Happy 90th Birthday Sir George Shearing.

I would have posted a clip of Shearing playing Conception, my favourite among his compositions, but it already figured in this post. The one above isn't so bad, anyway -- Shearing's most famous tune, played at a 1990 Tokyo gig with assistance by Toronto bassist Neil Swainson.

Here's Shearing more than 30 years before that, rendering the same song with Peggy Lee singing.

And here's the Shearing Quintet, circa 1950 or so, playing Barney Kessel's blues Swedish Pastry, with some classic Shearing "locked-hands" playing just before the 2:00 mark:

Four interviews with Shearing, conducted by Les Tomkins, are here.

When tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin was in town last month, he delivered passionate, virtuosic solos that were highlights of the Ottawa International Jazz Festival.

In Confederation Park, McCaslin won over thousands with an urgent, eloquent plea during the Maria Schneider Orchestra concert. A few hours later, he made jaws drop at the Crowne Plaza jam session, so forceful and prolonged was his playing.

The saxophonist's new CD, Declaration, features the same kind of high-energy emotional release that has elevated McCaslin into jazz's upper echelons. But there's much more to its beauty. The disc, released yesterday on McCaslin's 43th birthday, places his horn in a novel setting. Most tracks feature an 11-piece group consisting of a conventional sextet augmented by a brass quintet. With Declaration, McCaslin is stretching out as much or even moreso as a composer and arranger.

The group tackles eight McCaslin originals, skilfully and meaningfully arranged so that trumpets, trombones and french horn add texture and commentary throughout. McCaslin is otherwise joined by his frequent collaborators -- pianist Edward Simon, guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Antonio Sanchez and percussionist Pernell Saturnino. All have opportunities to shine.

M, the disc's opener, and Fat Cat, which follows, are detailed, expansive journeys. They both have it all -- substantial melodies, compelling solos and celebratory conclusions. On both, Simon has time in the spotlight -- He's rhapsodic on M, which reflects McCaslin's interest in Egberto Gismonti's music, and urgent on Fat Cat. On Rock Me, McCaslin and guitarist Monder provide blazing solos before the song's slow, satisfying denouement.

The title track is more sombre, with some strikingly lovely brass choir writing and McCaslin crafting a solo that's powerful in its simplicity and lyricism. While his calling card may be joyous, torrents-of-note playing, McCaslin has more emotional range than that. Late Night Gospel, the disc's perfectly named closer, was also recorded by McCaslin on his previous CD, the trio outing Recommended Tools which I reviewed here. Both versions are great, but the new version features an exultant, soulful turn from Simon, another great Monder solo, and an exultant finish that ends the CD perfectly.

A wee bit of synchronicity means that I'll be blogging again about jazz's ostensible drop in popularity among younger music fans, while responding to that recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece about jazz that was, in short, just a drag.

Last Friday, on the same day that I wrote this post, the WSJ published the piece Can Jazz Be Saved? by its drama critic, Terry Teachout.

The headline alone put me in mind of this:



But back to the Teachout piece, which has ruffled the feathers of at least a few jazz lovers/musicians/advocates. Those who have already weighed in include Jason Parker, who blogged here, NPR's Patrick Jarenwattananon, who blogged here, and Howard Mandel, who blogged here. I'll single out Chris Rich's rapier-like reply to Teachout as especially fun. I'm late to this party, but that's what can happen when a salaryman blogger is, technically, on vacation.

Teachout stirred things up when he wrote of jazz:

Nobody’s listening.

No, it’s not quite that bad — but it’s no longer possible for head-in-the-sand types to pretend that the great American art form is economically healthy or that its future looks anything other than bleak.

Teachout relied on the recently released data from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts’ Survey of ­Public Participation in the Arts that suggested, among other things, the youth audience for jazz (18 to 24) has plummeted in the last 25 or so years. Teachout offered this bulleted summary:

• In 2002, the year of the last survey, 10.8% of adult Americans attended at least one jazz performance. In 2008, that figure fell to 7.8%.

• Not only is the audience for jazz shrinking, but it’s growing older—fast. The median age of adults in America who attended a live jazz performance in 2008 was 46. In 1982 it was 29.

• Older people are also much less likely to attend jazz performances today than they were a few years ago. The percentage of Americans between the ages of 45 and 54 who attended a live jazz performance in 2008 was 9.8%. In 2002, it was 13.9%. That’s a 30% drop in attendance.

• Even among ­college-educated adults, the audience for live jazz has shrunk significantly, to 14.9% in 2008 from 19.4% in 1982.

The findings "made jazz musicians sit up and take ­notice," Teachout wrote. From which, I suppose, we are to infer that a) jazz musicians did not know their audience was greying or b) that the stats didn't line up with their experience. There is, by the way, no evidence that Teachout had consulted any jazz musicians about their experience.

When I took notice of those NEA numbers, my response was to try to be facetious. But Teachout's alarums have prompted me to try to be a bit more serious.

I can't help but feel that Teachout is viewing jazz from 20,000 feet, and through dark glasses that obscure any signs of hope that contradict his thesis. I would have expected at the very least acknowledgement of the economic viability of the Diana Krall/Melody Gardot/Norah Jones brands at the big-label level, or, even better, some mention of forward-thinking means of distributing and promoting jazz (ArtistShare, to name just one).

Indeed, apart from a Wynton Marsalis name-drop, Teachout makes absolutely no mention of any contemporary jazz made by vital musicians of today, for an audience of both young and old. How Teachout ignored musicians from Joshua Redman to Dave Douglas to Donny McCaslin to the Bad Plus and beyond -- all of whom appeal to young music listeners, the last I looked -- is beyond me. I have to wonder whose head is in the sand.

