dusky whisper to a pierc-
ing scream, Barber’s music isn’t easily categorized. Her mix of
jazz, pop and art song results in something completely unique.
“She reminds me of some of those great performers, like a Judy
Garland, just somebody who’s so completely wrapped up in their
performance that it just lights up the rest of the room,” says pia-
nist Kenny Werner. “There’s a bit of intensity, there’s definitely
a serious sexuality, sometimes a pathos — all the elements that
make for a dramatic performance. But she expresses that drama
with poetry that makes it high art.”
24 february 2013 jazziz
Friendly, often funny, and, yes, a bit intense, Barber chooses
her words carefully in conversation. She’s equally exacting in
what she wants to express musically, which is why she replaced
her longtime quartet with a new lineup. Barber wanted to push
her music in a different direction. Werner, whom she considers a
mentor, gave her the push she needed. “I get a lot of my musi-
cians by recommendation from Kenny,” she says between sips
of espresso. “He was in Chicago and came to hear my band, and
he said, ‘It’s time to change. You’re too comfortable.’ I wanted
something quieter and musically more flexible. I got a band that
is much less predictable. It can go any which way at any point.”
Barber’s group now features bassist Larry Kohut, guitarist John
Kregor and drummer Jon Deitemyer — all Chicago-based musi-
cians. In addition to playing Monday nights at the Green Mill
Cocktail Lounge, Barber’s musical home since the mid-’90s, the
band appears on her latest record, the excellent Smash (Concord
Jazz), which was released in January.
“It’s interesting for me to work with someone like Patricia,
who has such a great voice as a singer,” Deitemyer says. “And
then immediately after you’re finished playing along with this
beautifully sung melody, you have Patricia the pianist who’s
part of the next experience. It’s almost like dealing with two
different people musically on the bandstand. I think that serves
the music in the sense that there’s always a certain amount of
spontaneity. Whereas as a vocalist she can be very introspective
and lyrical and very subtle, as a pianist she can be the opposite.”
Maintaining that level of spontaneity means keeping
discussions about music to a minimum. Deitemyer notes that
between sets, Barber mostly talks about other things, like
books and politics; the music takes care of itself. Though she
values spontaneity on the bandstand, offstage she’s a highly
disciplined, self-directed musician. She declared 2010 as “The
Year of the Piano,” and then dedicated herself throughout the
next 12 months to working on classical techniques (she ex-
tended those labors into 2011). You can hear the results in new
songs like “Romanesque” and “The Storyteller” and even on less
piano-driven pieces like the trippy “Code Cool.”
“I’ve always studied classical music, but of course playing
it you get a muscular memory of it,” Barber says. “It’s changed
my composing. In something like ‘Code Cool,’ when you listen
to the bridge, that’s really way out there. It goes through a lot of
different harmonic territory, and it goes through it sort of out of
rhythm. That’s also where I wanted to go with this new band.”
While Barber’s compositions are among the most unique
in jazz, it’s her lyrics that get the most attention — and for
good reason. Love and loss are the themes that appear most in
the Barber canon. But several of the songs on Smash have an
especially heightened sense of melancholy. Over a period of a
year and a half, Barber lost five friends and family members,
including her mother and her best friend. “It was just a tsu-
nami,” she says.
Barber works doggedly at her craft. She says it takes, on
average, about six weeks to finish a song. Syllable counts are
important, an influence from both poetry and leading American
songwriters. “The great songwriters, they’re like scientists,”
she says. “There are pop writers who are very, very good — Joni
Mitchell would be an example — who don’t count syllables. I
do that sometimes, too, just throw a narrative into it. But Cole
Porter, for instance, never took a chance with a syllable. I just
learned more about form that way. It brings out different ele-
ments, whether harmonic, rhythmic or lyric. I find that fighting
my way out of the bag has been good for me.”
That struggle with the nuts and bolts of songwriting is
evident in one of Barber’s most effective lyrical techniques
— sustaining a metaphor to unfold a story. On the new al-
bum, “Redshift” employs concepts of quantum physics and
astrophysics to limn the end of a relationship. (Barber says
she holed up for 10 days in the country, poring over science
textbooks, to get certain images exactly right.) On top of a
seductive bossa nova rhythm, Barber delivers clever references
to protons, curved trajectories and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty
Principle. For most of the song, the device puts the emotional
core of the narrative at a certain remove, but that only makes
the final line — “You are leaving me” — utterly devastating.
“I’m very aware of the way that you hear it the first time,” she
says. “And I’m very aware of the fact that it should hit you at
a certain point and have an effect. I should be able to predict
when people will laugh or when they will cry.”
She’s also attuned to what her fans enjoy, noting that
crowds typically respond best to her “angry songs.” “Devil’s
Food” is one such song, though with its danceable beat it
doesn’t sound particularly full of rage. Barber, who in 2011 mar-
ried her longtime partner Martha Feldman, a professor of music
history at the University of Chicago, says it was time for her to
“write a goddamn gay song.”
“This one is a song that I really wanted to shove in their face,”
she says, thrusting her hand out to underscore the point. “I was
mad about the gay issue at the time I wrote this song, particu-
larly this thing about marriage. The title, ‘Devil’s Food,’ gives
part of it away about how I feel about it. It’s funny, when you
look at people’s faces if they’ve never heard it, they’re not exactly
sure what’s going on until a little while into it.” By the time
Barber sings the lyric “Sweet on sweet/Meat on meat,” audiences
usually get the picture.
Although there are immediate pleasures to be found in her
music, Barber’s artistry also demands from her audience a
willingness to be surprised. It’s part of what make her fans so
devoted to her, but it’s also what’s kept her from being as widely
popular as, say, Diana Krall. Not that her records don’t do well
commercially. Modern Cool, from 1998, sold more than 120,000
copies — a strong figure for a jazz record — and Nightclub, a col-
lection of standards, did even better two years later. Still, she’s
not exactly a household name. Then again, this is an artist who
used the money from her 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship to make
Mythologies, a song cycle based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
“There’s edge to what she does, and that’s what makes her
material original,” Werner says. “And that’s what makes the
people who are aware of her so fiercely loyal.”
At 57, Barber certainly has no intentions of changing her
approach. But then, she never has. In the early ’90s, she turned
her back on PolyGram Records when executives there wanted
to dictate the material she would record. Instead, she signed
with the small Premonition label where, with complete artistic
control, she made some of her most beloved records, including
Modern Cool. She eventually moved to Blue Note for which she
recorded four albums, starting with 2002’s Verse.
“She has to be who she is, and any [record] company has
to understand who she is,” Werner says. “She’s not going
to convert herself to something else because of a concept a
company has of what they think they can sell. You can see it in
five minutes. She’s the kind of artist that if she couldn’t follow
her moment-to-moment inner urge, she would probably lose her
confidence completely.”
Which is why Barber herself was surprised when she signed
with Concord Records in 2012. After a shakeup at Blue Note
during which the label’s parent company was sold and label
jazziz february 2013 27

