Tag Archives: Jazz

Blues Women, Black Lives, American Protest

Thanks to Owen Thomas for editing, but also for offering thoughts on grief and protest that shifted this piece into something much more meaningful and relevant than it was before.

Though I’d been meaning to write about early Black Feminist musicians for a while now, this seems like an especially crucial moment to discuss their legacy and what that legacy means today, given the worldwide protests of George Floyd’s murder. The entire world is celebrating, mourning, championing, and defending Black American lives. In all areas, the conversation is shifting to center Black politicians, artists, and musicians: their struggles, their contributions, their leadership. As a Jazz musician, a brass musician, and an American musician, I owe much to American Blues, which inherently means that I owe a lot to Black women. Wanting to know more about them and this vein of music, I started reading Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Y. Davis (if you want to buy it, try and get it from a Black-owned bookstore). Much of the following was learned from and inspired by her book.

Jazz, Rock, Funk, R&B, Hip Hop, Rap – these innovations of American music, of Black American music, rest on the foundation of the Blues and Spirituals sung on slave plantations. Traditionally, the Blues are seen as Black man’s music, and women’s part in it has been eclipsed. This is a shame, because as Davis shows, women like Gertrude “Ma” Rainey and Bessie Smith were the first singers of the Blues to be signed onto records that sold massively to the public, while Billie Holiday is widely regarded as the vocalist that brought the Blues-to-Jazz transition to the mainstream. Thanks largely to Davis’s scholarship, the historical narrative of this music is gradually broadening to credit these ancestors of the Blues.

These women were superstars, achieving fame and fortune in pioneering a style of music at a time when they faced immense repression and stigma for both their gender and skin color. After releasing “Down Hearted Blues” in 1923, her first recording, Bessie Smith sold millions of records and made hundreds of thousands of dollars, leading many to view her as the “World’s Greatest Blues Singer” and “the first real ‘superstar’ in African-American popular culture” (Davis, p. 141).” She worked with Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson, and countless other notable musicians of the time. This earned her the title “Empress of the Blues.” Gertrude “Ma” Rainey – the “Mother of the Blues” and older than Smith by more than a decade – had already become a star by the time they met in 1912. Smith was only 14 years old, but “Ma” took her on and became her mentor. By 1923, Bessie Smith’s career started surpassing Rainey’s, as she captivated audiences in both the North and South and even became tied into the Harlem Renaissance art and literary scene – described in Davis’s chapter on this part of Black history (p. 139). A brief biography of Rainey’s and Smith’s relationship and how their careers intersected can be found here.

But beyond fame and financial success, these women were also just badass in every way. Bessie Smith once scared off KKK members trying to disrupt her tent performance. Notified about their disruption, she “immediately left the tent and ran toward the intruders, stopped within ten feet of them, placed one hand on her hip, and shook a clenched fist at the Klansmen. ‘What the fuck you think you’re doin’,’ she shouted above the sound of the band, ‘I’ll get the whole damn tent out here if I have to. You just pick up them sheets and run!'” And they ran (p. 37). And “Ma” Rainey flaunted her lesbianism – in the 1920s. That’s wild. During Jim Crow laws, during an era where women faced much more stigma than they do today (and they still do today), an era where homophobia was rampant and persecuted everywhere, “Ma” Rainey released a flyer that showed her wearing men’s attire and flirting with women (Davis, p. 39). The flyer was an advertisement for “Prove It on Me Blues,” a song with lyrics all about seducing women and dodging legal repercussions for it. And both Rainey and Smith were notorious for singing explicitly about their sexual relations with men, as well.

