Jazz Economics, Audience Research, Michel Camilo: The Friday Link Dump

by Patrick Jarenwattananon

If you are in New York, you might consider going to the Vision Festival benefit this weekend, a 28-hour marathon of music and art. I mention it in part because I was invited to participate on a panel about the plight of young artists, but cannot attend. I also mention it, because it frames our first link:

--The Jazz Economy Of New York: WNYC's Soundcheck hosted an interesting discussion with Nate Chinen yesterday about the central paradox of the jazz economy in New York: it's a phenomenally creative time for the music, but a terrible time to be a jazz musician. Or, as Chinen puts it on his blog, "It's a fantastically open time to be a jazz consumer in the city, and a borderline oppressive time to be a jazz artist (economically, not creatively)." It has to do, he says, with the "broken infrastructure" of the whole operation: there's no way to make a living playing sparsely-attended door gigs when the cost of living in New York is ridiculous.

Art exerts a powerful and mysterious pull, but it's not immune to economics. If being a jazz artist is so unsustainable, why don't more people weigh the cost-benefit analysis and quit? Why do people keep going into jazz performance studies at record levels, and apparently staying on the scene? An economist might tell you one of two things: the supply curve is high because artists are supplementing their performance income with other pursuits, or that demand is coming from forces which aren't reflected on the surface of a sparsely-attended door gig: public grants, corporate underwriting, etc. I would venture to say both are probably the case.

Anyway, the Vision Festival benefit is relevant because it's a classic case of musicians taking business into their own hands. The DIY approach of Arts for Art, the organization behind Vision Fest, has relatively low overhead, and fosters a community which understands the importance of throwing into the bucket. The Soundcheck blog muses on this. And speaking of jazz on WNYC: check out the Jazz Loft Project. We'll have more on this fascinating series soon when NPR starts to air some of the radio stories.

--The Jazz Audiences Initiative Awarded $200,000 Grant: Here's something that could be a great thing. A Columbus, Ohio non-profit called the Jazz Arts Group has been awarded $200,000 by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to "tackle fundamental questions about how and why people engage with jazz," with a view to building audiences in the future. Here's the press release, and here's more information about the project. If I may send a note of unsolicited advice, I earnestly hope that the Jazz Arts Group seriously consults many young people (and young musicians) about this -- the alternative seems like an incredible waste of time.

--Rock Meets New Orleans Jazz: Tom Waits, Andrew Bird, Jim James (of My Morning Jacket) and many more are currently recording a benefit album with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. At least those are the artists Pitchfork Media led with: Pete Seeger, Dr. John, Steve Earle, The Blind Boys Of Alabama, Merle Haggard and others make the disc too. (I'm told through the grapevine that Waits just recorded "Tootie Ma Is A Big Fine Thing" yesterday.) Speaking of Pitchfork and jazz, here's their review of Vijay Iyer's Historicity -- given a score somewhat uncommensurate with its glowing review, but I presume Vijay'll take it.

--More On Jazz.com: Howard Mandel speculates -- and in the comments, digs a little deeper -- on the post-Ted Gioia future of the site.

--Michel Camilo's Piano Concerto No. 1: Was the centerpiece of the Dominican-born pianist's performance last night with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. As in, he wrote it and performed it. Preview here, review here. The performance inaugurates his role as jazz creative director of the DSO, a two-year stint. Related: the Michel Camilo trio, recorded live at the 2009 Newport Jazz Festival.

12:13 PM ET | 11-20-2009 | permalink

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Johnny Mercer And The Future Of Jazz Standards

by Patrick Jarenwattananon

Johnny Mercer wrote lyrics for over 1,500 songs. That is ridiculous. (Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library)

Songwriter (and singer, and composer) Johnny Mercer would have been 100 on Wednesday. NPR, first-draft cultural historians that we are, was on the case. Twice, even: here's a profile of the man's career, with plenty of bonus online-only listening, from All Things Considered; and here's a studio performance of Mercer music with Dave Frishberg and Rebecca Kilgore on Fresh Air.

Mercer, of course, wrote lyrics for many jazz standards: "Skylark," "Come Rain Or Come Shine," "I'm Old Fashioned," "The Days Of Wine And Roses," "Satin Doll," the English version of "Autumn Leaves" ... it keeps going. And in thinking about his incredible accomplishments, it struck me then that we may never again have any new jazz standards.