I also find that Teachout's invocation of the old, tired, jazz-as-art vs. jazz-as-entertainment dichotomy is just too simplea construction to describe what's going on. Casting back, Teachout attempts to connect the NEA statistics to the decades-earlier morphing of jazz from entertainment to art form.

As late as the early ’50s, jazz was still for the most part a genuinely popular music, a utilitarian, song-based idiom to which ordinary people could dance if they felt like it," he writes. But by the ’60s, it had evolved into a challenging concert music whose complexities repelled many of the same youngsters who were falling hard for rock and soul...

The average American now sees jazz as a form of high art. Nor should this come as a surprise to anyone, since most of the jazz musicians that I know feel pretty much the same way. They regard themselves as artists, not entertainers, masters of a musical language that is comparable in seriousness to classical music — and just as off-putting to pop-loving listeners who have no more use for Wynton Marsalis than they do for Felix Mendelssohn.

And furthermore:

I wouldn’t want to undo the transformation of jazz into a sophisticated art music. But there’s no sense in pretending that it didn’t happen, or that contemporary jazz is capable of appealing to the same kind of mass audience that thrilled to the big bands of the swing era. And it is precisely because jazz is now widely viewed as a high-culture art form that its makers must start to grapple with the same problems of presentation, marketing and audience development as do symphony orchestras, drama companies and art museums — a task that will be made all the more daunting by the fact that jazz is made for the most part by individuals, not established institutions with deep pockets.

I'll pick just two bones, as I am on vacation, and writing during an insomnia bout:

First, is there anyone who "pretends" that contemporary jazz is capable of appealing to a mass audience that thrilled to the big bands of the swing era? Pat Metheny or Stevie Wonder playing to 100,000-person-plus crowds at the Montreal International Jazz Festival notwithstanding, I don't think any jazz fan is calling for jazz to supplant the mainstream music of the day. We'd be satisfied, I'd venture with artistry recognized for what it is and artists with sustainable careers.

More importantly, my feeling is that the art/entertainment, high/low culture split is not only too blunt a way of framing the situation -- it also perpetuates the marginalizing of jazz.

Yes, jazz is art (as I argued in this post last year, prodded by people who spoke of jazz as mere entertainment), and it is taught in colleges, universities and conservatories around the world. But for all that, jazz ought not be put on a pedestal. Its most special performances have taken place and still take place in small, human-scale rooms. Jazz fans don't need to dress up and they can enjoy the music with beers in their hand.

Teachout's view of jazz as effete may also align itself nicely with the mindset of a WSJ ideal reader. Such a mind might easily blown, however. I happily recall watching Wynton Marsalis -- whom many might view on first glance as the epitome of jazz as high culture -- playing in Harlem at a charity function several years ago. The music was "sophisticated art" that had the audience as engaged, upbeat and entertained, exhorting Marsalis to play with more fire, which he did. Museum music it was not.

It seems to me that if Teachout is blaming jazz's woes on the perception that its an unpopular, high-culture habit, then it would have been more constructive on his part to have poked some holes in that perception, which really isn't that hard. Otherwise, he's simply part of the problem.

Teachout concluded: 

I don’t know how to get young people to start listening to jazz again...Jazz musicians who want to keep their own equally beautiful music alive and well have got to start thinking hard about how to pitch it to young listeners — not next month, not next week, but right now.

There is, of course, nothing new about this counsel, and brighter minds than Teachout's and mine have been at it for years. I'll recap some of the suggestions that have come to me since my last post about jazz and younger listeners.

As Montreal guitarist Mike Rud wrote me:

I wonder if it's the music that has to change, or the way it's pitched to people. It seems to me that the value in Oscar Peterson or Coleman Hawkins should be nearly self-evident. I wasn't afraid to check those things out when I was 20.

If you have to overhaul the music to make it more popular with younger crowds, it's not the same music anymore. That's not necessarily a bad thing either, but still...

To reiterate: I don't think "jazz needs to change to survive" as do some doom-and-gloomers do. Not that there's some jazz dictator out there who can issue the dictum for change. The many musics of jazz are evolving, but they aren't making older jazz extinct, as I wrote here.

The 20-something, Toronto-raised, New York-based saxophonist Mike Ruby wrote me:

The jazz audience is getting older and smaller and I think that when people hear the word jazz they automatically link this word to Miles Davis, Louis Armstong, John Coltrane, and most music made from the '30s to the '60s. I could speak for hours about this topic, but the one important thing to stress is that most young jazz listeners are musicians.  I think that if the majority of young people went to hear someone like Joshua Redman or Brian Blade, they would really enjoy the music and would become fans. 

I agree, and have noted my conflicted feelings about 1959 annus mirabilis celebrations and deluxe CD packages that might reinforce the "automatic link" Ruby mentions, at the expense of living, breathing musicians and their contemporary art. One reason for me re-branding this blog from Thriving on a Riff (after the Charlie Parker tune) to Jazzblog.ca some months ago was that I wanted to avoid the appearance of being a jazz writer preoccupied with the music of the past, however great it was and is.

By the way, I think the whole past vs. present, culture-war-within-the-jazz-world thing at this point only diminishes the larger, more significant issue, which is to get the grab-bag of musics under the jazz tent out to receptive ears. This jazz vs. that jazz is  just so over, with so many collaborations happening between colloborators who might have been regarded as unlikely. To name just one guy: drummer Matt Wilson, who has played with everybody from Wynton Marsalis to Joe Lovano to Pat Metheny to Lee Konitz to Myra Melford to Andrew D'Angelo. That's a pretty broad swath of the continuum. Think of the great music that would have been missed if Wilson had been as close-minded as the jazz culture warriors.