Perhaps most importantly, the lyrics in these songs and the popularity of the music fostered a Black working class women’s consciousness, one that laid the foundation for later waves of Feminism and protest in the United States. But they did so in a way that was markedly different from middle-class Black women of the same era. The middle-class, educated, often Protestant women of the Black Women’s club movement were notably focused on raising their poor sisters’ “moral integrity” and “sexual purity,” an attempt to challenge the racist hyper-sexualization of Black women coming from the dominant culture. They held an ideal of “true womanhood” that actually excluded many Black women in working class and poor communities. In upholding this standard, they believed they were lifting up Black women everywhere. But, as Davis writes, “in the process of defending black women’s moral integrity and sexual purity, they almost entirely denied sexual agency.” As she emphasizes earlier in the book, “sexuality was one of the few realms in which masses of African-American women could exercise autonomy – and thus tangibly distinguish their contemporary status from the history of enslavement. Denial of sexual agency was in an important respect the denial of freedom for working-class black women (p. 44).” Rainey’s and Smith’s Blues were filled with sexual, erotic, and simply realist lyrics about sex and relationships, both heteronormative and queer. And they weren’t depicting romanticized fantasies evident in white popular music of the era, either: they shared relatable complaints and grievances, of domestic abuse or abandonment. Many of their problems were rooted in forces arising from a history of slavery, physically and economically violent forces that placed strain on personal relationships.They also shared notions of desire and bravely searching for love in a nation that often treated Black bodies as less than human. By not shying away from the real hardships and triumphs of love and sex in their lyrics, “Ma” Rainey and Bessie Smith opened up discourses of shared experience in the Black community and honored lived Black experiences through naming them.

The Blues is at once a way of naming struggle while exorcising it. It names in lyric the countless problems oppressing the Black community, and alleviates emotional pain from these struggles through song. It is shared, collective struggle that resonates with individuals through personal experience and feeling. This feeling was captured in Black art, but can be felt through various struggles. For me, personally, it is anytime you feel pain on the level of heartbreak that you intuitively know is rooted in forces much bigger than yourself. It’s when you or somebody you love is suffering economically, mentally, or physically as a symptom of capitalism, colonialism, or white supremacy; or when you or somebody you love hurts or abandons others due to these same forces. It’s the weight of macro-experience distilled into the personal, the same meaning behind the Feminist mantra “the personal is the political.”

In raising consciousness on these systemic issues through the personal lyrics of the Blues, this art-form encourages (though does not directly incite) the type of protest we are witnessing right now through the George Floyd uprisings. Davis writes a lot about the Dogon practice of Nommo, originating from Mali in Africa. In this practice, naming your problems helps to diminish their power. In naming or “counting” the Blues, Davis argues that a public consciousness forms around them, and they are easier to tackle as a community. This forms the foundation of organized protest (see a representative list of “counted Blues” at the end). As Davis writes, “in order for protest to acquire an explicitly political character, there must be an organized political structure capable of functioning as a channel for transforming individual complaint into effective collective protest. At the same time, social protest can never be made the exclusive or limiting function of art. Art may encourage a critical attitude and urge its audience to challenge social conditions, but it cannot establish the terrain of protest by itself. In the absence of a popular mass movement, it can only encourage a critical attitude. When the blues “name” the problems the community wants to overcome, they help create the emotional conditions for protest, but do not and could not, of themselves, constitute social protest (Davis, p. 113).