Monday Nights at the
Green Mill
As stirring as Patricia Barber’s records are, seeing her
live at Chicago’s Green Mill Cocktail Lounge — once a
favorite hangout of Al Capone — is the best way to get
the full Barber experience. Watching her at the piano is an
event in itself; she grunts, grimaces and contorts her body
as she plays. Sometimes she sings so quietly you have to
strain to hear her, other times her wail can pierce the walls.
And she makes surprising musical choices, from completely
reconfigured Monk tunes to classic pop songs.
“She brings something every Monday night that is unique,”
says Barber’s drummer Jon Deitemyer. “It’s a strong aura she
possesses. I think anyone who’s willing to do something that’s
sincere and personal and sounds honest, people are drawn to
that regardless of the style. And I feel like Patricia does that.”
That’s why people travel from all over the world to head
to the gritty Uptown neighborhood to watch her perform.
Admission is a mere $7, and you can stay for both sets if
room is available. Barber took up residency at Green Mill
in the mid-’90s. She attracts regulars who’ve made the bar
their Monday night home, as well.
“We don’t let anyone reserve seats,” says Green Mill
owner Dave Jemilo. “But there’s this one woman who comes
in and puts her coat on the chair right in the front by the
piano every week, and we let her. Then there are people who
might have heard about her in Europe and they find out
she’s playing at the Green Mill for seven bucks and they’re
freaking out about it. That’s kind of a cool thing because in
certain circles, she’s kind of big stuff, man.”
Before taking the stage, Barber heads behind the bar and
pours herself a glass of cognac from which she will periodi-
cally sip onstage. Such are the privileges of a performer who
has become synonymous with a particular place.
“The way we look at things is she’s part of the family,”
Jemilo says. “The Green Mill wouldn’t be the Green Mill
without her.” —JFM
28 february 2013 jazziz
president Bruce Lundvall — a close friend of Barber’s — vacated
the top spot after 25 years at the helm, Barber asked to be
released from her contract. While independent, she self-released
two volumes of Monday Night: Live at the Green Mill. She told
friends that she was in a semi-retirement phase. But Nick
Phillips, Concord’s vice president of A&R, talked her into signing
with the label.
“When I got the offer, I said no,” she recalls. “I said I’m going
to continue playing and singing and performing, but I’m going
to do it much less and at a much higher level. And then Nick
came out to see me at a gig in San Francisco. I just liked him so
much; he reminded me so much of Bruce Lundvall. It turns out
that Bruce was one of his mentors, and he always wanted to be a
Bruce Lundvall type.”
Despite her new corporate home, being an outsider suits
Barber. Somehow, she’s never been nominated for a Grammy,
though she has an idea why. “I heard from an insider once, a
long time ago, when Modern Cool hit 100,000 copies as soon as
it came out,” she says. “Apparently it went through the Grammy
committee, they put on ‘Touch of Trash’ [a dark, wicked tale
about superficial notions of female beauty — not exactly “My
Funny Valentine”] and somebody powerful within the commit-
tee said, ‘She will never be nominated for a Grammy. Over my
dead body!’ And to this day that has been true.
“But I think it’s worked for me at a certain point,” she adds. “I
would kind of hate to ruin that now. It’s made me kind of like a
cult figure because I obviously don’t have mainstream accep-
tance. But should I? I mean, just listen to mainstream music. As
long as we keep filling the halls, it seems to work.”
Barber, who suffered from severe stage fright early in her
career, has developed an unusually close rapport with her fans.
“I feel protected,” she says. “They are everywhere. There is no
place I can go where somebody isn’t there that I know. I was
playing in Fallon, Nevada, and I thought, ‘Nobody’s going to be
there that knows me.’ Sure enough, these two gay guys had come
up from San Francisco and stayed in my hotel just to make sure
that someone I knew was there. It’s so sweet.”
Barber feels a similar sense of comfort in Chicago. Most
musicians seeking a wider audience eventually decamp to New
York or Los Angeles. For several years, singer Kurt Elling played
Wednesday nights at the Green Mill. On any given week, you
could see two of jazz’s top vocalists perform at a neighborhood
bar for less than $10 a show. But Elling moved to New York a
few years ago. Meanwhile, Barber remains committed to stay-
ing in Chicago, not only because the city is so familiar to her
but also because of the sense of freedom it affords to an artist
set on going her own way.
“I see no reason to leave,” she says. “I’ve got everything I
want. A musician can actually afford to buy a house in the city.
That’s very different than New York, the way they scrape and
scrimp. It’s not for me. And if you try and make it big in New
York, the real estate is worth so much money that club owners
don’t want you if you can’t fill it. I don’t know how you can
possibly experiment. Here, there’s not that much pressure.
That’s an enormous thing.” s
 Lest We
Forget
Yes, Virginia, there is a jazz Grammy.
By Neil Tesser
Around this time of year, with the Grammy Awards right
around the corner, the old reliable complaints begin to echo
within the jazz community. In answer to the most common of
them: No, the television broadcast won’t feature any jazz. This
almost never happens, and on the few occasions when it has, the
complaints simply shift to what a bad job the producers did of
presenting jazz on TV.
And, no, they won’t announce the names of any jazz musicians
on the show, unless one of them happens to score in a category
other than jazz. Oddly enough, this has happened twice in the last
six years, with Herbie Hancock winning for overall “Album of the
