Spiritualized: Andrew Lamb & Newman Taylor Baker at The Blue Room

by Glenn Siegel

Although artists like Duke Ellington and Mary Lou Williams had incorporated religious themes into their music for decades, the concept of “spiritual jazz” gained steam after 1965 when John Coltrane released his epic, A Love Supreme. At the same time, artists like Albert Ayler, Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders were reaching for the ecstatic in their quest to imbue the music with spiritual uplift.  

Tenor saxophonist Andrew Lamb is cut from that same cloth. The 64 year old tenor player follows in the hallowed footsteps of those ancestors, as well as musicians like Lonnie Liston Smith, Azar Lawrence and Don Cherry. Lamb’s performance with drummer Newman Taylor Baker on Saturday, December 3 gave us new insight into the power of sound to cleanse and renew the soul.

Their hour long flight at CitySpace’s Blue Room in Easthampton was an unvarnished, unbridled and unapologetic foray into the free jazz universe; days later, the vibrations still reverberate. The unleashed energy had a cleansing effect on this listener; it was catharsis by fire music.

Baker began the evening in a low patter that built towards Lamb’s entrance, which was rough and full-bodied. That pattern held throughout the performance: a solo statement on drums, then the saxophone would join. Perhaps it was a stamina thing. Lamb moved slowly and sat down when not playing.

When he was playing, the music bounced off the room’s tin ceiling and swirled around the space with no need for on-stage amplification. A fusillade of notes, covering the entire range of the horn, came with little mooring to mode or melody until well into the concert, when Lamb started to testify with the blues at his back.

But within the gale force was a softness, expressed especially by Baker, who used nuance and subtlety during much of his alone time. He played the drums by hand for an extended period, creating swing patterns at modest volume. He slapped his thighs, arms and chest, a technique called “hambone”, at an even lower volume. At a whisper, he made his cymbals ring celestially.  We listened.

Baker, who turns 80 next year, has led a full life in music. He has recorded extensively with Billy Harper, Matthew Shipp, Henry Grimes and Billy Bang, and has history in music theater, having collaborated with Diedre Murray on multiple projects, including the Obie Award winning, “Running Man”. Other theater credits include work with Ntozake Shange, Leroy Jenkins, Jeanne Lee and Henry Threadgill. 

Baker was in Threadgill’s Sextett in the late 1980s. He told me that after getting off the road with Threadgill, his chops would be noticeably better. Reading down complicated drum parts, learning patterns he wouldn’t necessarily have come up with on his own, expanded his vocabulary, which he brought to other situations.

Until he discovered the washboard in 2010, Baker was the quintessential side man. His deep dive into this 19thcentury tool of drudgery gave him an opportunity to organize his own concept. Using expended shotgun shells on four fingers of each hand, customizing the physical instrument and adding microphones, effects pedals, and amplifiers, Baker has extended the washboard language, which he’s used in all manner of jazz, world, blues and new music contexts.

Andrew Lamb is a special individual. He is soft spoken and full of love. His spiritual essence is unassuming, but palpable. His playing felt like a quest, a search for attainment. Tracing a lineage through saxophonists like Charles Gayle, David S. Ware, Frank Lowe and back to Coltrane, Lamb intoned cascading lines of psalm-like notes, playing with energy and feeling. 

Growing up in Chicago and Jamaica, Queens, he alluded to being different than most children, and being bullied repeatedly for it. He told me that one of the reasons he loved to play football, was it provided a socially sanctioned way of exacting pay back to his tormentors. Lamb is quick to credit the Creator in liner notes and in conversation, and although he is by no means ascetic, he has a religious air about him that fits him naturally. Now residing in Nyack, NY with his wife, Lamb has forged his spiritual stance through plenty of real world experience.