I believe the vitality of the George Floyd protests today is rooted in consciousness-forming that has taken more than a century to develop, owed in part to Blues singers such as Bessie Smith and “Ma” Rainey, and later Billie Holiday. But I also think that the Blues – and all the Hip Hop, Rap, R&B, Pop, Rock, and Funk songs, old and new, that inherit from the Blues – have an active role in the protests today besides laying the emotional conditions necessary for protests. This is music that heals as it clarifies. This is music that can create space to sing about and feel emotional pain, helping to alleviate that pain; to take its energy and make something beautiful out of it. This is music that helps us to tap into grief surrounding the fact that our lives carry worth but our society treats us as less than human. And though Black people are among the worst treated in the United States, everybody suffers when incarceration is prioritized over education; when we care more about putting people into prisons than placing people in homes; when some of us are lacking healthcare (especially during a pandemic); when most of us are lacking mental healthcare; and when violence is met with violence rather than compassion, understanding, and support. There is a need to mourn collective loss when it can no longer be contained within individuals. I’ve been seeing and hearing about it all week: the altar built by the clock tower in Santa Cruz, the makeshift memorial for Black Lives Matter affixed to Trump’s barricade in Washington, DC, and the funeral held for George Floyd on Tuesday, which the New York Times called “a moment of both national reckoning and mourning.” I especially felt it during the recent memorial for Sean Monterrosa, a San Francisco Mission native who was shot by police while kneeling with his hands in the air, and who’s last text to his family was to ask them to sign a petition demanding justice for George Floyd. I didn’t know it was a memorial when I first arrived, but I knew without being told when I heard the drummers and later saw the dancers with the Latina Task Force. There was just a heaviness that couldn’t be attributed to a political rally, or even a distant killing. That’s something amazing that music can do that I’ve felt many times but have had difficulty articulating in the past: it weighs you down and reminds you of your sorrow while also lifting it off of you and giving you joy.

The Blues is our national heritage, but it belongs to Black people first and foremost, and it particularly owes so much to the Black women who carried it to the national stage. I sincerely wish I could hear the music they would make today if they could witness what is happening in our country right now.

—

Smith counted a wide range of Blues that the Black community faced together. Davis recounts some of these on page 143 of her book:

“‘Washwomen’s Blues’ for the millions of women condemned to jobs involving domestic drudgery”
“‘House Rent Blues’ for all those familiar with the monthly ritual of scraping together pennies to pay the landlord”
“‘Jail House Blues’ acknowledged the inevitability of the prison experience in virtually every household of the black community”
“‘Backwater Blues’ was for those whose socially inflicted destitution was tragically compounded by floods and other natural disasters,” grimly foreshadowing the disaster of Hurricane Katrina
“And ‘Poor Man’s Blues’ for all those who could be prodded to reflect upon the roots of their myriad pains of poverty’

60th Annual Monterey Jazz Festival

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Last weekend Monterey hit a milestone: 60 years of hosting one of the most exciting musical events worldwide, known and hailed internationally as the Monterey Jazz Fest. And they didn’t hold back for this special anniversary: topping the lineup with Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, all three days of the festival were jam-packed with acts such as the Roy Hargrove Quintet, Kenny Barron, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Common, Joshua Redman, Pedrito Martinez, all three of the Claytons (John, Jeff, and Gerald), Joe Lovano, Regina Carter, Branford Marsalis, and Jimmy Heath (you know, to name a few). Not only was this year’s fest particularly star-studded, but it also included a diverse spread of genres while keeping the focus centered around jazz; this acceptance of branching genres such as hip hop, rock, and blues is a recurrent theme in MJF’s history that I’ll dive into further on.

Monterey being within eyesight of my home turf in Santa Cruz, I had the honor of performing at this festival with the UCSC Jazz Combo. Taking the Thelonious Monk Education Stage at 12:30pm on Saturday, we opened the afternoon with a setlist from the European Real Book:

“Vista,” “Distant Biscuits, “Secret Champ,” “Home,” “Ups and Downs,” and “Sixteen Blues.” Mad props to Galen Savidge, Gabe Meacham, Keshav Batish, Evan O’Brien, and Ben Sitzer – your hard work and musicianship shined through, and it was a pleasure to play with you.

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I could write pages for each act I attended, but I’m going to focus on three: Common, the Roy Hargrove Quintet, and Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. Not only were these three performances the most enthralling to me, but taken together they formed a convincing statement on jazz’s future, present, and past (yes, like the Ghosts of Christmas).

