This week’s musical interlude is courtesy of the Miguel Atwood Ferguson Ensemble, performing Donny Hathaway‘s Someday We’ll All Be Free. This video was shot live a few weeks ago at California Plaza in Los Angeles.
Bilal Oliver does a fine job shadowing the original vocal style of Mr Hathaway on this song. He will have his own album Air Tight’s Revenge out in September… could be worth checking out.
It is a rare and exciting day when you hear a musician of the calibre of Eddie Palmieri in concert. One of the founding fathers of New York salsa and a great innovator in the Latin jazz of the 1970s, Palmieri brought his Afro-Carribean All-Stars to New Morning in Paris last Friday, and they blew the roof off.
Eddie Palmieri, Concert Pique-Nique, Reims France, 17.07.2010. Image: Eulsteph
Two hours of music stretched out over a pair of sets, suffused with humour and generosity. It was hard to suppress a giggle when Palmieri threw a quote from Salt Peanuts into one of his famously overblown solo passages. The grinning complicity between Palmieri and his bass player, Luques “Salsa” Curtis was evident throughout the gig.
Brian Lynch, Concert Pique-Nique, Reims France, 17.07.2010. Image: Eulsteph
The presence of trumpeter Brian Lynch in the touring band was a particular pleasure – an incredibly technically accomplished player, Lynch has been a regular collaborator with Palmieri since 1987, and directed the Grammy-winning album Simpàtico in 2006.
The music traversed Palmieri’s jazz catalogue (including tunes from Simpàtico and 1990′s Palmas) and included a steaming Latin version of Monk’s In Walked Bud, a nod to one of Palmieri’s own stylistic influences on the piano.
Palmieri apologised that the band wouldn’t be playing his salsa hits (Vamonos pa l’Monte, Cuidate Compay…), because of a lack of vocalists in the group. But with the energy on show last Friday, nobody went home disappointed. This is a gig I’ll remember for a long time.
Batucada Sound Machine is one of the many bands that grew out of Auckland’s funk/soul scene in the early years of the century. As far as I can recall, the scene congealed around a certain number of DJs and musicians. Club nights and the audience followed.
The scene was characterised by large-scale bands such as The Hot Grits, Tangent, Opensouls and one million dollars. If one were poetic and lazy one might say that the music reflected Auckland’s urban and cosmopolitan identity: jazz, soul, hip-hop, afrobeat, latin and funk congealing in one big sweaty mess.
Sound engineers either relished or dreaded the prospect of setting up a stage for a dozen musicians including horns, berimbau, harmonicas, surdos and multiple vocalists. A 24-channel desk was a minmum requirement. As were fun but low-budget music videos:
Of course, apart from a few forays to Australia, the sheer size of these bands has meant that they haven’t been heard often beyond New Zealand’s shores. BSM is an exception – a 2006 tour saw them play venues across Europe including WOMAD Reading.
This year they’re back in Europe for a month of gigs across the continent and the UK. They are definitely worth catching if they’re playing in a town near you. You will like them, and you will dance.
Here are the full tour dates:
June 11 2010 Blossom Festival, Alfândega da Fé, Portugal June 12 2010 Ollin Kan Festival, Vila Do Conde, Portugal June 15 2010 Music Box, Lisboa, Portugal June 18 2010 Sala Caracol, Madrid, Spain June 19 2010 Sala Joplin, Segovia, Spain June 25 2010 Bitterzoet, Amsterdam, The Netherlands June 26 2010 Afro Latino Festival, Bree, Belgium June 27 2010 Wereldfeest, Utrecht, The Netherlands June 28 2010 Colos-Saal, Aschaffenburg, Germany June 30 2010 Universum, Stuttgart, Germany July 1 2010 Café Hahn, Koblenz, Germany July 2 2010 Scala, Leverkusen, Germany July 3 2010 Bar Du Matin, Brussels, Belgium July 4 2010 Lustspielhaus, Munich, Germany July 5 2010 Spectrum Club, Augsburg, Germany July 7 2010 Guanabara, London, UK July 8 2010 The Stables, Milton Keynes, UK July 9 2010 Durham International Brass Festival, UK July 10 2010 Norwich, UK July 11 2010 Mouth of the Tyne Festival, Newcastle, UK
It’s safe to say I’ve finally leapt on board the Esperanza Spalding bandwagon. I got her album Esperanza a few weeks ago, and it’s pretty darn good.