He has worked steadily, if quietly over the years. He first came to my attention in the mid-1990s with the release of Portrait in the Mist, a wonderful Delmark recording featuring Warren Smith (on vibes), along with Wilber Morris and Andrei Strobert. Subsequent recordings on Engine and NoBusiness Records kept him on my radar. He had a critical reputation but was only peripherally in the public eye, making him a perfect candidate for inclusion on the Jazz Shares schedule.

The joy of being able to provide an appreciative audience, some money and respect to artists like Andrew Lamb and Newman Taylor Baker, is why we do what we do.

“A World of Piano” in our Corner of the Universe

by Glenn Siegel

“There are eighty-eight keys on a piano and within that, an entire universe,” wrote pianist and writer James Rhodes. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Valley audiences heard three distinct points in the piano macrocosm, as Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares presented “A World of Piano” at the Arts Trust in Northampton. Lafayette Gilchrist (Nov. 17), Ron Stabinsky (Nov. 18) and Marilyn Crispell (Nov. 19) each gave breathtaking solo recitals, filled with intrepid improvisation at all levels of intensity and complexity.

“A World of Piano” was a revival of a series I first produced for the Northampton Center for the Arts in 1995 (Jaki Byard, Stanley Cowell, Paul Bley) and every year from 2003 to 2012. After a final concert by Dave Burrell in 2013, the Center lost their Old School Commons space and the series went dormant. Until now. Kelly Silliman, Program Director of NCA, was excited to partner with Jazz Shares to bring the series back to life, and so we began the further exploration of the piano-sphere.

I had known Lafayette Gilchrist primarily through his work with the great tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist David Murray, with whom he has worked since the turn of the century. “He plucked me from obscurity,” Gilchrist told me. The long time Baltimore resident played with rhythmic assurance in multiple styles, much of it imbued with the blues. His playing brought to mind Jaki Byard and Dave Burrell, two expansive pianists who draw from the entire history of jazz. I loved his tendency to play a phrase then stop for a split second, adding drama and giving our ears a chance to catch up. It made me think of Artur Schnabel’s words, “The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes – ah, that is where the art resides!” His program of originals was full of ear catching melody drawn from the piano lineage.  Gilchrist is a beautiful soul, open and easy, and he made lots of friends on his first tour through New England, which also included stops in Boston and Portland, Maine. Thanks to jazz protector Ann Braithwaite for her help in organizing his visit.

Ron Stabinsky, unfamiliar to the vast majority of concertgoers, is best known in the jazz world for his work with avant-garde trumpeter Peter Evans and Moppa Elliot’s ensemble, Mostly Other People Do the Killing. For the past four years, he has been a member of the influential rock band the Meat Puppets, and is one of the most in-demand classical pianists in central Pennsylvania. Stabinsky, who possesses enormous technical skill and plays convincingly in many genres, is a charming and disarming music nerd. From the stage, he told us he was going to improvise like he does at home, and not like he is performing for an audience. He seemed to be able to play whatever was in his head, which was by turns, florid, eruptive, swinging and emotive. His work straddled contemporary music, romantic-period classical, blues, swing and other styles. He ended the program by playing two of his favorites: Horace Silver’s “Peace” and Thelonious Monk’s “Introspection”. Stabinsky is a long-time fan of “A World of Piano”, having made the four-hour trip from his home near Scranton to see pianists Matthew Shipp, Cooper Moore and Dave Burrell, along with his Northampton friend, Dick Moulding. “I really can’t put into words how deeply I enjoyed playing on this reintroduction of my favorite piano series,” Stabinsky wrote. Even though his visit was short, (he returned home after the show for an early Puccini rehearsal), the chance to meet his partner Mary, and his friend Doug, gave us a chance to get some insight into a really nice, very talented individual.