Seeing Common’s name on the lineup probably caused a lot of double-takes, especially from seasoned jazz fans. Born out of the South Side, Chicago, the Grammy Award-winning rapper is one of the most respected hip hop artists living – but what was he doing at a jazz festival? Several answers come to mind: first and foremost, that hip hop’s musical language comes from the same place as swing and bebop. Both heavily make use of the backbeat, which originated in West Africa, and both feature improvisation – jazz with instrumental solos, and hip hop with rap freestyling and disc scratching. Common underscored this point by appearing with a full band of accomplished jazz musicians and frequently giving them the mic (flautist Elena Pinderhughes was one of the musicians on stage – a welcome surprise, as she wasn’t listed on the program but commanded a set at MJF last year).

Equally as important, though, is to acknowledge that hip hop is coming out of the same culture as jazz – namely, black urban communities in America. Both are historically tied to black oppression, and as a result both respond to similar problems, rearticulated for different eras. Common’s set, for example, was called “Black America Again,” and all his songs discussed some problem he saw with the way people of color are treated in the United States. His lyrics echoed the words of Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and countless others, who critically discussed black experience and expressed it in their music. Though MJF kept the spotlight on jazz, having such an authority embrace rap signaled an acceptance of hip hop into the jazz family tree, the way MJF has done with blues, bluegrass, rock, and funk in the past. And one can find that happening with more established jazz musicians, with artists such as Christian Scott, Roy Hargrove, and Takuya Kuroda intentionally seeking to incorporate elements of trap, house, and old-school into their work. This is especially important because hip hop speaks directly to younger generations, while jazz is often criticized for seeming restricted to older demographics. By incorporating the newer genre into its fold, jazz, now a worldwide phenomenon, can retain a link to the same communities it served in the past.

Common performing at the White House with Elena Pinderhughes, Robert Glasper, Derrick Hodge, and Keyon Herrold

I thought it was one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen. Herbie Hancock himself was clapping and dancing to the music most of the time.

Roy Hargrove’s combo was a much more traditional set. Having just seen them perform in Paris at the New Morning, I already knew what to expect and was in a better position to offer critique. In Paris they played a diverse array of songs, ranging from soothing ballads to hard bop tunes with a heavy backbeat (my favorite). In Monterey they played the same set, and they danced on stage again, and Justin Robinson was an absolute beast on the saxophone, again, but something about this performance was much more lively. I’m not sure if it was higher energy in the quintet or a heightened engagement in the crowd, but their show in Dizzy’s Den on Saturday night was electric. They had the audience clapping and cheering for several songs, and you could hear the more experienced audience members whispering, “He just referenced Joe Henderson!” and “Did you catch how he modulated right there?” The show had something for everyone: masterful soloing navigating complex rhythms and harmonies for experts to chew on, exciting tunes and danceable grooves for newbies, and traditional combo-style playing for those who attended a jazz festival expecting a classic jazz performance.

I found Roy Hargrove backstage after the show and asked him to sign my t-shirt; I am now the proud owner of a shirt that has my combo’s name screen-printed along with the “Roy Hargrove Quintet” and topped with a signature from the man himself. The deepest, music-nerdiest part of myself is thrilled.

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Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock capped off the festival late Sunday night in the Arena. The show didn’t start until close to 10pm, and while we waited I had a conversation with a woman who had been coming to the festival for 40 years. I found out her grandkids had played in a band with Elena and Samora Pinderhughes in junior high; small world. I asked her how this year compared to previous years, and she said the 60th has definitely been one of the best. I’ve only been coming for two years – but I’d have to agree.

When the red curtain finally parted, we saw two full open-topped grand pianos locked together, like a musical yin and yang symbol. Chick and Herbie walked out on stage, the former dressed in white, the latter in black. They sat down and began to play. At first it sounded almost classical, like a modern piano-four hands piece, but soon they were evolving outward, opening into denser harmonies and rhythms and departing the classical sense of structure. And between the two of them they created a galaxy of sound; at times they cleanly came together for rehearsed motifs, and at others there was obvious call and response, but the majority of their playing melded concrete music and uninhibited improvisation so fluidly that it rarely seemed that they were separate at all. Each song evolved as naturally as a good conversation, spoken fluently and filled with epiphanies and fascinating ideas.

