David Adler
January 2002

New York @ Night
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By David R. Adler

September 11 was of course the defining moment of 2001. For a good part of the year our minds were on things other than music. Given this, it’s easy to forget the musical highlights, some of which I hope to have documented in this column since its inception about six months ago. It’s beyond trite by now, but it’s true — music does matter, it does heal. It makes the best of times better yet, and it carries us through the worst ordeals. And jazz, that highly contested tangle of forms and idioms, is clearly doing more than just surviving. Whatever else 2002 may bring, we can be quite sure it will bring great new music. And NY@Night will be there, striving to bring you reliable and informative eyewitness reports from the best music spots in the beleaguered big city.

Coming Home

The Jazz Composers Collective concert for December featured two of the Collective’s principals, pianist Frank Kimbrough and saxophonist Ted Nash, in delightfully stripped-down settings. Kimbrough performed trio with bassist Ben Allison and drummer Matt Wilson, playing a healthy amount of new music — including the stirring bossa "Grass Valley," the minor-key waltz "A&J," the minimalistic, quieter-than-quiet "New Ballad," and the slow blues "For Jimmy G," which successfully conjured the spirit of the old Giuffre trio. On two older pieces, "TMI" and "Over," Kimbrough displayed his penchant for soaring melodicism even within a rhythmically free context. At his trio gig at the Jazz Standard back in February, Kimbrough told the audience that "trio gigs are few and far between," and he said it again here. It seemed that in the trio context Kimbrough was speaking his native tongue, that he had come home.

Ted Nash used those very words — "coming home" — to describe his quartet set with Ben Allison, Frank Kimbrough, drummer Tim Horner, and guest trumpeter Marcus Printup. (Word has it that Nash will be recording the quartet with Wynton Marsalis as guest.) It was with Kimbrough, Allison, and Horner that Nash made his 1991 recording Out of This World (Mapleshade), back before the Collective existed, when the future composers-in-residence were still getting to know one another. On the heels of Nash’s ambitious recent projects — the Double Quartet, Odeon — this did indeed seem like a return to roots. The music was swinging, in a word, beginning with "Ida’s Spoons" (based on "Stella by Starlight" changes) and on through the slower, Elvin-esque "Jump Start," the ballad waltz "Bells of Breschia," and three adventurous, burning charts: "Point of Return," "Still Evolved," and "The Competitor." Nash, who usually brandishes multiple reeds and flutes, played nothing but a mean tenor throughout.

The Howard Fishman Quartet also "came home" for their tribute to Lonnie Johnson at Joe’s Pub. They’re gearing up to finish their third disc, which for the first time will feature a drummer (the word "Band" will soon replace the word "Quartet"). This gig, in Fishman’s telling, was a way for the band to prepare for the next big creative step, by looking back on their founding mission and reconnecting with the old blues tunes and Tin Pan Alley standards they often played at Sardi’s and the Algonquin. In their finest clothes, Fishman and his mates focused primarily on Lonnie Johnson’s later "comeback" period, when the old blues great took to singing romantically oriented items from the Great American Songbook. They began with "I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love with Me" and went on to offer highly personal, inventive readings of "Prisoner of Love," "This Love of Mine," "How Deep Is the Ocean," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," and "What a Difference a Day Makes." By way of contrast, they also performed "Careless Love," a bone-chilling tale of lovers’ rage, and closed with the enchanting "Lonesome Road." When it came time to play Johnson’s own "Lookin’ for a Little Sweetie," Fishman had the soundman roll an excerpt of a taped Lonnie Johnson interview, in which Johnson claims that Rudy Vallée lifted the song and turned it into the well-known "I’m Confessin’ That I Love You." Fishman proceeded to sing both lyrical incarnations. The improvisations sparkled, particularly those of trumpeter Erik Jekabson, who has honed his time feel to a razor’s sharpness.

The Vanguard

Pianist Ethan Iverson was in the house for Geri Allen’s first Sunday set at the Vanguard. Allen was to be joined by Robert Hurst, Billy Hart, and Mino Cinelu; Iverson was on the banquette right next to the drum set, poised to study the mastery of Hart, his friend and colleague. I joined Iverson there, readying myself for the barrage. Hart can indeed play loud when he wants to, but far more memorable was the way the time felt up there. As Allen sent her remarkable piano inventions into the air and Hart and Hurst reacted, what became clear was the amount of space between each beat, and the infinity of creative options that existed for filling that space. Allen began with a haunting "Come Sunday"/"A Child Is Born" melange, then leapt into "Beginning to See the Light" with two extra bars of time appended to each melodic phrase, giving the tune a new harmonic and rhythmic expansiveness that Hart could really sink his sticks into. Mino Cinelu, playing electro-acoustic percussion with tremendous energy and vision, joined in for Milton Nascimento’s "Veracruz" and several original numbers.