Marilyn Crispell is also a fan of the piano series. She played it in 2004, and for the last two years she’s been a dues-paying member of Jazz Shares. Her protean talent was on display at 33 Hawley St., as she wowed a crowd of 75 with her piano explosions. Shareholder Ron Freshley told me he felt the vibrations through his chair. But there were also periods of aching beauty, reinforcing Frederick Chopin’s insight that, “After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” Her improvisations seemed fully formed, as coherent as any written music, with ideas coming in torrents. Crispell is a self-effacing person. Her hair, like that of her upstate New York neighbor Carla Bley, obscured her face while she played. Her preference to angle the piano and lower the stage lights, emphasized her modesty. When Jazz Shares live streamed her trio, Dreamstruck in October, 2020, she insisted the cameras focus on her hands. Long-time Jazz Shares member Julie Orfirer’s solution to the lack of “face time”: “I just closed my eyes and followed the paths.”I love that Crispell’s demure on stage demeanor sits so comfortably with her loud, disruptive playing. Priscilla Page and I are so happy to call her a friend.

Gilchrist and Crispell stayed at chez Siegel/Page, and Jazz Shares board members Nancy Goldstein and Marta Ostapuik had the musicians in their homes for delicious pre-concert meals. We are western Mass. ambassadors, ensuring our region remains a welcoming place for cutting edge creative musicians, and their music. Three concerts in three days gave us a needed boost of piano bliss, which we hope to continue annually.

The Griots Speak in Holyoke

by Glenn Siegel

William Parker is the most important jazz musician to emerge in the last 40 years. That view is entirely disputable, of course, and subject to all kinds of varied responses. But that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.

So when someone suggests I produce a concert that includes Parker, I almost always say “yes”. The Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares event on October 29 at the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke, featuring The Griots Speak, was the 14th time I’ve produced the great bass player live. If you add his Valley appearances under Michael Ehler’s aegis starting in the mid-1990s, the number of times Parker has performed for Valley audiences exceeds two dozen.

Parker was the lynchpin that held the Griots together, just as he’s been the coalescing force within New York’s creative music scene since the 1980s. On Saturday, Parker’s mates were underground legend Juma Sultan (percussion),  NY stalwart Daniel Carter (saxophone, flute, trumpet, piano) and the Valley’s own Charlie Apicella (guitar, percussion). The pairing was the brainchild of Apicella, who put together the idea after meeting Sultan’s daughter through the music education organization, The Blues and Beyond.

Parker turns 71 years old in January, so now is the right time to step back, assess and sing praise. It’s hard to underestimate Parker’s influence as a player, organizer and friend. He’s a phenomenal bassist, whose work with Cecil Taylor, David S Ware, Charles Gayle, Matthew Shipp and Peter Brötzmann is well documented. He has 75 recordings as a leader or co-leader, where he plays donson’goni, shakuhachi and other non-western string and wind instruments, in addition to composing and playing bass. Taken together his music paints a portrait of an expansive soul, who despite his free-jazz cred, is blues rooted and grounded in deep, deep swing. 

Parker’s biography, “Universal Tonality: The Life and Music of William Parker”, by Cisco Bradley, was just published, and Parker’s own writing, including “Who Owns Music?” and “Conversations”, is both profound and straightforward, the way enlightened beings do. He and his wife, Patricia Nicholson, have built Arts for Art (which includes the Vision Festival) into a national model for musician-centered presenting, all while quietly helping hundreds of musicians and others in need. William Parker is a spirit driven pied piper, who put a whole music on his back and carried it across a period of steep financial decline.

At Wistariahurst, Parker’s bass lines, insistent, forceful, constantly shifting and always swinging, served as the evening’s anchor. He gave the audience something we could hang our hats on, and provided the band a direction, a tonal center, and a set of rhythms to work with. If not for him, the music would have meandered off the proverbial cliff. 

There was no written material, and except for Parker’s sturdy backbone, no real signposts  guiding the music. Sultan’s playing, on hand percussion and a large, African two-headed drum, was elemental and straightforward. Carter’s work on flute, tenor sax and trumpet added a tasty top that provided a modicum of melody, while Apicella switched between a madal drum, an instrument integral to Nepalese folk music, various bells and shakers, and electric guitar. 