This is something I strive for as a musician: a sense of ease in communicating through sound, in any genre. After all, at its most basic level, music really is another language. This is an old idea, and Hancock and Corea are two of the most venerated musicians still alive from jazz’s youth, but somehow this set sounded very fresh, flexible, and even futuristic. They managed to connect with the crowd on standards – Hancock’s “Chameleon” and Corea’s “Aranjuez/Spain,” two absolute classics – while introducing sounds that for all the world approached the most dissonant, complex ideas found in modern classical piano playing.

For a taste of what that set was like, check out this video of the duo performing a similar set in 1978 – under different fashion norms. Or this one from 1979, at the North Sea Jazz Festival (we’ve got the full recording of that festival over on the Jazz Archive).

I came away from MJF’s 60th festival fully convinced of jazz’s ability to be flexible, adaptable, yet still firmly rooted in an era when music seems to be increasingly hybridized and sometimes nebulous. And, of course, a strong motivation to get back to practicing.

Armstrong, Hargrove, The Beatles and Film: New Posts on JazzArchive.org.UK

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Hey all!

I’ve been busy writing pieces on various jazz topics over on JazzArchive.org.UK. The basic idea I’ve had with the Altman-Koss collection is that with a database catalogued in its particular style, it’s really easy to ask broad thematic questions and quickly retrieve relevant videos to investigate. Its simplicity is its flexibility; with just an Excel-style sheet to represent the information on these videos, all you need to do are ask the right things and translate them into search queries using CTRl-F (CMD-F for Mac). The kinds of questions I’ve been asking have led to finding groups of videos that, taken together, tell a story about a particular artist, place, or song. For example, “What relationship did The Beatles have with jazz,” “What is the connection between the underground jazz scene and glamorous Hollywood films,” “What kind of person was Louis Armstrong and how did he change throughout his career,” and “What words of advice do successful jazz musicians today have for the musicians of tomorrow?” Each of those questions have propelled me on short excursions into the archive and ended up in posted shorts over on the Altman-Koss website.

Go check it out!

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Tonight: Jam at The Brunswick

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Brighton and Hove’s jazz scene has been wonderful, but tonight I’m playing my last jam here for the summer! Come drop by The Brunswick around 8:30 pm to catch me and other local musicians join Paul Richard and his quartet for the best jazz session in town!

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And a quick thank you to Adam Stokes for inviting me out to his gig at Martha’s Gunn last Wednesday. It was a pleasure to play with his group and Charlotte Glasson, who played circles around me on tenor sax, soprano sax, and fiddle 😀

Ronnie Scott and Old Jazz Film: Video Features from the Jazz Archive

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Hey all! Just wanted to post a pointer over to the Altman-Koss Jazz Archive website – I’ve been busy publishing blurbs on the videos as I come across ones I find particularly valuable or interesting, or on strings of videos that seem to tell an emergent story. For example, pulling out all the videos tagged with “Ronnie Scott” starts to give you a picture of the man as a working musician in a section, as a leader (and bit of a comedian) as he takes his own combo to music festivals, and as an impresario as other groups are hosted at his jazz club. Or you can search the archive looking for all entries tagged with “film;” a few of the tapes contain full-length films tangentially related to jazz that are generally of excellent quality and would otherwise require a subscription to Amazon, Netflix, or even access to a physical copy. So head over if you’re interested in reading various pieces on jazz! I promise it’s worth checking out!