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8:43 PM ET | 11-19-2009 | permalink

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Listening, Party For Two: Coleman Hawkins, 'Body And Soul'

by Patrick Jarenwattananon

Coleman Hawkins and company in 1960: Man, whatchu looking at? (Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

My boss readily admits that she doesn't know a whole lot about jazz. But she lets me write all this nonsense on the Internet, so I'm not complaining. And at least she's willing to learn. So every week -- or at least as often as possible -- she and I get together to listen to and Instant Message about a different great jazz song.

The last time -- and the first time -- that the Boss Lady and I IM-ed each other, we listened to recordings featuring Lester Young. So I thought it important to feature that other great early tenor saxophone master, Coleman Hawkins. This week is as good a time as any to listen to "Body And Soul" -- Hawk would have been 105 this Saturday.

"Body And Soul," from Coleman Hawkins, Body And Soul (Bluebird). Original Issue Bluebird 10523/mx. Coleman Hawkins, tenor saxophone; with Joe Guy, trumpet; Tommy Lindsay, trumpet; Earl Hardy, trombone; Jackie Fields, saxophone; Eustis Moore, saxophone; Eugene Rogers, piano; William Smith, bass; Arthur Herbert, drums. New York, N.Y.: Oct. 11, 1939.

Purchase: Amazon.com / Amazon MP3 / iTunes

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me: So do you think you've heard this before?

Boss Lady: My memory is like a sieve.

me: Well, all right then. What do you think?

Boss Lady: Very comforting. Just what I could use right now.

me: What's comforting about it, do you think?

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7:50 PM ET | 11-18-2009 | permalink

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Jazz And The 50 Most Important Albums Of 2000-2009

by Patrick Jarenwattananon

The Bad Plus: hot important or not? (John Christenson)

Yesterday on All Songs Considered, NPR's The Decade In Music multi-pronged retrospective continues with a look at the 50 Most Important Recordings of the 2000s.

Two jazz records made the final tally: The Bad Plus' These Are The Vistas and Jason Moran's Black Stars. I had something to do with both being on there, but certainly wasn't the only one making decisions about what made or didn't make the list. These things are completely unscientific (how to define "important" in the first place?), which is the point, as far as I see: they're meant to generate discussion. Speaking of which, I done did some talking on the podcast too.

I also wrote some blurbs about both records, which I want to discuss and expand upon. I also want to ask: what other records could have made the list? But first: Should there even be jazz records on here in the first place?

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3:42 PM ET | 11-17-2009 | permalink

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Tootie, Ted, Tommy, 15, 23: The Tuesday Link Dump

by Patrick Jarenwattananon

Where Gary Giddins helped us pick this week's Take Five. (!)

--Ethan Iverson Interviews 'Tootie' Heath: The Jazz Internet's best interviewer gets another master musician to open up. And he also writes about Paul Bley for Destination: OUT. We shouldn't have to tell you by now that both are important reading.

--Ted Gioia Steps Down From Jazz.com Leadership: Gioia, the site editor and a major contributor, sent an e-mail last week to his writers and other media types, and JazzTimes has a confirmation. He has no comment about the future of the site. This is sad: in under three years of his leadership, jazz.com went from non-existent to one of my daily must-reads. Let the speculation begin ...

--15 Fashion-Forward Jazz Musicians: John Murph captions some photos for The Root. Usual suspects like Banana Republicans David Sanchez and Esperanza Spalding appear, as do some more offbeat choices like Theo Bleckmann and Leo Tardin. I recently met Murph, who occasionally contributes to NPR and once worked here, at a Gretchen Parlato show (she also makes the list), and dude was dressed pretty impeccably too. I certainly would trust his sartorial eye over my clearance-rack tastes.

--A New Tommy Ladnier Book: It is here, and I heard about it here. An under-recorded and under-remembered early trumpeter, this guy.

--23 Year Old Takes Over Jazz Club: The Blue Wisp in Cincinnati is hiring a senior University of Cincinnati marketing student to be its general manager. Cincinnati.com has a interview with Jackie Walsh, who, two years ago, "didn't really even like jazz." After a few years of working there, Walsh now says, "My stereotype of jazz wasn't what it truly is."