Via Twitter, I received several suggestions for bringing jazz to younger people which deserve elaboration.

From Anthony Dean-Harris: "It's all in the covers: When I heard Mehldau cover Radiohead and The Bad Plus cover Nirvana, I was hooked deeper than before."

Here's hoping this clip below hooks some new jazz fans. Yes, if you're reading this, you're probably already on-board. But maybe you could refer a Nirvana fan to this page?

From Montreal pianist/blogger David Ryshpan: "Present jazz in non-jazz venues w/ not-always-jazz bands. "I don't like jazz but I like this," is frequently heard and said, no?"

Blogger/bandleader Andrew Durkin feels the same way, I believe, and I think there's much value to this tactic. Indeed, one of the best jazz hangs in the Ottawa area is the Monday steady gig at Le Petit Chicago in Gatineau. The bar has a buzzing, youthful clientele, but it's not like the regulars are staying away on Mondays, when the best 20- and 30-something jazz players in the area are on stage. This has been going on for more than three years now, and the only question is whether any other non-jazz venues might be "turned," on other nights.

From NPR's Patrick Jarenwattananon:"Jazz needs exposure. Cheap tix. Free mp3s. New authorial tones of voice. And a sense of adventure, even if it isn't "adventurous" jazz."

Exposure, these days, is a very much a DIY thing. The means are there, right at the fingertips of jazz musicians and jazz promoters thanks to a thing called the Internet.

My omnibus post, Using the Web to Snare Jazz Fans, catalogued just a few ways in which jazz musicians are following Teachout's directive. I wrote about the jazz world's Twitter fans here a few months ago, and since then, folks like Chris Potter, Dave Holland and Terence Blanchard have joined Geoffrey Keezer, Peter Martin, Roberta Gambarini and others in micro-blogging. Wynton Marsalis is a Facebook monster, relating to his fans with the immediacy and hipness of an Imogen Heap. Don't know her? Dig this blog post on her cutting-edge Twitter-based career, and this video that shows she's just as hip musically:

Oh, did someone say free MP3s?

Peter Martin

Dave Holland

Sunna Gunnlaugs

Yes, advocating for jazz -- which sounds far less desperate than "saving" jazz, doesn't it? -- can be a struggle, as much as advocating for anything that isn't on the mainstream agenda like AmericanIdolWannaDanceGotTalent or KISS or even Susan Boyle.

But to counter as succinctly as possible Teachout's vision of a bleak future for jazz, I'll leave you with what Lee Konitz once said: "As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be Jazz."

UPDATE: Accujazz's Lucas Gillan recaps the jazz blogosphere's cumulative reaction to the Teachout article: "People paying attention to staggering amount of passionate creative jazz made by young folks are irked by article, historians not so much. Only favorable response to Teachout article is from JazzWax, a guy whose focus is definitely NOT vibrant modern scene."

(Please bookmark this blog at http://jazzblog.ca and follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhum)

NPR has archived here a batch of concerts from the 2009 Newport Jazz Festival which took place over the weekend. So far, available for your streaming pleasure are performances by:

Claudia Acuna
The Bad Plus with Wendy Lewis
Steven Bernstein's Millenial Territory Orchestra   
Brian Blade and The Fellowship Band    
James Carter Organ Trio    
Hiromi's SonicBloom    
Vijay Iyer Trio   
Joe Lovano UsFive  
Rudresh Mahanthappa's Indo-Pak Coalition   
North Carolina Central Ensembles 
Esperanza Spalding
Cedar Walton All-Stars with Lew Tabackin & Curtis Fuller
Miguel Zenon Quartet

I'm digging the Vijay Iyer hit right now...

Streisand, not Gonzales, that is.

Barbra Streisand is to play Sept. 26 at the Village Vanguard, the storied New York basement jazz club.

News reports and Streisand's website have said that she sang at the Vanguard before, in 1961, "as the opening act for Miles Davis." However, what's described in Davis' autobiography is a bit more nuanced. The trumpeter recalled:

"One night we were playing at the Village Vanguard, and the owner Max Gordon wanted me to play behind a singer. So I told him I didn't play behind no girl singer. But I told him to ask Herbie and if Herbie wanted to do it thenit was okay with me. So Herbie, Tony and Ron played behind her and the people loved her. I didn't play and neither did Wayne. I asked Max who she was, you know, what was her name. So Max said, "Her name is Barbra Streisand and she's going to be a real big star." So everytime I see her today somewhere I say, "Goddamn," and just shake my head.

The Vanguard is a small room, and will seat just a 100 or so lucky people who win free tickets via Streisand's website. The concert will promo Streisand's next album, Love Is the Answer, which is to feature jazz standards and classics. According to Streisand's website:

Love Is The Answer showcases the artist as a cabaret and jazz singer of emotional clarity, depth and maturity, offering the listener a warm and intimate selection of late night meditations on love's powers, heartbreaks and solaces.

The disc, to be released Sept. 29, will feature more star power than simply Streisand herself.

Love Is The Answer provided an opportunity for Streisand to work for the first time with the Grammy-winning Canadian jazz artist Diana Krall (piano) and her quartet (guitar, bass, drums) who brought a refined and sensual poignancy to the album's spare and subtle accompaniments.