John Coltrane’s 50th Anniversary, John Altman, and Jazz Jams at the Brunswick

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June 18th, 2017 marks 50 years since the death of John Coltrane, who passed away at the age of 40. This is yet another milestone reached this year, which sees the centennial anniversary of the first jazz recording (Original Dixieland ‘Jass’ Band’s “Dixie Jass Band One Step” and “Livery Stable Blues”). I was lucky enough to celebrate by meeting and jamming with someone who was worked with just about all the greats in jazz. John Altman, who donated the archive I’m currently doing research on, met up with my professor and I to discuss the collection: how it came about, who it was intended for, what interesting material it contains, and so on (full post of this will be available on the archive’s website, jazzarchive.org.uk). What I hadn’t realized is that several of the biggest names in jazz had actually sat down and watched videos of themselves from the archive, at the suggestion of John Altman. Gil Evans, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, have all had a look at the videos, a few of which they had been searching for elsewhere to no avail. Hearing this blew my mind – and absolutely made me more keen to finish the project so that musicians, students, and researchers can access these videos.

After speaking with John, he kindly let me know about a jazz jam down at the Brunswick in Hove. Of course I was there later that evening, and surprised to see a full house: unusual for a typical jazz jam, but apparently not so in Brighton/Hove. Led by guitarist Paul Richards and his trio, we had saxophonists, piano players, singers, even a harmonica up on the stage. I had the pleasure of playing “Ornithology,” “Sweet Lorraine,” and “All Blues” with the trio plus Altman, and while I had a blast soloing, these guys could play circles around me. They’re incredible, and so hooked into their local jazz scene. Definitely going back next Wednesday.

Keep checking jazzarchive.org.uk for more jazz info, video clips, and updates on the project!

Roy Hargrove @ The New Morning in Paris

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Was lucky enough to catch Roy Hargrove at the famous New Morning jazz club in Paris last Saturday. One of my heroes when it comes to trumpet playing and music in general: not only has he worked across genres from jazz masters like Herbie Hancock and Wynton Marsalis to hip hop legend D’Angelo, but he talks, thinks, and teaches about music in a way that’s almost philosophical. And he’s fun; at the New Morning show he actually stopped part way through a song, put his trumpet down, and started dancing, motioning for the saxophone player (Justin Robinson – a beast) to do the same. For a couple of nearly fifty-year old musicians, they had some moves.

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One of the coolest things about Roy is his stage presence. I mean, outside of the raw sophistication and thrill of his soloing, there is such a grippingly visual aspect to his performance. Since starting work on this jazz video archive, I’ve been paying a lot more attention to what can be gained from watching jazz as opposed to just listening to it, and Roy is a shining example of why jazz is so important to see. First off, his style – he tends to wear well-cut, light-colored suits, paired with big, athletic sneakers. He literally embodies the jazz-hip hop aesthetic in his outfit. And if he doesn’t have sunglasses on when he walks out on set (indoors, in a basement-like jazz club), he’ll probably pull them out at some point, maybe while he’s dancing. Then, he’s never just standing around, looking like he’s bored or even waiting. Roy always appears to be listening. If he’s finished soloing, he turns his body and fixes his gaze on the next player, intently watching them take a chorus. Or he might walk off stage and give the spotlight entirely to someone else. Or (and he did this several times), he’ll go sit by the drummer and tap on the drums with him. And whisper to audience members, less than two feet away. And just… be interesting. Everything he did had some kind of intention behind it. A relaxed intention, to be sure; he always looks laid back and content. But definitely like he had a handle on the performance the entire time. He engaged audience attention and controlled it very well, never looking like he was really trying that hard to do so.