1:29 PM ET | 11-17-2009 | permalink

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Bassist Tatsu Aoki On Asian American Jazz

by Patrick Jarenwattananon

Tatsu Aoki's Miyumi Project combines Taiko drums with bass and woodwinds. Aoki is the bassist on the right. (courtesy of the artist)

This weekend in Chicago, the Midwest chapter of Asian Improv aRts is putting on its 14th Annual Chicago Asian American Jazz Festival. Over three days, artists like Jeff Chan, Francis Wong and Jeff Parker will appear on stage, along with several other lesser-known ensembles led by or featuring Asian Americans.

Bassist Tatsu Aoki is the executive director of Asian Improv aRts Midwest, as well as the founder and artistic director of the Chicago Asian American Jazz Festival. Born to an artistic family in Japan, he's long held interests in experimental filmmaking and experimental music. As a jazz performer, he plays the double bass, and also incorporates his work on shamisen and Taiko drums into his music.

As my surname might suggest, I myself am Thai-American, and I've always been interested in the perspectives of fellow Asian Americans who have dedicated their lives to jazz and improvised music. Asian Americans have experienced many different paths in this music, but the specific framework of "Asian American Jazz" has been particularly meaningful for a sizeable group of musicians since the late 1970s. A 2001 NPR report by Reese Ehrlich, aired on the now-defunct Weekly Edition, provides a good introduction to the idea:

Aoki has long subscribed to the movement's tenets, and with the 14th anniversary of his festival afoot, I thought it an appropriate time to ask him about it. Over the phone, I interviewed Aoki about the utility and intent of an Asian American jazz festival:

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Why have a specifically Asian American jazz festival?

One of the reasons is that we, as a community of Asian Americans -- one is to break off the stereotype of what we have in the society. Because we, at Asian Improv aRts, both at San Francisco and in Chicago, have a distinct gallery of sound that is employed by all of our artists that are Asian Americans. Some rooted music of our Asian heritage, or Asian American originality, is very different from other types of music. Many years ago, we decided to name this Asian American jazz.

Of course, the frontier of this movement came from a lot of artists from the Bay Area: People like Jon Jang, Mark Izu, Miya Masaoka, Glenn Horiuchi, Anthony Brown and many others in the Bay Area. I had the opportunity to collaborate with the Bay Area artists in the early '90s, and I joined the organization Asian Improv aRts, and expanded that operation to the Midwest. In Chicago, we started the [Asian American Jazz] Festival 14 years ago. After this year's festival, we have the 15th year anniversary, which is in 2010.

Why do you think it is important to have an artistic community centered around the idea of Asian American-ness?

I think one of the reasons [is that] we all agree: In society -- not just in this musical community -- in many cases that Asian Americans are excluded, or maybe Asian American something is not really paid attention to much by the majority of society. So it's important to initiate this circle: To keep us going, and present art from our communities.

If you look at the major, mainstream festivals, our question is: How often do you see one of us represented? So I think it's important to have this festival, so that we make sure that some of our people who are doing wonderful work are consistently presented within the community, as well as for people outside the community.

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9:40 PM ET | 11-13-2009 | permalink

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Dick Katz, Newport Archives, EyeShot Jazz: The Friday Link Dump

by Patrick Jarenwattananon

RIP Dick Katz, great jazz pianist, Milestone Records co-founder and general Mensch, at age 85. The New York Times obituary. Also, remembrances and a short video from WNYC.

--Newport Jazz Festival Archives Released: The big news of the week is that the audio archivists at Wolfgang's Vault have finally unveiled the first batch of recordings from their massive cache of historical Newport Jazz Festival tapes. Some time ago, festival head-dude-in-charge George Wein sold the entirety of his festival recording archives to Wolfgang's Vault, who have spent millions of dollars cataloging and doing digital transfers. (As an aside, earlier this year I got to visit the Wolfgang's archives in their Manhattan office building, where they have a small room with four heavy-duty reel-to-reel tape players and like nine twenty-something interns cutting tape. Amusing sight.) The sound is good, the music is great and there's much more to come. Related: NPR/WBGO/WGBH recordings of the 2009 Newport Jazz Festival.