Krall's website notes that she will produce Streisand's CD. In addition, Johnny Mandel, who contributed to Krall's Grammy-winning When I Look In Your Eyes, is orchestrating Streisand's disc. In short, perhaps we can expect Love is the Answer to sound a lot like a Krall CD with Streisand subbed in.

I hope it sounds less like this:



And more like this:

UPDATE: Krall's guitarist Anthony Wilson just let me know: "Other than pianist Tamir Hendelman, I'm not sure who else will back Babs" at the Vanguard.

(Please bookmark this blog at http://jazzblog.ca and follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhum)

Tabatha Southey's once more professing her dislike for jazz in The Globe and Mail. Some of Canada's finest jazz musicians are not pleased about Southey's stylish but ignorant piece, as they should be. Still, my advice to them is not to counter with a barrage of comments. This is no Schneider/Heinrich affair. Indeed, a few commenters have pointed out that Southey's piece is a pointless flail.

Southey's likely the type of contrarian writer who gets off on needling others whom she thinks need to be taken down a notch. And that's all. Furthermore, the Globe may not even care about what she writes -- only that she's being read and getting a rise out of folks.

Best to ignore her, I think, and spend time on positive things, such as watching Montreal's Joe Sulivan Big Band, with Remi Bolduc and then George Garzone up front: 

The Wall Street Journal's drama critic, Terry Teachout, asked yesterday Can Jazz Be Saved?

Given that just yesterday I was chewing on some of the same issues here, I'll be responding ASAP, after some non-blogging on a rare sunny weekend in Canada's capital.

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about jazz's search of younger listeners, this post is all about the generation gap -- or lack thereof -- between a 40-something (me) jazz fan and a jazz fan two decades younger (Lubricity's Alex Rodriguez).

Alex wrote me this spring, letting me know that he hoped his blog would "become a place for perspective on jazz from my generation, those of us who grew up without Coltrane and Miles alive and performing, and instead with a whole lotta Wynton."

To which I replied, more or less, "Wait a minute! I thought my generation was the we-grew-up-with-Wynton generation!"

(Marsalis is only two years older than I am, but since he was a jazz shooting-star in his late teens, and since I distinctly recall his debut CD making a big impression on me during my last year of high school, I think of me and my peers getting our music together in the shadow of Marsalis and the Young Lions.)

When I put this to Alex, he cleared things up:

I guess your question about "generations" is relevant -- Wynton and the "Young Lions" have been the dominant force on the jazz scene for quite a long time, you're right. 

I am 24, so I was 7 when Miles Davis died and hadn't even heard jazz by that point.  I bought my first jazz CD (Miles Davis Bags Groove) probably around 1997.  My high school jazz program was strongly influenced by JALC's Essentially Ellington project.  I didn't hear a "big name" jazz act probably until I saw Wayne Shorter in Argentina when I was 21.  I never heard my first trombone idol JJ Johnson perform live, although I remember hearing news of his death when I was in high school.

I don't know how different it would have been for you experiencing jazz in the '70s or '80s, but I do think that younger jazz enthusiasts like me have come into jazz at a point where the JALC/Ken Burns/Albert Murray thing was pretty well-established as the "official history" of jazz.  When Ken Burns's Jazz came out, I was in high school (although I didn't see it.) 

I think the main difference between you and me is that even in the '70s there were still a lot of jazz musicians of the bebop generation alive and playing, even if they weren't necessarily playing bop.  My generation has to either swallow the JALC party line or be raised, in a musical sense, by ghosts.  As I said in my first post, I'm with the ghosts. Jack Teagarden, the subject of my MA thesis, died 20 years before I was born.

I'm curious to know the degree to which Alex's path into jazz is typical of 20-something jazz fans. Certainly, he -- as did I -- came at jazz as a school-age musician. But as I've mentioned before, I don't hold that jazz is necessarily music for musicians.

My own path to jazz went like this:

I bought my first jazz albums around 1977, when I was 13. A piano whose peers dug prog rock, I went from Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman to Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul and Keith Jarrett. Keyboard magazines must have been the bridge. (I also dug Dave Brubeck and Scott Joplin during those formative years.) I took out ECM records and Miles discs like On The Corner from the library. From there, I plunged back. Peers and I dug into 1960s Blue Note discs, Blakey, and Bird. I'm still weak on Pre-Bird.

In the early 1980s, Wynton Marsalis arrived, but his chief inspiration was the Miles '60s quintet. Peers and I were into him and into Terence Blanchard/Donald Harrison and into Branford's group. We wore suits too to gigs.

I'm old enough to have caught shows by Miles (electric comeback), Jaco Pastorius, J.J. Johnson at the Vanguard. But the ones that were seminal for me include the first time I saw Jarrett's trio, as well as Dave Liebman's Quest group. Also Woody Shaw.

Regarding jazz players of my generation -- the ones I know followed similar trajectories. They're grounded in 1960s Coltrane -- although they never saw him play, Trane having died at last a decade before we got into jazz --  Miles, Wayne and perhaps to a lesser degree Ornette. Of course, most of us can't ignore Herbie, Chick, Pat, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland. Bill Frisell, etc -- the post-Miles pack.

As for "modern mainstream" musicians in their 30s and 40s, the question perhaps is the degree to which they/we are keen on/influenced by our contemporaries such as Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mark Turner, Chris Potter, Donny McCaslin, Brad Mehldau and Brian Blade. Slightly to the left in the jazz realm, I hear people like Dave Binney, Craig Taborn and Jason Moran as big influences. And of course, so to are the best pop/rock of the day, sounds from around the world, and classical music -- just as they were for earlier generations.