And then the music was amazing. I’m biased towards his composition “Strasbourg/St. Denis,” because I’ve watched his 2007 New Morning performance of it on YouTube hundreds of times (not an exaggeration). And of course, he performed it now, 10 years later in 2017, because he wrote it across the street from the club (the nearest Paris metro station is literally called “Strasbourg – St. Denis”). And it was fresh, even though I’ve heard it so much, because, of course, this is jazz: every performance is going to be different. This time around, Roy played the head and then grabbed a cowbell, and had a contest with the drummer (Quincy Phillips). Roy would play a rhythm, and the drummer would spit it right back, not after him, but with him. It was amazing. Eventually, they both stopped, leaving the piano player to do a solo that was truly solo. Nobody else in the band played, but the audience was clapping on beat the whole way through (the nice thing about a jazz audience is that they stay on beat, too). Suddenly, the whole group was back in an explosion of sound, and Roy and Justin took the head to finish out the piece.

Going to see this trumpeter at this jazz club felt like a sort of pilgrimage to me as a musician, so I had to post about it. Some video clips of the performance are already up, check them out on YouTube.

Yazz Ahmed: UK Trumpet Feature

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Even though I’m currently immersed in the English jazz scene, it was my home jazz authority, SFJazz, that pointed me in the direction of UK-based trumpeter Yazz Ahmed. She’s British-Bahraini and recently released an LP critics have described as “Psychedelic Arabic Jazz.” As an Arab-American jazz trumpet player and composer myself, I couldn’t resist reading it, and it’s a truly enlightening perspective piece on the state of modern jazz and jazz musicians. Check it out here.

… And while you’re at it, be sure to give the album a listen to. La Saboteuse is joining my inspiration playlist right alongside Ibrahim Maalouf, Roy Hargrove, Hiromi, Christian Scott… etc.

Hidden Treasure: Undiscovered Footage of Gerry Mulligan on SS Norway

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There’s a lot to sift through in the Altman-Koss archives: the videos are long, they span a 75-year period, and the performers are sometimes barely known and other times household names, like Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald. While much of what I’m finding is up on YouTube or at least traceable via Google search, every once in a while I come across something totally unique and quite valuable.

My favourite instance of this so far is a video of Gerry Mulligan’s quartet performing on the SS Norway Jazz Cruise in 1995. This cruise journeys the Caribbean, launching from Miami and on to the Bahamas, St. Marteen, and St. Thomas, with epic line-ups of jazz shows on-board. A lot of the cruise is documented for advertising purposes, but little of the content is actually recorded.

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Now, Gerry Mulligan is big in the jazz world for bringing in Chet Baker, the trumpet player, but also for his innovations – for example, removing the piano from the quintet, which apparently shocked jazzers and revolutionized the way quintets do things. So Altman-Koss #44, a private recording of his performance on this cruise, was already interesting to me, despite the low video quality. But what made it appear invaluable was finding this quote from Phil Woods, another saxophone player on the cruise, speaking about it on Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective:

“I saw Gerry just before he died, when he was playing on a jazz cruise on the SS Norway in November 1995. Gene Lees and Johnny Mandel were there, and we all hung out with Gerry and had a great time, even though we realized it might be the last time we saw him. He was playing beautifully, more poignantly than ever. He was a lovely writer, and he played some of his new tunes, and the group with Ted Rosenthal, Dean Johnson, and Ron Vincent sounded great. He performed from a chair, and I’m sure he knew it might be his final performance, but he was playing so well and finding new ways. I’d love a tape of that concert, because there wasn’t a dry eye in my part of the house.”

-Phil Woods, Ch. 27 of Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective by Gordon Jack

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Gerry Mulligan died two months after the performance, in January 2006. According to Phil, not only was this performance one of his last, but it was also one of his best. And it’s possible we may have found the only recording of it, hidden in this archive. I wish Phil himself were still alive; I’d try and send him the video.

Monterey Jazz Fest 2016

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September 16-18 saw some of the world’s best jazz musicians playing in Monterey, with Wayne Shorter, Kamasi Washington (!!!), Gregory Porter, Joshua Redman, and Branford Marsalis all playing in the main arena for an incredibly stacked lineup.
Buuut I didn’t see any of them, partially because my student ticket ($22 for a full day) didn’t cover the main arena (not bitter), but mostly because my attention was totally focused on Ibrahim Maalouf and Elena Pinderhughes, the former being my favorite trumpet player, and the latter being a flute player and vocalist who tours with my second favorite trumpet player (Christian Scott Atunde Adjuah), and who is a phenomenal musician in her own right.