--Jazz Photographs From Seattle: A Seattle-based photographer named Daniel Sheehan recently wrote in to plug his jazz photoblog. I was like, yea, OK, whatever -- but I had a look, and there's some really vivid stuff in there. Sheehan happens to have written in just after the Earshot Jazz Festival ended, and took some great shots that really capture the excitement of what happened. (Cyro Baptista and John Hollenbeck, for example, are wearing phenomenal hats.) It's at eyeshotjazz.com.

--Nextbop Artists Select Their Favorite Music: Our friends in Montreal asked some of the artists featured on their Web site to help them create a playlist of songs: any music, in any genre, that they're currently listening to. Cool idea -- looks to be happening on the regular too. Have a listen.

--Seven Overlooked Jazz Guitar Albums: Man, I am a sucker for any list of records billed as "overlooked." This one features some live Jim Hall, Pat Metheny with Gary Burton, Jimmy Raney and more.

--Clifford Brown, Pulling Strings: Finally, trumpeter Jason Palmer shares a great story about talking to Clifford Brown's widow. Learn about Brownie's doughnut addiction, and the true story behind Clifford Brown With Strings.

12:23 PM ET | 11-13-2009 | permalink

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A Life Of Craft Beer And Free Jazz

by Patrick Jarenwattananon

Worlds colliding: Ken Vandermark's Caffeine, with Jim Baker (keyboards) and Steve Hunt (drums), performs at the Sugar Maple in Milwaukee, Wis. (Md2545 / Flickr)

Dedicated fans of out jazz know Bruno Johnson's Okka Disk record label for putting out discs by several of today's leading free improvisers: Fred Anderson, Peter Brotzmann, Ken Vandermark and the like. Epicurean tipplers of Milwaukee, Wis. know Bruno Johnson as co-owner of two of the city's great watering holes: the Sugar Maple (60 beers on tap!) and the Belgian-beer-specializing Palm Tavern, both in the neighborhood of Bay View.

Good music by day, craft beer by night -- literally. Basically, Johnson has the Best. Life. Ever.

Milwaukee happens to be this blogger's hometown, so on a recent trip back, I made it a point to find out more about Johnson's multiple enterprises, and if they intersected at all. You wouldn't call Milwaukee a world-class jazz city, but there's certainly some good music going on, and Chicago is less than two hours down the Interstate. So I brought a microphone and digital recorder to the Palm Tavern, where Johnson graciously agreed to an interview in spite of his migraine:

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OkkaDisk is 15 years old now. Take me back to that: Why did you start the label, and what inspired you?

Well, I had made a lot of money as a bartender, and since I had been in the record business doing rock music ... I saw Fred Anderson perform at a show with the Ken Vandermark quartet, and I talked to Fred about doing a recording -- which he hadn't done in a while -- and he immediately called me the next day and said he had a tape already done, and was ready to go. And since he said he would do it, I couldn't back down, and we started. And I've been going ever since.

You said you had your own small rock label. This must have been when you weren't that old yourself.

I was probably in my late twenties when I first started. I've been in the record business my whole adult life, and I did some rock records in the early '80s. But it just wasn't as interesting to me. I'd started listening to jazz since my twenties, and it's more interesting musically -- it's just a lot more interesting than rock music. So I kind of stopped with the rock label, and started up anew with the jazz label.

I also got a job at the Jazz Record Mart, which didn't hurt. I was working there as one of my many jobs.

A lot of the material that you put out is "avant-garde," or creative improvised music. How did you get into that scene? I mean, you must have been in Chicago and listening to this music -- what was it like back then? Ken Vandermark was fairly new to town. Fred Anderson hadn't recorded in many years ...

Well, I originally started out listening to the more "avant-garde" things. A friend of mine I knew in college was more worldly than I, and I was listening to a lot of more really far-out rock music. And he said, "Well, you should listen to the Art Ensemble [of Chicago]," who happened to be coming to town. His thing was, you know, they sounded as wild as the rock bands I was listening to -- Caberet Voltaire, Einsturzende Neubauten -- but they could actually play their instruments.

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2:05 AM ET | 11-12-2009 | permalink

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Christian McBride Knows A Lot About Frank Sinatra

by Josh Jackson, WBGO

Doesn't Christian McBride look like he belongs in the Rat Pack? (courtesy of the artist)

You learn a lot about musicians when you hijack their digital music players and set them to access files randomly. For instance, bassist Christian McBride apparently records messages from his answering machine -- from the seemingly mundane (Herbie Hancock calling about a gig) to the sublime (Abbey Lincoln singing "Happy Birthday" to him).