For a still-young musician (25 years old) Esperanza shows remarkable maturity in performance and composition. She reminds me a lot of a young Tania Maria, both in the fact she is a vocalist/composer/instrumentalist and because of her taste for rapid-flight scat melodies spread over latin grooves:
But Esperanza is also all about subtle and complex songwriting, both in terms of the lyrics and their harmonic structure. I wish Betty Carter were still alive, because she would understand exactly where Esperanza is going with songs like She Got To You. Esperanza is the real deal:
In the heady days following the Second World War, Paris was the world capital of one of the first modern “youth” subcultures. Before rock ‘n’ roll, before Elvis, before punk, before hip hop, kids flocked to jazz clubs and proclaimed themselves existentialists or beat poets. St Germain des Près was the European centre of the movement, orbiting around figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre and the inimitable Boris Vian.
Today almost all the jazz cellars of St Germain des Près are gone, replaced by specialist boutiques and restaurants. Along the Boulevard, the cafés that were formerly literary haunts of Sartre, de Beauvoir, Juliette Gréco and their offsiders are largely given over to the tourist trade.
One of the last surviving clubs is Papa Jazz on rue Saint Benoit, and it was thence that we repaired last night in search of a few hours of slow whisky and music.
Papa’s offers a perfectly acceptable line in non-offensive, well-played small group jazz and by all accounts an excellent dinner menu. Guitarist Jeff Hoffman was offering some nicely-turned licks in the style of Wes Montgomery, and Philippe Petit’s parallel chords on piano drifted increasingly Brubeck-wards as the evening drew on.
The highlight of the gig was the arrival of trumpeter Ken Barker who sat in for just one song – Bye Bye Blackbird. I caught most of it thanks to the recorder on my iPhone. The performance was pretty good, at least to these jazz-starved ears…
Bye Bye Blackbird, performed by the Jeff Hoffman Trio with Ken Barker
Jeff Hoffman (g)
Philippe Petit (pn)
Pierre Maingourt (b)
Special guest Ken Barker (tp)
Papa Jazz Club, rue Saint Benoit, Paris 6e – 7 May 2010
In the summer of 1969, a mail sorter at a New York post office received a letter addressed “To The Greatest Drummer in the World”. There was no address or return address and the sorter wasn’t sure what to do.
Fortunately, there was a former drummer who worked the front counter of the Post Office who promptly found Max Roach‘s address and forwarded the letter.
Max Roach received the letter and said, “Oh no, I’m not the greatest drummer in the world.”
Max then promptly forwarded the letter to Gene Krupa.
Gene Krupa looked at the envelope and said “Somebody must’ve made a mistake.”
Gene then forwarded the letter on to Buddy Rich.
Of course, Buddy had been waiting his entire life for that moment.
He read the words “To The Greatest Drummer in the World”and smiled from ear-to-ear as he ripped open the envelope.
Thelonius Monk Quartet in Paris, 1969, playing “I Mean You“. Charlie Rouse on tenor is particularly strong on this performance: melodic and concise, never overpowering Monk’s composition. He reminds me a little of Dewey Redman… in fact, it would’ve been awesome to hear Redman play with the Monk Quartet!
Thelonius Monk (pn), Charlie Rouse (ts), Nate Hygellund (b), Paris Wright (d)
Salle Pleyel, Paris: 15th December 1969
John Dankworth passed away on Saturday. Here’s a recent performance of his arrangement of Duke Ellington’s It Don’t Mean a Thing, still going strong at 81 at the 2008 North Sea Jazz Festival, and only hung up his saxophone in December.
This clip epitomises a lot of what Dankworth’s music meant to me – his close partnership with his wife Cleo Laine (one of the great voices of the 20th Century), his penchant for tight, witty ensemble writing, and his consistent ability to connect with a wide audience well beyond the regular jazz public.
Thursday 14th January was trumpeter Kenny Wheeler’s 80th birthday. John Fordham in the Grauniad offers a review of the Birthday Concert that was held this week at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Image: Juan Carlos Hernandez
It sounds like it was a predictably wonderful evening – with a monster band assembled to pay tribute to this most modest of master musicians: including Dave Holland, Evan Parker, John Taylor, Stan Sulzmann and Norma Winstone… all players with long histories of fruitful collaboration with Wheeler.
As far as I know, the Verona date has never been released commercially, but you can pick up the superb Nineteen Plus One (recorded with the same orchestra) if you like what you hear.
Happy Birthday K.W.!
(Edit: for those of you who don’t want to download, Yann sent me the link to Kenny Wheeler on Deezer)