I sped down from Santa Cruz late in the afternoon, having had to stay in town for the most of the day, and got to Monterey just in time for Ibrahim’s show. I had to go back to Santa Cruz immediately after, despite having an all-day ticket; and it was absolutely worth the time and money. Ibrahim performed his jazz combo’s rendition of Alf Leila wa Leila (1001 Arabian Nights), one of the most famous Arabic music classics by Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum. Everything about the song makes it a cornerstone of Arabic culture: the singer, the style, the literary reference. Ibrahim, who currently lives in France but is originally from Lebanon, put a modern spin on his take of the song, parting it into four-movements (it’s originally an hour long). The version he played was a fusion of jazz, rock, and traditional Arabic music, including a cadenza where the rest of the band cut out and Ibrahim and spun the themes through Baroque, bebop, and even a hip-hop breakdown. He’s even able to hit the quarter tones in the Arabic maqqams because he added a fourth valve to his trumpet. The full song is on Youtube (minus the hip-hop).

After the performance I slipped backstage to meet him; he’s only in the United States once or twice a year and I had to hi. Despite clearly being tired (and probably not in the mood to meet fans), he was really nice and talked with me for a bit. Since my father’s from Lebanon I asked him about his roots; it turns out he’s from a village barely ten minutes (walking, not driving) away from where my dad grew up. Which of course made me want to ask a million more questions, but soon after I let him be and headed back to Santa Cruz.

The next day I came back with a bunch of housemates for a fuller day at the jazz fest, with the ultimate goal of seeing Elena Pinderhughes’s evening performance. We relaxed, ate good food, and enjoyed being some of the few people under 50 at the event. I’ve never seen so many happy drunks in my life. Maybe the key to drinking is just experience; on the shuttle over I sat with an elderly lady who was drunk out of her mind and forgot everything I said ten seconds later, but was laughing the entire bus ride, and totally thrilled by Davina’s performance.

Me and my friends sprawled on the grass in front of the Garden Stage while the Montclair Women’s Big Band and the Tommy Igoe Groove Conspiracy played. Right when the sun began to set it was time for Elena Pinderhughes and her band.

Every musician on stage was phenomenal. The drummer (Corey Fonville) and guitarist (Gabe Schnider) both were with Christian Scott for Complex’s Complex City Cypher, (featuring A$AP Ferg, Wiki, Your Old Droog) – one of my favorite modern jazz and hip hop collaborations. I hadn’t heard the bassist, Josh Crumbly, before, but his playing was so lyrical, both in solos and his regular bass lines. And the piano player was none other than Elena’s older brother, Samora Pinderhughes; together, he and Elena composed most of the songs they performed that evening. And the songs were beautiful: Elena switched between playing flute and singing, and in both cases she had a warm, gentle, flowing sound that still carried a ton of emotional power. Something about the way the music itself – definitely jazz, but definitely different than any kind of jazz I’d ever heard before – would effortlessly shift from tranquil and introspective to explosive, energetic, and complicated in a way that perfectly suited her playing made it impossible to look away. I was completely invested and absorbed, which is really rare for me; despite being a musician and loving listening to music, I tend to get really restless at concerts. I had no desire to leave at any point in time during this one.

But my attention was shaken from time to time by a red-faced gray-haired man, lying on his back front and center and less than five feet away from the stage, who was completely passed out except for an occasional eruption of hacking and coughing. It was so rare that he would wake up that we weren’t even annoyed, but we had the hardest time keeping our laughter in. I mean, it was to the point that the first few times it happened we thought he might need medical attention. I can’t imagine the band didn’t notice; but they didn’t show it if they did.