billbeuttler.com

January 1, 1970

This is getting out later than usual this week. I had it mostly ready to go, then forgot to send it. There are a couple of quick hits concerning Terence Blanchard's benefit concert for Katrina victims — a preview for Calendar and a review of the concert itself. Blanchard, his saxophonist, and his band's road manager all lost their own homes in the flooding.

The Jazz Notes column was a profile of Ron Gill, who will be singing his tribute to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn at Scullers on Wednesday. He also hosts a jazz show 1 to 5 a.m. Mondays on WGBH, and in May he became president of the New England Jazz Alliance. Space seemed even more limited than usual this week, but I squeezed in what I could.

Other pieces to run included my review of Larry Coryell, Victor Bailey, and Lenny White — which finally saw print on Wednesday, nearly a week after the concert in question — and a profile of Stanley Clarke, accompanied by the rest of a package about some of the Boston fall season's jazz highlights.

I've also posted a new photo of Sonny Rollins with my family, taken backstage at Tanglewood a couple of weeks ago by Jon Hammond, who has recently taken up a second moonlighting gig to go with his jazz radio host duties in Rhode Island. I hope to put up a few more shots from Tanglewood and Newport as soon as I find a spare moment. (Those are harder to come by now that the school year is underway.)

Until next week ...

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Trumpeter Blanchard goes with 'Flow'

By Bill Beuttler, Globe Correspondent  |  September 17, 2005

The name of Terence Blanchard's superb new CD is "Flow," and flow is what the trumpeter and his five young sidemen did, dazzlingly, in the first of their two benefit sets at Scullers on Thursday.

Blanchard, one of his musicians (saxophonist Brice Winston), and the band's road manager lost their homes to the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina, Scullers entertainment director Fred Taylor told the crowd beforehand, and the night's proceeds would be donated to hurricane relief.

The group opened with "Wandering Wonder." A version of the song appears on "Flow," but Blanchard wrote it years earlier in honor of various New Orleans musician friends. It opened with Blanchard's slow, atmospheric intro and grew in power as other instruments trickled in behind him, Winston taking the first solo on tenor sax with support coming mainly from Aaron Parks on piano and Kendrick Scott on drums. Parks took a later solo, a mix of Herbie Hancock-style harmonic inventiveness with a bit of percussive dissonance.

Next up was Ivan Lins's "Nocturna," from Blanchard's previous CD, "Bounce." Blanchard's trumpet again introduced the piece, and then guitarist Lionel Loueke played a lyrical solo, singing along with himself in a faint, wordless falsetto that called to mind Milton Nascimento and Richard Bona. Blanchard followed with yet more trumpet brilliance, stalking the stage as he built and released musical tension.

Loueke, a native of Benin, starred again on his composition "Wadagbe," which he led off by tapping his guitar's hollow body like a percussion instrument. Then he added a West African chant as his melody, with his voice doubled via microphone effects. The rhythm instruments found a groove, and Blanchard and Winston joined them on trumpet and soprano, leading to a burning and passionate Winston solo.

The set ended with the new CD's title cut, which Blanchard explained was improvised in the studio, from Derrick Hodge's infectious bass line. At Scullers, Hodge also played a phenomenal upright bass solo on the tune.

"Remember to say a prayer for my city," said Blanchard, as the first set came to a close. "It really needs you." 

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
 
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Paying tribute to a dynamic duo

By Bill Beuttler, Globe Correspondent  |  September 16, 2005

Ron Gill is used to wearing multiple hats. He moonlighted as a jazz singer during the nearly two decades he spent working for Polaroid, played prominent roles in the nonprofit Jazz Coalition in the 1970s, and has been hosting a weekly jazz radio show on WGBH in the wee hours of Monday mornings since the late 1980s.

At 70, Gill is still juggling headwear. He retired from Polaroid years ago, but he's still hosting his radio show and singing. On Wednesday, he'll bring to Scullers "Duke and Strays," his tribute to longtime collaborators Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Gill will be backed by the trio of Manny Williams on piano, Keala Kaumeheiwa (bass), and Reid Jorgensen (drums), along with guests John Stein (guitar) and Philippe Crettien (saxophone). He's also found another jazz advocacy group to run, having taken over as president of the 3 1/ 2-year-old New England Jazz Alliance in May.