Year” (the Grammy’s top prize) for 2007, and Esperanza Spalding
becoming the first jazz player ever to win “Best New Artist” three
years later — a one-two combo unlikely to repeat itself anytime
soon. But on February 10, when Chick Corea gets his 19th Grammy
— either for “Best Improvised Solo” or “Best Jazz Instrumental
Album” — you won’t hear about it on the air.
30 february 2013 jazziz
Actually, very few of the winners in any category will be
announced on television. Long ago the Grammy telecast morphed
into a top-rated variety show, focused on rock, pop, country and
hip-hop, and interrupted by only a few of the winners in those
categories receiving their statuettes in front of the cameras.
By then, the vast majority of nominated artists in the other
categories, including jazz, will have known already whether they
won or lost. (About 85 per cent of the awards are announced in a
pre-telecast event streamed live on the Web earlier on show day.)
And from the dozen or so major musical productions that make
up the broadcast — many of which will provide the one-of-a-kind
collaborations known in the industry as “Grammy moments” —
viewers could easily surmise that the American music scene
offers little besides Adele, Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Rihanna,
Mumford & Sons, Carly Rae Jepsen and The Boss.
But, yes, there is indeed a jazz Grammy — five of them, in
fact: Jazz Vocal, Jazz Instrumental, Large Ensemble, Latin Jazz
and Best Improvised Jazz Time for the disclaimer:
Solo. How much the jazz I’ve been a voting member
Grammys really matter of NARAS — the National
— and to whom, and why — Academy of Recording Arts
are questions without easily and Sciences (a.k.a., the
quantifiable answers. Recording Academy), which
To someone like vibra- presents the Grammys — for
phone legend Gary Burton, over 30 years. I fervently sup-
who’s won six of them (one port most of the Academy’s
or more in each decade since mission, much of which
the 1970s), they represent involves educational and
recognition from his peers. philanthropic initiatives that
“I know these awards, unlike most people never hear of, but
other accolades, come from which are made possible by
the musician community,” profits from the TV show.
he says. “It feels like a great But I’ll still readily admit
honor each time.” Burton’s that all awards for the arts
first Grammy came in 1972, engender suspicion, and
when he was 29 years old, and rightly so. Most musicians,
“I used to think that after a and plenty of aesthetes,
time or two it wouldn’t mean recoil at the idea of applying
that much. Yet I still get all judgments to something as
emotional about receiving personal as artistic expres-
this unique honor.” sion — hence the age-old
Burton is a jazz lifer who, having burst onto the scene in the
early 1960s, boasts a 50-year career in the public eye. His two
“I know these divide between musicians
and critics — and even more
nominations this year bring his career total to 21. Such numbers awards, unlike at pitting art works against
dwarf those of the far younger pianist and composer Vijay Iyer,
who regularly appears at the top of today’s polls and on the covers
other accolades, one another, asking how such
individuated creations can
of jazz magazines. Accordingly, he has a different perspective —
but a similar response. He hasn’t won even one Grammy, but his
come from possibly brook head-to-head
comparisons. (And yet we
nomination in 2010 made a strong impact. the musician love a good horse race. Plenty
“At that point, though I’d had a lot of praise from critics, I
don’t think I was widely considered part of the mainstream —
community. It of folks who profess not to
care, who decry the whole
whatever that means, and for whatever reason,” Iyer says. “But
suddenly there we were, nominated in the same category as the
feels like a great process, still make a point of
checking the results.)
great James Moody [who eventually won]. The news caught the honor each time.” The Grammys are
attention of the different communities to which I belong. The
global South Asian diaspora was pretty excited; my cousins in  —Gary Burton certainly not immune to
these criticisms, or from
India, for example, were in gleeful disbelief, and I got written concerns about the whole
up in a few national newspapers over there. Also, the creative thing turning into a popular-
music community — it’s a vague term, but we know who we are ity contest. The Recording
— felt a certain validation. The feeling wasn’t just congratula- Academy tries to mitigate
tory, but celebratory — not just “Vijay Iyer got nominated!” but this by restricting the voting
more like “One of us got nominated!” to music professionals who
To followers of Iyer’s complex and cerebral music, as well as have qualified under the
to critics who place him on the leading edge of modern jazz, this Academy’s guidelines. In my
sense of validation might seem surprising. But I’ve heard like- case, my work as a liner-note writer qualifies me for membership,
minded reactions from equally unexpected nominees, including, in on the premise that liner notes (and even cover art), like engineer-
recent years, composers John Hollenbeck and Darcy James Argue, ing and mastering, contribute to the final product.
saxist Donny McCaslin, vocalists Carla Cook and Denise Donatelli, This differs markedly from all the other music-awards pro-
and venerable French pianist Martial Solal — none of whom could grams, which either rely on the public or use other metrics, such as
be accused of catering to populist taste. Their reactions speak to sales figures, to determine the nominees and winners. But music
the unique attention the Grammys still command in a music world professionals still need to have heard a record to properly consider
beset by awards presentations of every stripe. it, and they’re more likely to hear a record that’s making the rounds.