On Ken Burns: most people I know dug what was there about older jazz, but were bummed out by what was left out. It's also possible that in Canada, we weren't quite so worked up. The politics of jazz are not right in our backyard.

Those are some of the difference between the different entries into jazz that Alex and I enjoyed, 20 years or so apart. What's more interesting, I think, is that we are more or less in the same spot now. What I find as I read Alex's work, or interact online with Lucas Gillan, the 20-something programmer of accujazz.com or with 20-something Canadian pianists/bloggers Chris Donnelly and David Ryshpan, is that the generational difference is not so significant when we are down to jazz brass tacks. We dig many of the same things, are excited about many of the same people, and are on similar or at least sympathetic esthetic wavelengths. Again, we all play instruments and so our ability to bond may only support the notion that I don't want to support, which is that jazz is music for musicians. I'd prefer to think that love for jazz erases the years.

Art Blakey said something about playing jazz and in particular with younger musicians helped to keep him young. I don't stomp on the high-hat or flail on the toms or press-roll as viciously as he did, but I like to think that jazz helps to keep me young too.

(Please bookmark this blog at http://jazzblog.ca and follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhum)

The audience for this music is basically the same, no matter if you play in Eastern Europe or in Asia or in the U.S. There is a slightly younger audience in the U.S. and Eastern Europe (the Baltic States, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and other great places with a huge and curious audience!) than in Western Europe. It’s much more fun to play for a younger mixed crowd than for only 50-year-old men with beards, with German beers in their hands . . . no offence, you guys!
                       Swedish free-jazz saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, interview with thequietus.com

On behalf of all lager-swilling greybeards, I say, "None taken!" Gustafsson, I think, puts his finger on a problem that many say afflicts not only his own iconoclastic music but jazz across the board.

Indeed, as the fine bloggers at Twenty Dollars wrote not so long ago:

The recent NEA study on arts participation in America revealed that the median age of the jazz audience has risen 17 years since 1982, from 29 to 46, and that the percentage of young people, ages 18-24, who attended a jazz concert in a year fell from 17.5 per cent to 7.3 per cent 7.3, a decline of 58 per cent. No one can dispute that the jazz audience is getting older, and smaller.

                                                          Twenty Dollars, The Jazz Audience Smells Funny...

Since the NEA study was released last month, and indeed, prior to its release, There's been a fair bit of handwringing about jazz and its apparently dwindling appeal to young listeners. Some commentators have proposed solutions that are marketing moves. A few venture that some kind of esthetic capitulations changes are required to make kids dig jazz. Here's a selective little recap:

MAKE JAZZ... SMOOTHER?

At a recent Las Vegas jazz gathering described here, one pessimistic speaker lamented:

“If we don’t build a bridge between what jazz was and what jazz needs to become, it’s going to die here. We need to find a way for the art form to evolve and become something people in their 20s and 30s will want to come out and see. If we don’t educate the young about what was and also expose them to what is, jazz is going to die. It has nowhere to go.”

That the speaker was a smooth jazz DJ named Dana Crawford gives me a definite bad feeling. I really, really hope that "what jazz needs to become" has nothing to do with Boney M.

In any event, I don't think jazz needs to "change" or "evolve" -- as if some kind of uni-directional move was possible for a hodge-podge of different musics expanding in all directions. That said, jazz continues to grow. because that's what it does, not because of some DJ's imperative. Basically, in my upbeat, inclusive view, the intrinsic merits and value of all the musics under jazz's big tent, from the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra to Mats Gustafsson's The Thing, are not in dispute.

Just writing the words "smooth jazz" makes me hanker for a blast of Gustafsson's trio playing Black Sabbath's Iron Man:



MAKE JAZZ... JAMMIER?

The author of the PlasticSax blog out of Kansas City cites his "insistence that a commercially viable future for jazz lies within the jam band community."

Seems to me that DownBeat, Medeski Martin and Wood, John Scofield  et al were all riding that horse some years ago -- and yet, the NEA numbers are still what they are. Where's the jam-based uptick?

I'm certainly not opposed to jam bands, and the park-filling popularity of SMV this summer at the Ottawa International Jazz Festival, reviewed here and shown below, does speak to jam-based music's broader appeal.

But still, I wonder how you get jam fans to swim upstream musically from two-chord grooving to stuff that has considerably more moods and materials to it, and more history too. I suppose it would be a gradual process, or a matter of stressing commonalites (Coltrane liked to stretch out, So What = two-chord jam) rather than getting hung up on details. Here, blogger Andrew Zender exhorts Jam Nation to make the hyperspace jump to Planet Rosenwinkel:

My friend over at Plastic Sax has many-a-time mentioned that the future of jazz, particularly its appeal to future generations, lies within the hands of the jam-band oriented groups.  If that’s the case, then their ravenous fan base should immediately follow [this] NPR link [for Rosenwinkel's Quartet January '09 show at the Village Vanguard] and download this show, and then go buy (Kurt) Rosenwinkel’s The Remedy.

Maybe Phish should have this group open for them.  Rosenwinkel and Trey Anastasio could easily duel into the night, and the drums sound just like something Jon Fishman would hammer out in the Vermont-based group’s jam sessions, or in his work with The Jazz Mandolin Project.  While some of the tracks meander a bit for some listeners’ tastes, several of the them have enough movement to appeal to those with short attention spans – or those who simply can’t wait to be rewarded through a patient listen.

Interesting.

MAKE JAZZ... HIP-HOPPIER?