The "Duke and Strays" project is dear to Gill. The seed was planted nearly three decades ago when pianist and professor Ran Blake approached Gill about performing a tune with a student group at a New England Conservatory concert honoring Strayhorn.

"He calls me up and he goes, 'Ron, I would like you to do one of our concerts again,'" Gill recalls one recent afternoon in a WGBH office. "He said, 'I'd like you to do "Day Dream."' Well, the thing about Ran, you see, is he never asked you what you wanted to do. He'd tell you."

What Blake had in mind, it turned out, was for Gill to sing the piece backed by a quartet made up of bassoon, harp, trombone, and guitar. Gill incorporated a piece the students had composed as a prelude, added a visual flourish inspired by his design background, and the crowd at Jordan Hall that evening loved it.

"When I did the thing and got the reaction I got," Gill says, "I stepped back, and I said, 'Oh, my God, who was Billy Strayhorn?' I knew his music, essentially, but I didn't know who Billy Strayhorn really was. So what I did was I started trying to find out, and it literally took me 20 years. There was no Billy Strayhorn material sitting there waiting for you to approach it. Singers weren't doing it. Musicians were doing the stuff that he did with Duke."

By the mid-'90s, Gill had gathered enough Strayhorn material to do something with it. He corralled Williams, an old buddy from his teen years, to play piano in a small backing ensemble. In 1997, Gill and the band performed "The Songs of Billy Strayhorn" at the Museum of Fine Arts.

The concert impressed Gill's WGBH bosses so much they asked him to record the CD "The Songs of Billy Strayhorn" later that year. And the MFA brought Gill and the band back two years later for a concert of Duke Ellington compositions. The Scullers sets next week will draw from both projects.

Meanwhile, Gill's NEJA presidency is off and running. Early talk about hosting a benefit concert to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina has been temporarily shelved amid a flurry of similar events. More immediately, Gill put friendly pressure on BeanTown Jazz Festival organizer Darryl Settles to add some bona fide jazz to this year's event. Next weekend's lineup will include such purist-pleasers as Miguel Zenon and Nicholas Payton.

"I worked closely with Darryl to make sure that the event was truly a jazz event," Gill says. "He understood."

Ron Gill will perform "Duke and Strays," a tribute to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, at Scullers at 8 and 10 p.m. Wednesday. Tickets $15. Call 617-562-4111 or visit www.scullersjazz.com.

Hurricane relief: Zeitgeist Gallery is presenting a benefit for ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which lost its national headquarters in the New Orleans flooding) and New Orleans Hurricane Relief tonight at 9:30. Admission will be a donation of $20 or "best offer."

Also this weekend, vocalist Will McMillan and pianist Doug Hammer will present "Here's to Life," a cabaret concert for Katrina survivors, at 8 p.m. tomorrow at 56 Brattle St. in Harvard Square. The Cambridge Center for Adult Education is donating the space for the event, and admission is $25. 

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Calendar Jazz Picks

Thurs 9-15

Terence Blanchard
Scullers, Doubletree Guest Suites Boston, 400 Soldiers Field Road, Boston. 617-562-4111. 8 and 10 p.m. $20, $60 with dinner. Repeats Fri.

The fact he and some of his band mates lost their New Orleans homes to the disaster there isn't stopping Terence Blanchard (right) from bringing his sextet to Scullers. Instead, his two sets tonight are recast as a fund-raiser, with the club donating the night's profits to the Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief Fund. Blanchard, one in a long line of New Orleans trumpet stars dating back to King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, came to national attention when he succeeded another New Orleans native, Wynton Marsalis, in the trumpet chair of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in the 1980s. Since then, Blanchard has made a name for himself composing film and television scores, most notably 10 movie collaborations with director Spike Lee. But he remains very much a working jazzman, and his current sextet — rounded out by Lionel Loueke on guitar, Brice Winston on saxophone, Aaron Parks on piano, Derrick Hodge on bass, and Kendrick Scott on drums — is outstanding. The proof is on Blanchard's most recent CD, "Flow." Herbie Hancock, who produced it and played piano on a couple of cuts, calls Blanchard's group "One of the most exciting working bands in jazz today."