Before I created The Checkout, I made a radio series about jazz called Living With Music. Christian McBride was a prime candidate for the show. In two decades, he has played with the biggest names in jazz and pop music. He's the creative chair for jazz at the Los Angeles Philharmonic (at least until Hancock takes over next year), co-director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, host of his own radio show ... and he's not even 40. Oh, and he plays a lot of bass.

Since we're presenting Christian McBride live at the Village Vanguard (Wednesday Nov. 11 at 9 p.m. ET), I thought I would revisit this game of Shuffle I played with Christian. Without giving away all the details, let's just say he's listened to the Frank Sinatra and Count Basie concert at The Sands many times, and he also has a scratchy analog-to-digital transfer of this:

"Lots of unusual things happen in traveling. A few weeks ago, I'm riding a train between New York and Washington. When I boarded the train, my first thought's to find my seat, get settled and relax. Once I had gotten settled, I glance across the aisle, and I notice the woman occupying her seat there had her baby there with her. Ugly baby. Bad-looking baby. And I want to make it clear that generally I'd be reluctant to express an opinion of someone's kid -- but I know an ugly baby when I see one. ... There's this fellow in the coach -- he's half-smashed -- when he gets to the section with the woman is with her baby, he stops. And he's staring. And the lady's watching him. She heard him when he said to himself, "Damn." And the lady says, "What are you looking at?" And the guy says, "I'm looking at that ugly baby. That's a bad looking baby, lady. That's a hell of a kid you got there. [whistles] I bet you save a lot of money with that baby. You don't have to hire a babysitter -- no one's going to bother that kid." The woman took this as an offense. She pulls the emergency cord, the train stops, there's a big scene, the conductor comes running in. "So what's going on in here? What's going on in here?" And the lady says, "This man just insulted me! I don't have to spend my money to ride this railroad and be insulted." The conductor says, "Now, calm down lady. Madam, the railroad will go to any extent to avoid having differences between the passengers. So perhaps it would be more to your convenience if we would rearrange your seating. And, as a small compensation from the railroad, if you'll accompany me to the dining car, we'll give you a free meal. And maybe we'll find a banana for your monkey."

5:57 PM ET | 11-10-2009 | permalink

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Willard Jenkins: On Talking With Black Jazz Writers

by Patrick Jarenwattananon

Willard Jenkins. (Ronnie James)

I started reading Willard Jenkins' blog, The Independent Ear, well before I knew who he was or that he even lived in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Jenkins, of course, is what you might call a heavy cat: he's a tremendously successful arts administrator, writer, educator, radio broadcaster, festival producer and general-purpose jazz consultant. Check out the Open Sky Jazz Web site for more information.

I've been especially interested in his series of conversations with African American jazz writers, which he calls Ain't But A Few Of Us. I've always been curious about the relative dearth of black writers (or folks who aren't white males) covering jazz in prominent locations, and have even lobbed a few attempts to induce further inquiry about the issue. So it's been revealing to read the candid thoughts of folks I admire like A.B. Spellman, K. Leander Williams and Greg Tate, among many other contributors whose work I'm just discovering.

I recently met Jenkins at the annual Congressional Black Caucus Foundation jazz concert, where he moderated a panel discussion about developing a young jazz audience in a world where public schools are continually cutting music education. I followed up with him about his series in an e-mail interview:

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Why did you decide to do this series in the first place?

I decided to run this series because --- and this is quite clear from the various participants in this ongoing dialogue --- clearly, despite the historic origins of this music we call jazz, there have never been an abundance of African Americans (or women, or people of color period) writing about the music. And when you take into account the complete and vast bibliography of jazz you find even fewer African Americans have written books on the subject than those who have contributed to periodicals. So in a way we're exploring that disparity, but more importantly, I wanted to have a dialogue with those who are out here as to their various experiences --- including both triumphs and tribulations.

Why do you call it "serious music"?

I refer to "serious music" as a somewhat covert means of separating the efforts of the participants in this dialogue from those many black writers who've written about black pop --- from blues to R&B to hip hop --- and even they are lacking great numbers compared to their white counterparts.

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5:12 PM ET | 11-10-2009 | permalink

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