Many certified young jazz heavies have done so -- Roy Hargrove and Nicholas Payton just to name trumpeters, Robert Glasper with Mos Def most prominently, perhaps  -- although I don't think any are trying to advance a save-jazz-by-transforming-it agenda. But I'm sure there are folks out there who contend that trading ding-ding-a-ding for a DJ and mad beats is the lifesaving move that jazz needs.

A recent case to consider: the young drummer Karriem Riggins -- who played straightahead jazz with Ray Brown and Mulgrew Miller, among others -- is fusing jazz and hip-hop with his band that includes Miller (!) on piano, Joe Sanders on bass, vibist Warren Wolf and DJ Dummy:

Minnesota blogger Pamela Espeland interviewed Riggins and Miller here.  Some excerpts:

PE: You’ve been on parallel paths—hip-hop and jazz. Larry and I were wondering, how does an audience approach that? Most people are not on those two paths.

KR: A lot of people are, actually.

LE: How did you figure out how to incorporate the DJ so well? I’ve seen a couple of other folks try to incorporate DJs and it didn’t work out very well.

KR: It’s important for the DJ to have a musical ear, to know when to do whatever—when it’s called for to scratch, or mix something in. It has to be in context. It’s all a taste thing.

and:

PE: We asked this of Karriem, too, but in a different way: Your recordings tend to be pretty straightahead jazz. How do you feel about this hip-hop stuff?

MM: Well, um…I’m still, you know, getting some insight to it.

PE: Does it feel natural to you?

MM: It’s all music. I grew up listening to rhythm and blues, so it’s not totally foreign. My challenge is finding a way to fit in. That’s what I’ve spent my life doing, fitting in, being a team player.

PE: I would think that people would be more concerned about fitting in with you, frankly.

MM (laughs): Well, you know, I think a reason that I work in the situation I work in is because I have a pretty good track record for fitting in. But it’s very interesting thus far. It’s been a very interesting project.

I'm all for introducing new beats and influences into jazz. As Sonny Rollins said: "Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be Jazz." It's only when people say that swinging has somehow gone out of date that I start gnashing my teeth.

MAKE JAZZ... YOUNGER!

The Ottawa International Jazz Festival put 20-somethings Esperanza Spalding, Julian Lage and Trombone Shorty on its mainstage this summer. More power to them.

I'm also buoyed by the progress made by young and accomplished jazz players such as Taylor Eigsti, Robert Glasper, Gerald Clayton and especially Aaron Parks. They're just the most visible, big-label examples of musicians who are a) at least decade or so younger than the verging-on-middle-aged heavies such as Rosenwinkel, Chris Potter, Donny McCaslin, Brian Blade and Brad Mehldau; and b) definitely worth hearing. From Canada's jazz community, I'd single out young pianists Chris Donnelly and Amanda Tosoff and saxophonist Evan Antzen as particularly noteworthy. 

The over-30 but still youthful Darcy James Argue also makes jazz for young ears, the Village Voice's Jim MacNie recently wrote here. Not only did MacNie call DJA's Infernal Machines "2009's consensus jazz disc," he added: "A fanfare here, a freak-out there, enough dark hues and ingenious oddities to woo a 20-something audience that doesn't know or care about the ancient stack o' riffs that big bands were built on; it's all here."

Out of Montreal, the young jazzfans behind nextbop.com feel that they can market youthful jazz to younger listeners.

Nextbop's co-founder Sebastien Helary wrote me: "We’ve noticed that there is an interest for jazz among our peers but it’s difficult for them to discover it since it doesn’t play on the radio stations they listen to or on the television channels they watch.

"So we’re trying to bridge this gap. And even though we might not create true jazz aficionados, we’re convince that young people will integrate groups like Brad Mehldau, The Bad Plus and Christian Scott to their current music catalog. And hopefully some of them will then be curious to discover more about all types of jazz music!"

In principle, I want to see nextbop's online play work -- but what else would a jazz blogger say? Some of the comments that I read following the demise/resurrection of JazzTimes are also pertinent; some young, post-Internet jazz fans such as Lubricity blogger Alex Rodriguez wrote that they were never big readers of hard-copy jazz magazines.

ASSOCIATE JAZZ WITH THINGS YOUNG PEOPLE LIKE

Exhibit A: Kind of Blue skateboards!




Exhibit B:

Carlos Santana, who is practically an honorary jazz guitarist given his collaborations with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, is to be featured in the upcoming video game Guitar Hero 5, it says here.

Some Verve types really need to get Scofield into Guitar Hero 6. Or how about Pat Metheny or George Benson?

Critic Nate Chinen wrote at length and seriously about merging jazz and music-based video gaming here. Drummer Ali Jackson needs no convincing, as I noted here.

Exhibit C: (which is not a jazz example, but has to do with music-related product placement)

I recently read that the Sammy Kershaw tune Louisiana Hot Sauce was featured on a recent Sunday night on an episode of HBO's cool vampire drama True Blood. By Monday morning, the song was one of the top downloaded tracks on iTunes, and SammyKershaw.com was so overloaded with traffic that the site crashed several times.

What if that Kershaw tune had been something by Allen Toussaint or Brian Blade?

SMALL BUT MEANINGFUL GESTURES OF THE ACT-LOCALLY KIND

Blogger Matthew Rubin at Twenty Dollars suggested here that young, local jazz up-and-comers open for big stars giving big shows. Rubin thinks there are two "jazz audiences" -- an older, moneyed, more conservative batch and a younger, less monied batch -- and he would "like more young musicians to be able to get a crack at the older, wealthier jazz audience before it dies out completely."

Pamela Espeland compiled suggestions from her Minnesota Post readers -- follow the link here.