Wed 9-21 Danilo Perez Trio The pianist in Wayne Shorter's magnificent quartet also leads a fine, freewheeling trio (includin bassist Ben Street and drummer Adam Cruz), as evidenced by their recent CD, "Live at the Jazz Showcase." Regattabar, Charles Hotel, One Bennett St., Cambridge. 617-395-7757. 7:30 and 10 p.m. $18. Repeats Sept. 22.

BILL BEUTTLER

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Trio explores rock as much as jazz

By Bill Beuttler, Globe Correspondent | September 14, 2005

The most telling moment of Larry Coryell, Victor Bailey, and Lenny White's first set Thursday night at the Regattabar came midway through, when White stood up at his drum set, grabbed a microphone, and announced that their next tune would be "our take on an old standard."

The trio had opened with a version of Wayne Shorter's "Footprints," so it seemed reasonable to think that Miles Davis's "So What," the other jazz cover from their new album, "Electric," would follow. Instead, they struck up the familiar chords and melody to Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog," sending a ripple of laughter through the audience.

"We didn't say it was a jazz standard, did we?" Coryell said with a grin when they'd finished putting their spin on the rock anthem. "We love Miles Davis and Led Zeppelin." ("Black Dog" is also on the new CD.)

Indeed, these three veterans of jazz-rock fusion's 1970s heyday ("I used to open for him when he was playing with Return to Forever," Coryell said of White) spent the set bridging the gulf between rock's rhythmic power and jazz's improvisational and harmonic sophistication. And demonstrating that they'd retained their formidable chops through the decades.

White especially shone on drums, taking monstrous solos on Coryell's "Space Revisited" (written several years earlier for another great drummer, Billy Cobham) and "Wolfbane," his own propulsive contribution to the CD. Bailey's main moment in the spotlight was on his piece "Lowblow," which had him singing along to his lightning-quick electric bass lines.

Coryell, on guitar, did the most soloing. He primarily played a solid-body electric model, crouching and gyrating a bit when he fell into especially rocking grooves. But he sat and played two pieces on a hollow-bodied acoustic guitar, too. The first was a virtuosic solo reading of the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home" that seemed almost classical in its grace. The next, "Dedication," was a quietly melodic, balladlike piece written by White for his wife, during which the drummer switched to brushes.

For the most part, though, it was Coryell's electric-guitar prowess that was on display. And he flashed it one final time in an encore, another well-known tune from outside the world of jazz: "Born Under a Bad Sign," made famous by the bluesman Albert King and the rock super trio Cream.

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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With Trio, Clarke gets back to bass-ics

By Bill Beuttler, Globe Correspondent  |  September 11, 2005

Stanley Clarke has spent the past year reuniting with his first loves: jazz and the acoustic bass. Most visibly, Clarke, 54, has done so touring with Trio, the all-star, all-strings ensemble he put together with violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and banjoist Bela Fleck. That group's flashy chops went over big at the Newport jazz festival last month, and they're coming to Symphony Hall Oct. 11. It will be the first time Clarke has played Symphony Hall, he says, since his days touring with Chick Corea in their pioneering 1970s jazz-rock fusion group Return to Forever. Clarke's monstrous technique did much to legitimize the electric bass as a serious instrument in those years. But more recently he had largely disappeared from the jazz scene, having turned his attention to composing scores for television and film.

"That was mainly in the '90s," Clarke explains from Sacramento, where Trio was in the midst of a West Coast tour, "and to be quite honest, I was going through a divorce. I didn't really realize until recently how much that affected me. I just kind of lost the desire to want to come up with something fresh, and I had always liked writing music for films. . . . So that was what kind of carried me through the '90s."

One exception was a mid-1990s tour with Ponty and guitarist Al Di Meola, which resulted in their 1995 CD "The Rite of Strings." When Di Meola was unable to reconnect with the others for a reunion this year, Clarke suggested Fleck as a replacement.

"When you think of the instrumentation, it's kind of an odd pairing," says Clarke. "But I think just because of the musicianship — and also sonically, none of the instruments really conflict with each other — it just kind of worked. It's nice to see something that's fresh."

