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Jazz in Europe news!
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Posted by: editoron Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - 09:21 AM |
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10. November 2009
Nate Chinen reports about the saxophonist and composer Henry Threadgill (New York Times). Threadgill had always kept an open ear for different musical genres, "listening to as much Serbian music and country and western music and classical music as I was listening to jazz and blues", as he explains. A reissue of Threadgill's Arista albums is planned on the Mosaic label which "will lay out a broad view of Mr. Threadgill’s central preoccupations as a composer". Threadgill talks about his compositional concept, a serial intervallic language, "governed partly by mathematical principles, and inspired by ideas in the music of the 20th-century composer Edgard Varèse".
Jazz Index: Bibliography on Henry Threadgill.
9. November 2009
20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall
Germany celebrates the 20th anniversary of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall today, and even the BBC takes up the story to ask about the changes brought about on jazz through these political developments (BBC). Julian Joseph talks to Bert Noglik who speaks about how jazz was not so important to a lot of people in East Germany immediately after the wall came down and that it took a few years until the East German jazz scene picked up again. Noglik mentions the importance of the Western free improvisation scene for East German musicians and explains that when East and West German played together in official concerts in the German Democratic Republic, there always had to be musicians present from other countries so that it didn't seem like a reunification of Germany on stage. Finally he talks about the Berlin jazz scene which became one of the most vivid European scenes in recent years in which musicians from all over the world come together and East or West no longer are categories. Julian Joseph also talks to the trombonist Jiggs Whigham about his time with the RIAS Big Band and his experiences in 1990s Berlin. On another note (and this no longer refers to Joseph's BBC broadcast): One effect of the political changes definitively was the establishment of a new market for jazz. Only 15 or 20 years ago (till shortly after "Die Wende", the fall of the Iron Curtain), Europeans competed mostly with American musicians. Now they compete with other Europeans as well. Public funding and subsidies more and more become investments in cultural export in order to strengthen the national position within the growing European market. It's a development that one may or may not like but cannot ignore, not even in the jazz world.
8. November 2009
Free Music Production
Ulrich Kurth reports about Free Music Production (FMP), the Berlin-based record label, publishing house and promotion company once founded out of a musicians' initiative 40 years ago (Frankfurter Rundschau). Its founder Jost Gebers single-handedly documented Europe's free music avant-gardes from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, organized concerts and workshops and a legendary alternative festival to run parallel to the big-name Jazztage Berlin (now Jazzfest Berlin) called the Total Music Meeting and featuring mainly musicians from the free improvisation scenes of both Western and Eastern Europe. Gebers sold the publishing house in 1992 and today works at documenting the FMP label's history. What Kurth does not mention: Gebers' record collection (i.e. all of FMP's output as well as many records musicians sent to him) is housed at the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt.
Jazz Index: Bibliography on FMP.
7. November 2009
Art D'Lugoff (club owner)
(b: 2.Aug.1924, New York; d: 4.Nov.2009, New York)
The impresario and club owner Art D'Lugoff died in New York at the age of 85. He had opened a jazz club in Greenwich Village in 1958 which he called The Village Gate and which soon became one of the premiere jazz spots in New York City. Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, John Coltrane and Herbie Mann played and even recorded there. He also was involved in cultural politics, fighting against the cabaret card law in New York. Besides jazz, the Village Gate also featured folk acts and comedians. The Village Gate closed in 1994, to reopen only shortly on West 52nd Street in 1996. Obituaries: New York Daily News, Village Voice, New York Times.
6. November 2009
Donald Bailey
Jim Harrington talks to the 75 year old drummer Donald Bailey about his long career (Silicon Valley Mercury News). Bailey had three major seizures, had been in the hospital for back surgery, suffered from memory loss and had seen his marriage, his career and his financial situation fall apart. Now he is being honored in two tribute shows at Yoshi's in Oakland. Bailey grew up in Philadelphia and from 1956 to 1963 was the drummer in organist Jimmy Smith's band. Musicians listened to his very specific kind of drum style which became just as influential as Smith's organ playing. He later played for many singers, among them Carmen McRae, Peggy Lee and Sarah Vaughan. He lived in Japan for a while before moving to Oakland. The last years were hard, as he says, "I've been in the hospital so much the last 10 years, people think I work there." Bailey also talks to Lee Hillebrand (San Francisco Chronicle) stating that his memory loss mostly affected his memory for people, not for jazz. Hillebrand also asks the saxophonist Charles McPherson and the guitarist Kenny Burrell about the drummer. Bailey tells her that he also plays trumpet, trombone, saxophone and piano in order to better his drumming.