GET INTO THE MINDS OF A YOUNGER JAZZ FAN OR TWO TO UNDERSTAND WHY THE MUSIC, CONTRARY TO THE STATS, APPEALS TO THEM:

That's what I'll be doing in the next post.

Until then, if you have any comments about jazz and the youth audience, please share them below.

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An actor as well as a singer, Amanda Strawn may be the only Take Five respondent who also has a lengthy bio at IMDb.com.

Having recently relocated from Ottawa to Montreal, the deep-voiced Strawn returns to Cafe Paradiso on Friday for a night of music that should be smooth and soulful, backed by guitarist Mike Rud and bassist Stephen Szawlowski.

Strawn was game to the take the blog's quiz, and quickly furnished these answers:

1. What's the difference between good music and bad music?
Good music goes through you, you feel it. Bad music... you just hear sounds.

2. What jazz musician past or present would you most like to have dinner with, and why?
Joe Zawinul. A family friend I miss him much and he has never heard me sing.

3. What's one thing that you're practicing these days?
Practicing some songs for Cirque Du Soleil, for my application, A few songs in Italian, operatic. Not my genre but definitely do-able.

4. Name three songs in heavy rotation on your iPod.
Missy Elliott -- Get Your Freak On
Cassandra Wilson -- Moon River
Sarah Vaughn -- Return To Paradise

5. What would you be doing with your life if you weren't a jazz musician?
If i were not a artist, I would be a professional masseuse!! Either that or dead. Not living my purpose would be a slow death!

Amanda Strawn performs Friday at Cafe Paradiso (199 Bank St.) from 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. There 's a $5 fee for non-diners.

Montreal's jazz musicians are playing a free concert this Sunday, Aug. 9, in memory of the late Len Dobbin, the city's famed jazz journalist, radio host, photographer and fan.

Dobbin, 74, died July 9, after suffering a stroke while sitting at his favourite seat at the Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill. It seemed to some a fitting way for Dobbin to pass away, since he was so utterly dedicated to his beloved music. (Modestly, he described himself only as "a friend to jazz." The Montreal International Jazz Festival, which was in full swing when Dobbin died, dedicated the remainder of its days to him and organized Sunday's tribute party.

The event will take place at L'Astral (305 Ste. Catherine St. West), and run from 11 a.m. till 5 p.m. Appearing will be pianist Oliver Jones, singers Ranee Lee and Dorothee Berryman, saxophonist Dave Turner. Pianist Andre White will host a jam session and Trevor Payne and the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir will close the day. A brunch will be served throughout and donations will be collected to create a scholarship in Dobbin's name.

Here's Andre Menard, artistic director of the Montreal International Jazz Festival, remembering Dobbin just hours after Dobbin died.



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Ottawa trumpeter Charley Gordon recently reported to me to keep my ears open for the young Ottawa vocalist Renee Yoxon. They were on a bandstand together and she was sounding good, Gordon said.

Somehow, I've not yet heard Yoxon, pictured right in a photo by Brett Delmage, sing in person. She's definitely out on the scene. It seems like I've bumped into her at every other recent Ottawa jazz event I've attended, and from what I can tell, she's gets to many events that I'm missing.

I've checked out her tracks at her website, and they sound good, distinguished by considerably more assurance and presence than I  expect from someone still in university, and not studying music, either.

I'm intending to catch Yoxon tonight when she performs with pianist Kelsey McNulty and Vineyards Wine Bar and Bistro in the Byward Market.

To get to know Yoxon better musically, I gave her the blog's mini-interrogation. Here are her replies:

1)  What's the difference between good music and bad music?
Two qualities I find important in music are depth and conviction, regardless of genre. For me, depth applies mostly to composition and can refer to anything from musical complexity to an interesting soundscape or thoughful lyrics. Conviction then applies to performance. A tune can be the most complex, interesting piece of music ever but if it's performed dishonestly it won't have the same impact.

2) What jazz musician past or present would you like to have dinner with, and why?
Definitely my primary influence, Carmen McRae. I would love to soak up all of her attitude and experience and knowledge. I bet she'd be a great hang.

3) What's one thing that you're practicing or studying these days?
Improvisation is the big one for me right now. I've been pouring over Bob Stoloff's book, Scat!, which is an incredible resource for any and all vocalists.

4) Name three tunes in heavy rotation on your iPod
Days of Wine and Roses from Dexter Gordon's 1972 album Tangerine
Epitome from Locked and Loaded: Live at the Blue Note by the Odeon Pope Saxophone Choir
On the Sunny Side of the Street from Easy to Love by Roberta Gambarini

5) What would you have done with your life if you were not a jazz musician?
Well, I'm actually completing my physics degree at Carleton University this December so I guess for a while I was considering a career in physics. I don't think I would have been a fraction as happy as I am in music though.

Vocalist Renee Yoxon and pianist Kelsey McNulty play at Vineyards Wine Bar and Bistro (54 York St.) on Wednesday, Aug.5, from 8 to 11 p.m. There is no cover.

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The Ottawa International Jazz Festival lost one of longstanding key organizers with the passing last week of its volunteer co-ordinator of 20 years, Doug McNab.

McNab, 74, died Friday following a brief illness in hospital. The former City of Ottawa employee was in charge of the festival's volunteers for the last two decades. As reported on the festival's website, when McNab began with the festival in 1986, there were 20 volunteers and he did a bit of everything from driving people to site co-ordination, to parking cars. The festival this year required more than 450 volunteers under McNab's supervision.

 "He was really a great guy," said Catherine O'Grady, the festival's executive producer. "Down to earth, less is more, valued the art of volunteering and was a master of it. His passing signals the end of an era to be sure."