32 february 2013 jazziz

So popularity, or at least name recognition, still enters the equa-
tion to some extent. And this in turn leads to a related Grammy
complaint — that the same big-name artists win all the time. Does
Chick Corea need another Grammy? Does Pat Metheny (with 16 jazz
awards) or Wayne Shorter or Wynton Marsalis (each with 9)? Did
Michael Brecker, who had 11 Grammys at the time of his death (and
who won another four posthumously)?
As it turns out, though, a glance at the jazz winners — and
especially the nominees — from the last decade proves that this
criticism doesn’t quite hold up, as the list includes a number of far
lesser-known artists. Much of this has to do with the Nominations
Review Committee put into place by the Recording Academy about
20 years ago. The Grammy process involves two steps. In the first,
balloting determines the nominees; akin to the primary system for
presidential elections, it allows each voter to select up to five artists
or albums, per category, for nomination. In the second step, the top
vote-getters become the official nominees — no small accomplish-
ment in itself, considering the hundreds of entries in each category
— and appear on the final ballot.
By the early ’90s, Academy officials saw that many established
artists — particularly in jazz, but also in other categories — were
receiving nominations year after year, even when knowledgeable
experts in the field agreed that said artists were merely resting
on past laurels and that younger artists had clearly eclipsed them.
Surmising that the membership might be unfamiliar with the
vast majority of albums released in any category, leading voters to
simply nominate the most familiar names, the Academy created
oversight committees to intercede between the two stages of
balloting in several genres. Instead of simply choosing the top 5
vote-getters in each category as the nominees, these committees
receive an alphabetical list of, typically, the top 15. By secret ballot,
they then narrow the lists to the actual nominees. (The committee
membership rotates but remains secret, to discourage lobbying or
finger-pointing. However, it’s known to include primarily working
musicians, plus a handful of producers, scholars and music critics.)
The impact of these committees has gradually become appar-
ent, as complaints about the quality of the jazz nominations have
almost entirely disappeared. Fans and critics may argue about
what didn’t make the list, but it’s rare to hear arguments that
one of the nominees simply doesn’t belong. The last time such
complaints did focus on a jazz musician, she wasn’t even nomi-
nated for a jazz Grammy. When Esperanza Spalding surprised the
music world by winning the “Best New Artist” award two years
ago, beating out the prohibitive favorite Justin Bieber, the Bieb’s
furiously disappointed fans laid siege to Spalding’s Wikipedia page,
relentlessly adding scurrilous (and fictional) personal details to her
biography and hurling plain old insults.
As illustrated by the comments from Gary Burton, Vijay Iyer
and others, the Grammys — even the jazz Grammys — still
mean something. In the early days of the Recording Academy,
though, the distinction between jazz and other Grammys barely
existed. At the time, winning a jazz Grammy represented some-
thing of an afterthought because most of the general categories,
34 february 2013 jazziz
mirroring the predominant postwar music trends, already boasted
nominees and winners from the jazz world. (Back then, the awards
were announced at events in New York and Chicago and Los
Angeles, and a filmed compilation of acceptance speeches, cobbled
together after the fact, would run on TV several months later.)
The founders of NARAS came primarily from the classical
sphere, as well as from jazz and pop, the latter of which depended
on the production talents of an entire generation of musicians
raised during the Swing Era and who were therefore inculcated
with jazz values. Although rock ’n’ roll had made major inroads
onto the cultural landscape by 1958, when the awards debuted,
American music still stood largely at the intersection of jazz and
pop, as it had since the Swing Era. That helps explain why, when
the first awards were announced, Ella Fitzgerald took home the
trophy for “Best Vocal Performance,” period, with no appellation of
“jazz” or “pop” added to the title.
Ella won for The Irving Berlin Song Book — the first of the 13
Grammys she won between 1958 and 1990. A separate category
also existed for “Best Jazz Performance, Individual” and Ella won
that, too, for The Duke Ellington Song Book, making her one of
several multiple winners that first year. Henry Mancini’s heav-
ily jazz-flavored The Music From Peter Gunn (a popular noir TV
drama) won a Grammy for “Album of the Year” and another for
“Best Arrangement.” The eponymously titled Basie set garnered
two awards for the Count Basie Orchestra, for “Best Performance
by a Dance Band” and “Best Jazz Performance, Group.” All told, of
the 20 Grammys awarded to non-classical performers in 1958, 25
per cent of them went to bona fide jazz artists (and two more to
Mancini’s jazzy score).
Ella, Duke and Basie continued to fill their trophy cases with
Grammys during the next several years. By 1962, Stan Getz, Vince
Guaraldi and Stan Kenton had gotten into the mix; the next year,
pianist Bill Evans won the first of his eventual seven Grammys.
Not until the mid ’60s did Barbra Streisand, then the Beatles, then
the Fifth Dimension and Glen Campbell, begin winning the top
overall awards. Only then did jazz singers fail to compete with
the pop singers, and the jazz instrumentalists retreat to their own
domain. Grammy categories proliferated throughout the ’80s and
’90s, as awards were added for rock, R&B, gospel and rap. The jazz
field grew to include seven categories in the late ’80s (separate
awards for male and female vocalists, and one for “Best Jazz Fusion
Performance”) before settling on the five that now exist.
Do they matter? There’s little evidence that a Grammy win
significantly affects sales for jazz winners. On the other hand,
the term “Grammy-award winner” serves as a lifelong badge of
achievement, bandied by artists and their management as a major
achievement. Perhaps the most clear-eyed assessment comes from
one of the youngest jazz Grammy recipients, Esperanza Spalding,
who had just turned 26 when she joined the ranks of Miles Davis,
Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson and her occasional boss Joe Lovano.
“The process of a jazz musician evolves over a lifetime,” she
said then. “You don’t judge your progress based on your fame —
or your notoriety. So when I think of Basie and Ella and the rest,
I think of the music they made and the work they did. And receiv-
ing the Grammy is a small slice of that.” s
 ®

VOTED
WORLD’S
BEST
TEQUILA

CHOOSE PLEASURE ™

@TequilaAvion #choosepleasure
facebook.com/TequilaAvion

CHOOSE PLEASURE RESPONSIBLY.

TEQUILA AVIÓN® 40% ALC./VOL. ©2012 IMPORTED BY TEQUILA AVIÓN, NEW YORK, NY
 ‘tis the season
chris stanDrinG & Jeff kashiWa
kathrin shorr let it riDe
senD me some snoW Rippingtons saxophonist Jeff Kashiwa
returns to Native Language for his
Guitarist Chris Standring & vocalist eighth solo project overall. Let It Ride
Kathrin Shorr celebrate the most features David Benoit, Rippingtons
wonderful time of the year with guitarist Russ Freeman, Spyro Gyra
a collection of all new original keyboardist Tom Schuman, and
holiday material. guitarist Chuck Loeb.

marc antoine foUr80east

GUitar Destiny off DUty
Guitarist Marc Antoine returns to The brand new release from Toronto-
true form with Guitar Destiny, an based Acid Jazz group Four80East.
instrumental journey illustrating Featuring ten all new tracks, including
Marc’s pursuit of his long and the hit single “Sandbar,” Off Duty
illustrious career. The album’s brings Four80East back to true groove
ten all-new tracks have a strong form!
connection to Marc.

Brittni Paiva tizer

tell U What DoWnBeat
At just 23 years of age, Brittni Downbeat is the highly anticipated
Paiva (pie-VAH) is the preeminent new album from acclaimed jazz
female ukelele player from Hawaii. fusion group, Tizer (2011 Jazz Group
Her latest album, Tell U What, of the Year). This collection of 12
showcases her true talent along new original tracks encompasses a
side Tom Scott, Arturo Sandoval, wide-array of musical flavors to make
and Michael McDonald. for a memorable listening experience
for any fan of creative, jazz-inspired
music.

triosence With mark aDams

sara Gazarek love & Dance
Where time stanDs still The new CD Love and Dance pushes
the boundaries of contemporary jazz
Where Time Stands Still is a with songs like “Silk Dress,” “Love
collaboration between the German And Goodbye” which appeals to the
instrumental group Triosence and grown and sexy side of the smooth
American Jazz vocalist Sara Gazarek. jazz listener, the urban seasoned
The album is a collection of 12 vocal songs “Never A Fool,” featuring
original songs that captures the spirit Cassandra Thompson and “Nica’s
of the band’s melodic song styling Dream” with Jonathan Quash and a
and Gazarek’s enchanting vocals. funky take on John Coltrane’s “Giant
Steps.”