Jazz Index: Bibliography on Donald Bailey.
5. November 2009
Alex Steinweiss
Christian Mayer writes about the graphic designer Alex Steinweiss who single-handedly "invented" the album cover 70 years ago (SĂĽddeutsche Zeitung). He worked for Columbia Records and in 1940 had the idea of his life: giving records a face instead of just packaging them in brown paper sleeves. His first album cover was a record by Rodgers & Hart. He took a photographer to the Imperial Theater on Broadway and convinced the manager to keep the marquee lighted for one hour so that he could take a good photo of the lettering "Rodgers & Hart". He then added imaginary grooves to the picture. He wanted, as Steinweiss says in a phone conversation from Florida where he lives at the age of 92, the people to see the cover and at the same time imagine the music. He continued to work for Columbia into the 1960s. Now, the publisher Taschen has dedicated a book to his historic art work.
4. November 2009
New Haven Improvisers Collective
Phillip Lutz reports about the New Haven Improvisers Collective that tries to keep the tradition of free improvisation alive that is rooted in the free jazz scene of the 1970s (New York Times). The collective was founded five years ago and in its first year engaged Butch Morris for a workshop and joined concert which inspired the initiative's founder Bob Gorry to adopt Morris' idea of "conduction", a system of improvised conducting (or rather, of conducting an improvisation). Among regular participants of the Collective's workshops are the flutist Barry Seroff and the bassist, bass clarinetist and electronic musician Carl Testa. Lutz also mentions other New Haven based musicians since the 1970s that were active in the scene around Yale University and later made their own careers, among them the trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum or the pianist and composer Anthony Davis. Doug Morrill, who produces the New Haven Jazz Festival, plans a conference focusing on the city's avant-garde for next summer.
3. November 2009
Jean Luc Ponty
Jesse Hamlin talks to the French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty whom he calls "a musical polymath who's been equally comfortable playing with bebop piano genius Bud Powell and Frank Zappa's raucously experimental Mothers of Invention, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and banjo wizard Bela Fleck" (San Francisco Chronicle). Especially his work with Zappa had opened new sound possibilities for Ponty, son of a family of classical musicians, and only in the 1990s he returned to the "pure sound of the acoustic violin" again. On his newest album he even plays a completely unaccompanied acoustic solo piece, something he always was afraid of because he feared it might sound too classical.
Jazz Index: Bibliography on Jean-Luc Ponty.
2. November 2009
Hammond Organ
David McNamee pays homage to the Hammond organ in an article asking (and trying to answer) the questions: What is it? Who uses it? How does it work? Where does it come from? Why is it classic? What's the best ever Hammond organ song? (The Guardian). He moves from Jimmy Smith ("the first musician to unleash the creativity of the Hammond") to Keith Emerson, Deep Purple, Genesis, Bruce Springsteen and the Charlatans, and compares the classic tone wheel organs with "The New B3", equipped with modern electronic and sold since 2002.
Jazz Index: Bibliography about the Organ.
1. November 2009
Stacy Rowles (trumpet)
(b: 11.Sep.1955, Los Angeles; d: 30.Oct.2009, Burbank/CA)
The trumpeter Stacy Rowles died October 30th from injuries after a car accident. Rowles was the daughter of the pianist Jimmy Rowles with whom she performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1973. In the 1980s she led the Jazz Birds Quintet together with the trombonist Betty O'Hara, but also toured with the Swinging Ladies, the Jazz Tap Ensemble and the DIVA Big Band. Obituary: All About Jazz, New York Times, Los Angeles Times (1), Los Angeles Times (2).
About this mailing:
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The Jazzinstitut Darmstadt is a municipal cultural institute of the city of Darmstadt, Germany.
Contact:
Jazzinstitut Darmstadt
Bessunger Strasse 88d
D-64285 Darmstadt
Germany
Tel. ++49 - 6151 - 963700
Fax ++49 - 6151 - 963744
e-mail: jazz@jazzinstitut.de
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