Jackie McLean joined the Cedar Walton Trio (with David Williams and Kenny Washington) for the first of two weeks at the Vanguard. Walton and his rhythm section opened with an "All Blues"-like original and a snappy bossa rendition of "Body and Soul." Then McLean came onstage and counted off a blistering tune based on "Bebop." He went on with a mournful "I Fall In Love Too Easily" and then "Little Melonae" — how interesting to hear the tune played by its author, after hearing renditions recently by young neo-boppers. Finally the quartet honored a request from the audience and played Mel Torme’s "Christmas Song" (fantastic bass solo by Williams), then closed with uptempo rhythm changes. A couple of sad notes: December at the Vanguard was dedicated to the spirit of the late Tommy Flanagan; Kenny Washington was occupying a chair once held by the late Billy Higgins. Washington, incidentally, played the Bill Charlap stint the previous week, in addition to Cedar Walton’s two weeks — that’s three consecutive weeks at the Vanguard.

McNeely Goes to College

The NYU Concert Jazz Ensemble had a double honor last month: playing at Birdland, and being conducted by Jim McNeely. The first set started off with "Crescendo In Blue," conducted by graduate assistant and bass trombonist Tim Newman. The rest of the program was largely handed over to McNeely, who conducted his own "Pete’s Feet," "Absolution," "Mel," and "Extra Credit." (Most of these McNeely charts were written for the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, giving you an idea of their complexity and sophistication.) To break it up, McNeely played piano while Bob Parsons conducted a strong "’Round Midnight."

McNeely’s music is often incredibly dense, yet in the hands of world-class players it can be made to dance lightly. These young musicians met McNeely’s technical challenges but occasionally got sluggish with the tempos. That said, they showed great promise, although poor McNeely struggled terribly with their names, to no avail. The main soloists were tenor saxophonists Jason Scott and Jason Hassenstab, trumpeters Boyce Griffith and Tim Byrnes, and trombonist Rick Parker. Pianist Adam Fernandez played with memorable spark on the closing "Extra Credit," as did bassist Zach Wallmark and drummer Emre Yurtsever throughout.

The Bad Plus

According to bassist Reid Anderson, the name of this trio has "no meaning whatsoever." But when Anderson, Ethan Iverson, and Minnesota-based drummer David King played at Roulette, the downtown performance space, meaning was not in short supply. Billed as "the loudest piano trio ever," The Bad Plus does indeed pound it out; King’s athletic yet always musical drumming is an inevitable focal point. (One wonders why they bothered to mic his kit.)

Not unlike J.A. Granelli’s band EZ Pour Spout, this trio likes to take a highly unorthodox look at rock and pop, or what Iverson calls "repertoire from the radio." On their Fresh Sound debut The Bad Plus tackled Nirvana’s "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and ABBA’s "Knowing Me, Knowing You." At Roulette they played both of these and also threw in Blondie’s "Heart of Glass," even including the wordless refrain at the end with the alternating bars of four and three. There’s an element of humor in all of this, of course, but that’s not the whole story; Blondie, ABBA, and Nirvana yield valid melodic material, and when these players work with it they stimulate new ways of looking at creativity itself. Their radical approach extends to old standards as well, like "My Funny Valentine," which found King playing his drums with a pair of blue plastic walkie-talkies. When they reached the bridge, Iverson hid behind the piano, peered over it so you could see only his eyes and forehead, and proceeded to sing the lyrics in a loud, broken wail.

Next to this, the band’s originals seemed almost conventional (they aren’t). They included Iverson’s "Bounce" (originally a solo piano etude) and "Labyrinth" (for Borges); King’s "1972 Bronze Medalist" and "Keep the Bugs Off Your Glass and the Bears Off Your Ass" (the band’s "trucking song"); and Anderson’s "Big Eater" (dedicated to David King) and "Silence Is the Question" (the final track on his marvelous disc The Vastness of Space). Amazingly, Iverson broke a piano string during the second half of the show, bringing The Bad Plus that much closer to being a bona fide rock-n-roll band.

Joe Cohn at No Moore

No Moore, the Tribeca music spot, has reopened in shrunken form (the downstairs portion is padlocked as a result of fire code violations). The new Zagat’s guide says there’s no more live entertainment there, but it seems that’s no longer true. On a recent Sunday night, violinist Antoine Silverman and I stopped in to hear guitar wizard Joe Cohn, who was playing with Kurt Weiss on trumpet, David Glasser on alto, David August on bass, and Marcello Pellitteri on drums. Burning stuff: "Witchcraft," "Groovin’ High," and lots of blues, among other things. Cohn’s facility is astounding; sometimes his ideas seem to run ahead of his technique, and yet he always manages to land gracefully. This may be a semi-regular gig, and well worth looking into.