Free 13-track CD sampler with any purchase exclusively at PacSounds.com

Offer valid through January 31, 2013, while supplies last. Limit one per customer.
 JAZZ IS OUT
OF THIS WORLD
GET IT?
nOW
NOW YOU gET…
GET…
• 2 CDs in EVERY Print issue
Issue packed with
wonderful music from bright young stars
like Hiromi to legends like Sonny Rollins
and Chick Corea (pictured).
• More pages than ever in the quarterly
print magazine, filled with beautiful art,
photography and colorfully crafted stories
about the music.

PLUS…
• Every MOnTH
MONTH you get a nEW
NEW interactive
magazine — our Digital Editions — that let
you flip through pages, listen to hundreds of
songs and watch videos.
• Every DAY you can check out jAzziz
JAZZIZ Daily
for updates and news about the jazz world.

CALL NOW 1-800-742-3252 or

EMAIL service@jazziz.com
GET JAZZIZ Collections Vol 2 and 3
With a 2-year subscription or renewal
Van Morrison
 Auditions
Van Morrison
Born to Sing: No Plan B
(Exile/Blue Note)
Van Morrison’s second album for Blue Note
is a mixed bag, with
several songs that
hit the mark and a
few that sound like
any number of rants
he’s recorded before.
The disc opens with
perhaps its two best
songs. On “Open the Door (To Your Heart),”
a song that manages to be simultaneously
breezy and bitter, Morrison plays both the
hard-nosed cynic and the romantic seeker.
“Goin’ Down to Monte Carlo” is a heartfelt,
weary expression of exasperation with
the world’s errors. From that point on, the
album is an up-and-down affair.
“Educating Archie” is a scolding Baby
Boomer lecture that soon wears thin.
“Mystic of the East” and “Pagan Heart”
tread paths Morrison has traveled many
times before without revealing anything
new. But there are other moments when
he convincingly passes himself off as one
of the world’s great soul singers, like on
“End of the Rainbow,” another hard-bitten
rejection of greed and the struggle to
attain worldly success, or the more af-
firmative “Close Enough for Jazz.” He even
finds a measure of peace and tranquility
on “Retreat and View.”
The music itself — Morrison’s unique
synthesis of soul, jazz, rock, Celtic music
and the blues — long ago slipped out of
any neat category. His smoothly efficient
band, with a jazzy horn section featur-
ing standout soloist Alistair White on
trombone, provides contrast to the lyric’s
turmoil and often reflects the peaceful-
ness that Morrison has seemingly been
searching for throughout his career.
At 67, the Irish singer/songwriter still
thunders bitterly against humanity’s
shortcomings, still longs for spiritual
transcendence and still finds healing and
solace in music. —Ed Hazell
Chris Potter
The Sirens
(ECM)
It’s hard to think of a more confident
saxophonist around
today than Chris
Potter. Whether on
tenor or soprano,
the command he
has over tone and
rhythm, the way he
gracefully moves
between sharp bursts of sound and more
flowing phrases, and his way of ventur-
ing outside only to find his way back in,
all point to a musician at the peak of his
powers. Potter’s latest disc is inspired by
his reading of Homer’s The Odyssey, and
it reveals him to be at his most mature in
every aspect.
Along with his towering abilities as
a musician, Potter is just as advanced
as a composer, mixing abstraction with
compelling melodies and rhythms.
“Stranger at the Gate,” for example, slides
easily from a complex opening statement
to a lengthy groove-heavy passage; it’s
a strategy wisely used throughout the
album to relieve the tension from some of
the knottier passages. The meditative title
track is a dark chamber piece, highlighted
by Potter’s sustained notes on bass clarinet
and an arco bass solo by Larry Grenadier.
Subtle textural elements, courtesy
of David Virelles on prepared piano
and celeste, add an extra layer of in-
trigue to such pieces as “Nausikaa” and
“Wayfinder.” Only “Kalypso” comes off as
a bit stiff at first, though even that piece,
once freed of its overtly mathemati-
cal main theme, expands into an airy,
free-flowing trio set piece for Potter and
company. Speaking of which, Potter gives
plenty of space to his killer supporting
cast. Midway through “Wayfinder,”
pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Eric
Harland lock into a duet so awe-inspiring
— Taborn’s intricate, dissonant vamps
dance on top of Harland’s snare pops —
that you hope the two of them release a
duo record of their own.
Twenty years after his debut as a leader,
Potter is still finding new ways to express his
formidable gifts. —John Frederick Moore
Florencia Gonzalez Big Band
Woman Dreaming of Escape
(self-released)
A native of Montevideo, the cultured capi-
tal city of the small
South American
country of Uruguay,
Florencia Gonzalez
left her homeland
as an accomplished
young woodwind
artist to conquer
demanding academic programs at both
Berklee and New England Conservatory.
On Woman Dreaming of Escape, her debut
recording, she sets her saxes aside to
focus on the roles of composer, arranger
and conductor of her 20-piece ensemble.
Drawing inspiration from a universe of
diverse sources — from Duke Ellington
to tango and the rustic, little explored
Afro-Uruguayan candombe — Gonzalez
has crafted a program of long-form works
that are packed generously with arranging
delights and happy surprises.
With the exception of the opening
track, “Hurry,” by well-known Uruguayan
jazz pianist Hugo Fattoruso, which boasts
the rhythmic urgency of a jazz samba in
6/8, all of the tracks were composed by
Gonzalez. The title tune, which takes its
name from the famous painting by Joan
Miró, is a complex orchestral creation
jazziz february 2013 39
with the pulse of an avant-garde tango.
In “Chacarera para Greg,” one can hear
the cadence and festive spirit of a coun-
tryside carnival transformed into a jazz
orchestra opus. “Candombe estirado,” a
folk style sculpted into a classical music-
oriented expression, is dark, mysterious
and probing. The makeup of Gonzalez’s
18-piece orchestra — which includes two
flutists and other reed players who double
on flute, clarinet and bass clarinet — help
her achieve, at times, the soothing effect
of a classical woodwind quintet. The
occasional paring down of the ensemble to
a small handful of instruments, such as on
the title tune, when an alto sax and bass
clarinet provide a brief, winsome inter-
lude, helps create interest and orchestral
tension. Radically alternating tempos
provoke dramatic moments.
Could Woman Dreaming of Escape have
been a little smoother, a little tighter?
Here and there, yes, but most listeners
will likely find that the CD’s few rough
edges enhance, rather than detract from,
the enchanting quality and freshness of
Gonzalez’s inventions. —Mark Holston
40 february 2013 jazziz
Ran Blake and Sara Serpa
Aurora
(Clean Feed)
On paper, Aurora seems predictable. Mostly
it’s a collection of
piano-vocal duets
featuring mate-
rial associated with
familiar figures such
as Sarah Vaughan,
Abbey Lincoln and
Billie Holiday. But pi-
anist Ran Blake and singer Sara Serpa aren’t
interested in producing interchangeably
pretty renderings of classic ditties. Instead,
they take a bracingly modernist approach,
daring to re-imagine the tunes in ways that
may strike some listeners as abstruse. For
those who prefer the unconventional to the
commonplace, however, the album will feel
wonderfully adventurous.
Although a number of the tunes
here are culled from the Great American
Songbook, few are on dog-eared pages.
“Strange Fruit,” Holiday’s epochal deni-
gration of racism, is arguably the most
familiar, yet Serpa refuses to treat it as a
museum piece. Rather, she strips the song
to its bones, alternately caressing and
wailing its words a cappella. Along the
way, she deploys her light, reedy voice with
a striking lack of self-consciousness, even
nudging toward atonality at times. It’s a
remarkable performance, and a brave one.
Serpa’s boldness is more than matched by
Blake’s. On “Saturday” and “When Autumn
Sings,” popularized by Vaughan and Lincoln,
respectively, he breaks the tunes into pieces
and reassembles them by his own design
— one whose many open spaces make his
rhythmically eccentric choices feel that much
more surprising. The approach works just as
well on “Dr. Mabuse,” featuring a melody from
a Fritz Lang film, and “Moonride,” an oddball
goof from the Chris Connor canon that Serpa
recites with charmingly off-kilter wit.
The recording concludes with a live
rendering of the chestnut “Last Night When
We Were Young” that spawns more than
90 seconds’ worth of applause. Letting
the appreciation run on so long may seem
indulgent, but it’s also appropriate. Aurora is
a highly unusual effort, and one well worth
cheering. —Michael Roberts
 Hello Browser!