With no one particular in charge, the music often sounded unmoored, wandering without forward momentum, listing from side to side.

The presence of 80 year old Juma Sultan was a cause for celebration. Sultan was a close associate of Jimi Hendrix, performing with him at Woodstock and appearing on a dozen recordings with the great guitarist. His work on bass and percussion in the 1970s with his Aboriginal Music Society and others, is collected on a beautiful Eremite Records box set, Father of Origin

Carter, 76, has a long history with Parker. He was on Parker’s first record as a leader, In Search of the Mystery Peace (1980), and they have played together since the late-1970s in the co-operative quartet, Other Dimensions in Music. Carter shows up on Thurston Moore, Yoko Ono and Yo La Tango records, and has a fondness for western Mass that was cultivated when he had a college girlfriend at Smith.

At the end, the 80 people crowded into the elegant Music Room at Wistariahurst stood to applaud, as much to acknowledge more than 150 years of collective experience, as to  show appreciation for this one night only musical experiment.

Twisting Trails of Career: Reggie Nicholson Brass Concept

by Glenn Siegel

The jazz world is built on the backs of musicians we used to call “journeymen”, artists who have learned their craft, paid their dues, and perfected their skills playing modest gigs of many types. They are the backbone of this music. The drummer and composer Reggie Nicholson, who led a wonderful quintet this past Saturday, is one such musician. His Brass Concept: James Zollar, trumpet, Marshall Sealy, French horn, Steve Swell, trombone, and Joseph Daley, tuba, shared an hour of meaty, alt-kilter music with a lucky few at the Community Music School of Springfield on October 15.

“Journeyman” is a dated (and gender-bound) term of faint praise. But I think of those freelancers and side persons, many of them drummers and bassists, as the connective tissue of the music, circulating stories and innovations from band to band. 

Nicholson is a long-time member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a Black-centered Chicago institution formed in the 1960s, brilliantly documented by George Lewis in “A Power Stronger Than Itself”. He has performed with AACM luminaries like Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton and Amina Claudine Myers, and anchored bands led by Myra Melford, Leroy Jenkins, Fay Victor and Oliver Lake. He is the epitome of the talented, unsung musician who makes everyone around him sound better. It’s always cause for celebration when someone who has so ably served others is spotlighted.

Nicholson has absorbed a founding principle of the AACM: to compose and perform original music that expands the tradition. His mastery of other instruments (he played marimba on Saturday) and his embrace of interesting organizing principles (he also leads his Percussion Concept), are in keeping with AACM precepts.

Brass ensembles have a long history in European classical music, and are frequently employed in sacred and patriotic settings. Nicholson brings a risk-taking attitude to the genre, creating  stimulating soundscapes that are both mellifluous and knotty. The sound was rarely loud, never brash, and often beautifully rounded, but filled with complicated counterpoint and dense chords. Most of the material was drawn from his 2009 recording, Surreal Feel, which featured Zollar and Daley. Eschewing swing convention and easy hooks, the music was highly composed, but left sections where one, two or three voices improvised. On pieces like “Celestials”,  “Surreal Feel” and “Local Express”, I heard compositional echoes of Henry Threadgill, the Pulitzer Prize winning composer who Nicholson worked with in the mid-80s.

Like Nicholson, the brass section are all veterans with decades of varied experience, including as leaders. They read down complicated charts and soloed with style and enthusiasm. Trumpeter James Zollar, proud brother of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the founder of Urban Bush Women,was featured in Robert Altman’s film “Kansas City” and Madonna’s video “My Baby’s Got a  Secret”, and has played in hundreds of settings with Cecil McBee, Don Byron, Marty Ehrlich and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, among others. He seemed to lightly direct his brass brethren through Nicholson’s written thickets, and used multiple mutes to add texture and humor.