Said Jacques Emond, the festival's programming manager: "I have known Doug McNab for over 20 years and in all these years we have worked together at the Ottawa International Jazz Festival, skied together, went to jazz festivals together, went to restaurants together and partied together. In all these years we never had an argument, Yes, we sometime disagreed about jazz artists and recordings but never in a nasty fashion. Of course, what came first were his festival volunteers. His memory was so phenomenal that he remembered all the names and even each one’s phone number and address. Doug never used a computer; all this information was in his head. He was also known for his generosity toward his volunteers and friends. Doug McNab will never be forgotten. He was one of a kind."

At the end of this year's festival, McNab announced his retirement as volunteer co-ordinator. But he might well have been expected to attended future Ottawa jazz festivals simply as a fan. "The ideal thing is sitting out in the Park on a starry night, having a beer and listening to Ed Bickert or Rob McConnell. There’s just nothing better than that,” McNab said in an interview.

McNab was proud of what he had accomplished in terms of mobilizing volunteers behind the festival. “It’s our secret weapon -- a solid group of volunteers, people returning year after year, they’re the crux of the whole thing! Volunteers have this power to make a difference because they ARE the community –- they can change things and make life better. They don’t volunteer because they have to, but because they want to.”

Despite the countless hours that McNab devoted to the jazz festival, he also volunteered for the West Carleton Public Library, the Red Trillium Craft and Garden Tour, the Diefenbunker, the Canadian Association of Disabled Skiiers and other events and causes.

Friends are invited to visit at the West Chapel of Hulse, Playfair & McGarry, 150 Woodroffe Avenue at Richmond Road on Sunday, August 9th from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 pm. Memorial Service will be held in the Chapel on Monday, August 10 at 11 am. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations to CHEO or to the Carp Library would be appreciated.

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"The problem is overkill. The floodgates are open with an overabundance of substandard product because everyone has access to some kind of recording medium, whether they are ready to present a project meant for public consumption or not. So in order for people to get to the real gemstones, they have to sit [sic] through all the muck. They have to get a machete and hack through the jungle of CDs that are not really developed and print quality."

Saxophonist Greg Osby, inteviewed by Lloyd Peterson in Music and the Creative Spirit

After seven months of muck-sifting, I'm scribbling down a list of contenders for my fave CDs of 2009 list. They are, in no particular order:

Declaration -- Donny McCaslin (due out Aug. 11, but I've heard it and it's really something)
Live at Jazz Standard -- Fred Hersch Pocket Orchestra
Third Occasion -- David Binney
You've Got A Friend -- Kevin Hays
Share -- Baptiste Trotignon
Infernal Machines -- Darcy James Argue's Secret Society
The Bright Mississippi -- Allen Toussaint
The Story -- The Story
Aurea -- Geoffrey Keezer
New York Nights -- Enrico Rava
Ultrahang -- Chris Potter

I have high hopes for these CDs which have yet to drop or at least land on my desk:

Choices -- Terence Blanchard
Mostly Coltrane -- Steve Kuhn
Poesia -- Edward Simon
Este Momento -- Claudia Acuna
Historicity -- Vijay Iyer
Eternal Interlude -- John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble
Koan -- Tyshawn Sorey
Fred Hersch Plays Jobim -- Fred Hersch

Critic Jim Macnie offers this longer list of noteworthy 2009 CDs. His taste is similar to mine and there's significant overlap -- "critical consenus," one might say.  A shorter list is here.

What do you think? What am I missing? All comments welcome.

A few days ago, Pat Metheny confirmed a rumour straight out of a science-fiction plot that had been circulating for some time: the guitar master is planning to go on tour with a robot band.

So to speak.

Metheny recently wrote a page on his website describing his next big endeavour, which he calls the Orchestrion Project.

It involves, Metheny says, "a new performance method to present music alone onstage using acoustic and acoustoelectric musical instruments that are mechanically controlled using the power of modern technology...

"In the late 1800's and early 1900's, as player pianos emerged (pianos played mechanically by moving rolls of paper through a mechanism that physically moved the keys), the next logical step was to apply that same principle to a range of orchestral instruments, often including percussion and mallet instruments. These large instrument arrays were called Orchestrions.

(One is shown at right.)

"For a number of years now, I have been gathering the forces of a group of talented and innovative inventors and technicians from around the country to construct a large palette of acoustic sound-producing devices that I can organize as a new kind of Orchestrion. The principle instruments have been designed and built for me by the incredibly talented Eric Singer, who is a major innovator in this area of engineering."

Here is a glimpse of one of Singer's creations, the GuitarBot, at play.

A bit of Googling found some intelligence from robot-builder Joe Saavedra, disclosed last January on his blog: "Started an internship last week at the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR)," he wrote. "My first day, I worked on the fabrication of a couple cymbalbots which are part of a robot ensemble LEMUR is building for Pat Metheny."

Saavedra also provided pictures of a xylobot (shown at right), marimbot and vibrabot. "Most of these are for Metheny," Saavedra wrote. "On a lot of these the mechanism is a solenoid attached to an axle, which strikes the instrument.  All are networked and controlled by MIDI."

Metheny writes that the "self-imposed challenge" of becoming the 2010 Orchestrion Master has been difficult and time-consuming, but exhilarating. He and his robotic ensemble will begin touring Europe next January and hit to the U.S. in April. An Orchestrion Project CD will be released as well.

As improbable as this project may sound, I look forward to hearing what Metheny will create next year. I'm sure that at the very least he'll out-do the Japanese robot that plays Giant Steps.

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