COMPACT

DATA STORAGE
Interactive

Pianist and composer David Benoit has JAZZIZ OnDisc SUMMER 2012
been communicat-
ing with audi-
ences for decades.
So perhaps it’s
unsurprising that
he’s titled his latest SUMMER 2012
Summer Variations

release Conversation
Disc 1 PIANO VARIATIONS
(Heads Up). In fact,
he views the recording as a way of catching David Benoit • Anne Sajdera • Alon Yavnai • Eric Reed
Steve Kuhn Trio • Mike Levine • Ahmad Jamal • Lynne Arriale

up with fans. “This really represents where

OM
EX
Kevin Toney 3 • Chick Corea • Michel Camilo

Z .C
CL
Charlie Haden/Hank Jones • Alfredo Rodríguez

US

ZI
AZ
Chick Corea/Eddie Gomez/Paul Motian

IV
E

.J
D
Taurey Butler • Kenny Werner

W
C
AV W
AI .W

I am right now as a pianist, as a musician,

LA ED
BL RV
EO SE
NL
YF RE
R OM HTS
JAZZIZ L R IG
. & © 20 12 . A L

as a composer,” he says. “It’s a very good

OnDisc
On
snapshot for people who have been follow-
ing me for a while.” Of course, Benoit also
CMYK with full white flood
converses eloquently with the musicians on
the session, including guitarist Jeff Golub,
Anne Sajdera flutist Tim Weisberg and even Benoit’s
11-year-old daughter June, who plays violin SELECTION #:
LABEL:
DATE:
FILE NAME:
TECH:
TOTAL
NUMBER OF

on a version of the theme music to the Diary

Summer Variations
ARTIST: PO #:
COLORS
TITLE: JOB #:
DATE REVISED: SEPARATOR: AMT

of a Wimpy Kid movies. On the opening CYAN MAGENTA YELLOW BLACK

CREATOR:

PMS #1 PMS #2 PMS #3 PMS #4 PMS #5

track, “Napa Crossroads Overture,” our

Disc 1 Piano Variations
TEMPLATE REV.

www.jazziz.com
06/20/2001

For more information regarding this and more than 100 other JAZZIZ discs available for purchase, go to
2 5 25 50 75 98 100 List PMS colors in the order they will be printed on the disc.

selection, the song’s co-author, guitarist

David Pack (of the band Ambrosia), joins 01 David Benoit “Napa Crossroads Overture”
Conversation (Heads Up)
The coastal geography of San Diego opening track, “Rashid,” included here, is standards. “Without other musicians as the pianist and orchestral players on a
02 Anne Sajdera “Rashid” Azul (Bijuri)
inspired the a prime example of Sajdera’s mastery of part of the dialogue,” she writes in the sunny jaunt through wine country.
Brazilian-leaning the Brazilian idiom, her trio’s dynamism liner notes, “it became essential to make 03 Alon Yavnai & The NDR Bigband
“Shir Ahava” Shir Ahava (AYM)
music of Anne supplemented by Moreira’s expert touch. the range of my playing wider and think bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Paul While he’s performed the music with
Eric Reed “Rhythm-a-Ning”
Sajdera. Like ‘orchestrally.’” Done, and done. Dig her Motian. The results, culled from record- orchestras all over
04
The Baddest Monk (Savant)
her Carioca Most listeners have come to know pianist sprightly, nuanced keyboard attack on ings of the trio during a two-week stay the world, Corea
05 Steve Kuhn Trio “Promises Kept”
counterparts, the Lynne Arriale as Monk’s “Evidence” or her funky stop-time at New York City’s Blue Note in 2010, are recorded it just last Wisteria (ECM)

Bay Area pianist a dynamic and rhythms on her own “Yada, Yada, Yada.” predictably brilliant. Spanning two discs, summer for the 06 Mike Levine “Gettin’ Ready”
and composer emotive ensemble But establishing an emotional connec- the program contains tunes written by or double-disc release Thinking of You (self-released)

infuses her playing and writing with sea leader. For 15 years tion with listeners has always been of associated with Evans, some dating back to The Continents 07 Ahmad Jamal “Autumn Rain”
Blue Moon (Jazzbook)
and sun and pulses that make listen- she worked solely primary importance to Arriale, and she the late-’50s-early-’60s sessions on which (Deutsche
ers want to get up and samba. Those with her trio, with does so even more directly here. Take a Motian played. An 11-year veteran of Evans’ Grammophon). 08 Lynne Arriale “Arise” Solo (Motéma)