In one sense, Trio is a misnomer: Roughly half of a typical Trio set gets devoted to each man taking a turn dazzling the audience alone. Clarke takes his on acoustic bass. "That was the best thing about this year," he says. "I mean, I can't remember when I just played all acoustic bass for a full year. So my chops are really coming back. I kind of joke around with people and tell them that the electric bass was kind of a hobby for me. But it really was."

Clarke says his forays into fusion, film scoring, and other forms of pop music were digressions, too. "I actually never really lost the love and the desire for playing jazz music, what we jazz purists or people that really understand jazz know it to be," says Clarke. "But I tried many other things, because that's just my nature."

Stanley Clarke a "jazz purist"?

"I don't know, maybe 'purist' is not the right word," he says. "But I love that music. It's sacred to me, and I feel like I have to protect it."

He's begun getting busy playing it again as well. Gonzalo Rubalcaba hired Clarke for a trio album recently, with fellow fusion refugee Harvey Mason on drums, and Clarke plans on touring more extensively with his own quartet next year.

Then there's the new album Clarke is plotting.

"I'm working on a solo bass album," he says. "That's the thing that I've been thinking about for about a year now. I'm working up a couple Bach pieces, and it's going to be just solo bass. I was thinking about doing it years and years ago, but I just wasn't ready. I'm ready now. I'm really ready." 

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
 
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Fall Stars: Jazz

By Bill Beuttler, Globe Correspondent  |  September 11, 2005

Big halls: Jazz is more commonly identified with clubs than concert halls, but a handful of big names besides Clarke, Ponty, and Fleck will try filling the latter this season. Madeleine Peyroux comes to the Berklee Performance Center Sept. 27. The Bad Plus will be at the Somerville Theatre Oct. 1, with the Boston-based experimental trio Color and Talea opening. Wynton Marsalis will bring a small ensemble to Sanders Theatre Oct. 30. And Jane Monheit will plug a new Christmas-themed CD, "Jane Monheit Celebrates the Season," at the Berklee Performance Center Dec. 11.

Real Deal Jazz Club & Cafe: Jim Hall and Dave Holland will reprise their magnificent duet sets of last winter for three nights (Nov. 18-20), a blockbuster booking to top off the upstart Real Deal Jazz Club & Cafe's return following a summerlong hiatus. Other Real Deal highlights: The Marta Gomez Group (Oct. 7), Sergio Brandão and Manga Rosa (Dec. 2), Lyambiko (Dec. 3), and ''Christmas With Rebecca Parris " (Dec. 4).

Regattabar: After dabbling heavily in other genres for the past year, the Regattabar seems to be returning to its jazz roots. The R-bar piano should get a good workout this fall, considering the plethora of pianists scheduled: the Wayne Shorter-inspired freedom of Danilo Perez and his trio with Adam Cruz and Ben Street (Sept. 21-22); a record release party for Third Stream legend Ran Blake (Sept. 28); the brilliant standards interpreter Bill Charlap and his standout trio with Peter Washington and Kenny Washington (Nov. 5-6); the locally based Pierre Hurel Trio (Nov. 9); Patricia Barber doubling on vocals and piano with her quartet (Nov. 17-18); and the great Kenny Barron 's longstanding trio with fellow vets Ray Drummond and Ben Riley (Nov. 25-26).

Scullers: When it came to jazz instrumentalists, Scullers outshone the local club competition in the first half of 2005. For the fall, the club shifts its focus to singers. Some exceptions: trumpeters Terence Blanchard (Sept. 15-16) and Maynard Ferguson (Nov. 10); the Marsalis brothers' piano-playing patriarch, Ellis Marsalis, in a rare Boston appearance (Oct. 6-7); and Latin jazz great Eddie Palmieri (Oct. 28-30). The many vocalists include Ron Gill (Sept. 21), Tierney Sutton (Sept. 23), Jacqui Naylor (Sept. 27), Cheryl Bentyne (Oct. 4), and Dee Dee Bridgewater (Oct. 14-15), host of National Public Radio's ''Jazz Set With Dee Dee Bridgewater." 

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company