influences can certainly be detected on
her latest trio recording, Azul (Bijuri).
Sajdera penned tunes for the album
while she was recuperating from a back
injury. Taking advantage of the time to
whom she also
recorded nine
CDs. More recently she’s been performing
and recording in combos with esteemed
players such as Randy Brecker, George
listen to “Arise,” our selection, and see if trio, Gomez gets the final word with his
you don’t agree. sprightly, spiky composition “Puccini’s
Walk,” which concludes the set and which
Modern-jazz giant Chick Corea has we’ve included here. An homage to the
never made a bassist’s beloved pooch — as opposed to the
In addition to members of The Harlem 09 Kevin Toney 3 “New American Suite”
New American Suite (self-released)
Quartet, Imani Winds and other top
Chick Corea “Solo Continuum 42”
orchestral players, Corea makes use of
10
The Continents (Deutsche Grammophon)
his quintet — saxophonist Tim Garland,
11 Michel Camilo “The Sidewinder”
trombonist Steve Davis, bassist Hans Mano a Mano (EmArcy)

woodshed, she says she went back and
studied the recordings of Herbie Hancock,
Keith Jarrett, Monty Alexander and
Egberto Gismonti. She then assembled her
seasoned trio mates, bassist Gary Brown
and drummer Paul van Wageningen,
in the studio, and invited guest percus-
sionists Airto Moreira and Michael
Spiro and drummer Phil Thompson. The
Mraz, Bill McHenry and Omer Avital.
Now, finally, Arriale’s released Solo
(Motéma), an entire album of nothing but
piano. Captured “live” at the Hillsborough
Community College Ybor Performing
Arts Center, the Florida-based pianist and
educator delivers a stark and gorgeous
set of original songs, interspersed with
interpretations of Monk tunes and
secret of his Italian composer — it’s a perfect example Glawischnig and drummer Marcus 12 Charlie Haden/Hank Jones
adoration of Bill of the trio’s remarkable synergy. Further Gilmore — bridging the worlds of jazz and “Come Sunday” Come Sunday (EmArcy)
Evans. On Further Explorations also serves as a tribute to the classical music. Disc One encompasses 13 Chick Corea/Eddie Gomez/Paul Motian
“Puccini’s Walk” Further Explorations (Concord Jazz)
Explorations ever-dynamic Motian, who passed away in The Continents suite, while Disc Two spot-
(Concord Jazz), November 2011. lights four tracks by the quintet and 11 14 Taurey Butler “Grandpa Ted’s Tune”
Taurey Butler (Justin Time)
Corea once again (mostly) brief and thoroughly absorbing
15 Alfredo Rodríguez “Transculturation”
bows to the In honor of Mozart’s 250th birthday, Chick solo pieces by Corea. One of them, “Solo Sounds of Space (Mack Avenue)
mega-influential pianist, this time in the Corea penned a six-part piano concerto Continuum 42,” is included here. At age 71,
16 Kenny Werner “Balloons”
company of two of Evans’ confederates: and titled each movement for a continent. Corea’s as creatively vital as ever. Me, Myself & I (Justin Time)

JAZZIZ ON DISC is a 2-CD music compilation from the artists of yesterday, today and tomorrow, bundled in the subscriber
copies of the print editions of JAZZIZ Magazine. This issue’s theme is “Piano Variations and Summer Variations.” Disc One
If you purchased this magazine without the CDs or would like additional copies, e-mail service@jazziz.com
contains a selection of songs by prominent pianists. Disc Two is a collection of music drawn from recently released albums. or log onto www.jazziz.com.

26 summer 2012 jazziz David Benoit by Lori Stoll jazziz summer 2012 27

Flip and Zoom Pages … Touch Album Covers … Play Music … Watch Videos

PRINT EMAIL LISTEN SHARE WATCH DOWNLOAD

Launch on your device from www.jazziz.com

FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY No App Required
 Advertisement

independentculture Passion-driven independent record companies have produced some of the most
important music in jazz. The tradition continues.

RiTA MARiE FOUR80EAST SOUTH FLORiDA jAzz ORCHESTA

So Many Stars (Rita Marie Music) Off Duty (Boomtang Records) Trumpet Sound (self-released)
Picture yourself in an intimate New York salon Take a walk on the wilder side of contemporary The South Florida Jazz Orchestra, directed by
while listening to jazz with Off Duty by nu bassist and composer
Rita Marie’s debut jazz outfit Four80East. Chuck Bergeron, is
release, So Many It’s another funk and a modern big band
Stars . With her lush groove filled collection comprised of the
and passionate that includes the radio best jazz and studio
voice she skillfully hit “Sandbar” and the musicians in the
delivers the intricate hauntingly beautiful greater Miami area.
melodies found on “Nothing Is Written.” Their latest release,
this unique collection Always melodic. Trumpet Summit,
of standard gems. Always happening. features heavyweight
Tasteful accompaniment is delivered by Rick And now available directly from the source at trumpeters Greg Gisbert, Jason Carder and Alex
Doll on bass, Giuseppe Pucci on drums, and www.four80east.com. Norris, plus special guests Wayne Bergeron
Jeff Padowitz on piano. Get that massage you and Grammy Award-winner Brian Lynch, in a
need through your ears with this delightful jazz DEBORAH PEARL collection of original compositions and exciting
journey. www.ritamariemusic.com Souvenir of You (Evening Star) new arrangements of jazz classics.
Deborah Pearl’s “meltingly beautiful voice”
SKiP BAUCHMAn AnD THE B&B breathes new life into CORinA BARTRA
jAzz COMPAnY Benny Carter’s genius Cielo Sandunguero (Blue Sprial Music)
Universal Vice (jazz Hat Records) instrumentals in this An innovator in fusing together Peruvian
Skip Bauchman and The B&B Jazz Company moving tribute inspired music with jazz, Cielo
epitomize the true by her friendship with Sandunguero is a
adventurous spirit the jazz master. Critics change of pace for
that is jazz. They rave, “Her words are Corina Bartra, for the
tear through the perfect.” “Soulful in singer is joined by a
jazz landscape with all the right places small big band that
captivating melodies and a faultless match includes six horns. She
and compelling for Carter’s stellar compositions.” Scatting to blends in well during
arrangements. Benny’s solos on two cuts, Phil Woods calls it her wordless pas-
Combining jazz “a magnificent collaboration.” Singers should sages with the horns,
elements with stellar flock to titles like “People Time,” “Doozy” and introduces six of her originals, and performs an
performances, they have created what has been “Souvenir.” www.deborahpearl.com offbeat version of “Night And Day.” The music is
called one of the best independent jazz projects haunting, swinging in its own way, and Ms. Bartra
of 2012, from the languid chill of “Paradise was EMY TSEng gives her sidemen a generous amount of concise
Cool” to the cinematic climax of “Paulo and Aziz,” Sonho (Mei Music) solos. This is one of her better recordings.
you will experience jazz. Singer Emy Tseng’s recording debut “marks Available from www.bluespiralmusic.com
her as one to watch
KAiT DUnTOn in the Brazilian jazz CARLA MARCiAnO
Mountain Suite (Read & imagined Music) category.” —Dan Stream of Consciousness (Alfa Music)
Los Angeles pianist/composer Kait Dunton’s Bilawsky, All About She is a marvelous saxophonist and improviser,
second album, with Jazz. Sonho is a consistently demon-
Bob Mintzer and Peter collection of songs strating impressive
Erskine, is a breath by Brazil’s most control of her instru-
of fresh air. Mountain sophisticated ments and her material.
Suite is an album- composers (Jobim, “She takes her liberal
length journey meant Toninho Horta, Chico breaks with a powerful
to be heard as a single Pinheiro) and eclectic arrangements of standards force, absorbing all the
narrative, though including a haunting version of “California energy from the room
Dunton’s genre- Dreamin’.” Tseng “has honed a beguiling sound and channelling it into
defying, expansive steeped in jazz and the sensuous rhythms and an open space as would
compositions for trio and quintet can certainly melodies of Brazil.” —Andrew Gilbert, Sonho the eruption of a volcano. At other times, the
stand alone, and merit careful listening. “A Liner Notes. www.emytseng.com mood shifts toward sensitive ballads.” —David
stunning showcase of a jazz newcomer holding Franklin. “One of today’s strongest female
her own with legends.” —The Examiner. saxophonists.” —Jim Santella. “One of the more
exciting albums of the year.” —Mark F. Turner.
www.carlamarciano.it

Click on the album covers to hear featured tracks.


Marc Johnson and Eliane Elias
Swept Away
(ECM)
Many listeners will be so captivated by
the serene mood of
the title track of this
release, headlined
by double bassist
Marc Johnson and
his better-known
pianist wife Eliane
Elias, that they’ll be
tempted to linger for a few repeat perfor-
mances before moving on to sample the
session’s 10 other works. With its slightly
melancholy air and gentle interplay
between the two soloists, “Swept Away,”
composed by the pianist, is truly spell-
binding. Drummer Joey Baron’s unobtru-
sive brush work and occasional cymbal
accents cement the spell. The performance
is magical and hauntingly memorable.
Fortunately, there are equally alluring
moments to come.
Guest tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano
steps in for one of five appearances on
another Elias piece, “It’s Time. His breathy
tone and gingerly, tiptoeing-on-eggshells
style of playing is perfect for the tune’s
reflective nature, and it’s here that Elias’
trademark blues-inflected chording comes
to the fore. Another song by the Brazilian
pianist, “One Thousand and One Nights,”
opens the door for real workouts by drum-
mer Baron and bassist Johnson as they
dig in to propel this rollicking, up-tempo
blues and boogie-rooted piece. “When The
Sun Comes Up,” by Johnson, is so literal
in the visual imagery it captures that one
can see a new day unfold as the bassist’s
sustained low notes melt away the early
morning mist and Lovano’s rustic mus-
ings suggest birds in flight.
Another highlight, Johnson’s
“Midnight Blue,” finds the quartet —
featuring a feisty Lovano and Baron
unleashed — sauntering through an
end-of-the-set-style blues ballad. On
the relaxed tempo of Elias’ “Moments,”
Lovano opts for a more full-throated voice
while taking command of the tune’s
wistful narrative. “Inside Her Old Music
Box,” one of two works co-composed by
the two leaders, allows Johnson to step
out, achieving cello-like perfection as he
MUSIC REAL
FOR
bows his bass. It’s one of many seemingly
serendipitous moments that make Swept
Away a session to savor. —Mark Holston
Ron Miles
Quiver
(Enja/Yellowbird)
It seems appropriate that Ron Miles would
share his surname
with the first name
of a more renowned
trumpeter. Both
men share a
EOM-CD-5165
reliance on the
trumpet’s middle THE RIPPINGTONS
register — a timbre BUILT TO LAST
better at conveying a broad spectrum of
One of the best-loved, and best-
human emotions than screaming high
selling, contemporary jazz groups
notes. While double-high C’s are exciting,
ever is celebrating its Silver Anniversary
the subtle introspection communicated with its biggest, most ambitious
with a well-formed phrase of comfortable, album. Maestro Russ Freeman
lower notes is likewise tantamount. takes listeners on an epic journey -
Quiver includes the stellar trio of Miles orchestrated and widescreen, high-
with guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer energy and progressive. Absolutely
Brian Blade. Both sidemen have been not to be missed!
known to cross musical genres so often
that their styles are without category.
Nonetheless, Blade is one of the finest,
most melodic jazz drummers on the scene.
Frisell, meanwhile, plays everything from
very open, free music to bona fide country
with absolute authenticity. The pair ably
interprets Miles’ multi-faceted music,
whether it’s the quasi-funk of “Bruise,”
the countrified “Just Married” (on which
Miles manages to show off some serious
jazz chops) or the album-closing ragtime
march “Guest of Honor.”
Quiver also includes its share of bal-
lads. Miles waxes sweetly and lyrically
through a Harmon mute on “Queen B.”
His pitch is exacting. The melody to “Days EOM-CD-2392
of Wine and Roses” remains a mere allu-
sion while Miles explores the trumpet’s
sumptuous, lower register with nods to THE BAD PLUS
Ruby Braff. MADE POSSIBLE
The thrust of this music is the three-
way sharing of ideas that culminate in Reid Anderson, Ethan Iverson and
one buoyant, very musical set. With three David King return with a new album.
of the CD’s nine songs recorded beauti- Tightly performed, infused with energy,
fully before an audience at Dazzle Jazz
irreverence and the sound of surprise.
Music to capture and hold the
Club in Miles’ home-base of Denver, open
attentions and passions of aware
spontaneity and impeccable musicianship
listeners everywhere.
is evident in large doses both in and out of
the studio. —James Rozzi
 The Winter Collection
Inside Subscriber Copies Only

Subscribers get a new 2-CD Collection

delivered inside every print issue.

THE WINTER COLLECTION FEATURES:

Donald Fagen Marc johnson/Eliane Elias gregory Porter
john Abercrombie Lynne Arriale Fourplay jD Allen Erin Boheme
Poncho Sanchez Weber iago Kurt Rosenwinkel and more…

To GET YOUR Collection or to SUBSCRIBE

Call 561-910-7730 or log onto jazziz.com