Marshall Sealy also used a mute, a rarity for the French horn, given its large bell. His career includes work in show orchestras (Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis, Jr., Melba Moore), pit orchestras (Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey, Broadway productions of Lion King, Beauty & the Beast) and TV orchestras (Emmy and Grammy Awards). He has performed with Max Roach, Steve Coleman, Lester Bowie and Ray Charles, taught at Berklee College of Music and was the Director of Music at the Harlem School of the Arts. 

Steve Swell is an old friend who produced a memorable Jazz Shares concert in Northampton with his Kende Dreams on March 13, 2020, just as the curtain closed on live performance. Other notable Valley Swell-sightings include a 2016 concert at Hampshire College, and big band work under Magic Triangle auspices with William Parker’s Little Huey Orchestra, Jemeel Moondoc’s Jus’ Grew Orchestra and Alan Silva’s Celestrial Communication Orchestra. His five minute unaccompanied solo, full of gutbucket and extended vocabulary, was some of the most bluesy of the evening. 

Joe Daley has been a hero of mine since I heard him in Sam Rivers’ great small groups of the 1970s. His large ensemble releases of the last decade: The Seven Deadly Sins, The Seven Heavenly Virtues and Portraits: Wind, Thunder and Love, are towering achievements, which he hopes to tour in celebration of his 75th birthday in 2024. His playing added plenty of bottom, but I wish Nicholson had made room for him to rip some groove at some point.

There are musicians who, like basketball players who set picks, take charges and box out, do the little things that ensures the success of the group. But that selflessness can sometimes obscure other talents and higher ambitions. Reggie Nicholson and the other members of his Brass Concept are artists like that, first call sidemen with their own projects that teem with creativity.

The Never-Ending Now: Jeff Cosgrove Quartet Creates Music in Springfield

by Glenn Siegel

Sometimes in the world of improvised music, it’s not necessary to have long history to establish a rapport. The connection can be immediate if the musicians involved are accomplished, think-on your-feet veterans. Drummer Jeff Cosgrove had never met pianist Angelica Sanchez before they performed together on Friday at the Community Music School of Springfield, and Sanchez had never played with multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson, either. Despite that lack of shared experience, the music produced on September 30 by the Jeff Cosgrove Quartet was cohesive, magical and very musical.

I also had never met Cosgrove before Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares agreed to host his band; indeed, I’d hardly heard of him. But when he mentioned the personnel: Angelica Sanchez, Scott Robinson and bassist Ken Filiano, my wheels of excitation whirled. The affable Filiano was the lynchpin, both relationally and musically. He knew everyone in the band, and provided the connective tissue that gave the evening it’s shape and coherence.

The concert centered around five Cosgrove compositions, loosely woven together without fanfare or interruption. The sketched pieces sat inside a sea of instant composition, with four master musicians listening and responding deeply in real time. The results: open and abstract, but with clear contours and moods, carried this participant to a place of acceptance and  engagement.

Cosgrove was an unassuming bandleader, content to provide color and texture. His brief solos, sometimes with hands on skins, were understated and played at moderate volume. He skirted all the stereotypes: there was no bashing, no impossible tempos, no strict timekeeping, no overt displays of virtuosity. Instead, he added his voice to the others, moving the proceedings along without attracting undue attention. As a consequence, the band sounded as one.

Cosgrove lives in rural Maryland, and before that, in West Virginia, far from any critical mass of jazz energy. Although his profile might be low, his discography as a leader, featuring musicians like Frank Kimbrough, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Mat Maneri, Scott Robinson and Ken Filiano, is very impressive. His latest, History Gets Ahead of the Story, is a trio with John Medeski and Jeff Lederer. He is starting “Jazz Inside Out”, a series of concerts in Frederick, MD that will put him the company of Dave Douglas, Caroline Davis, Akua Dixon and John Hébert. He has created his own scene, on his own terms. If you want to know more about Cosgrove, check out this interview which appeared in my favorite on-line jazz publication, Point of Departure.

This was my first opportunity to spend time with Scott Robinson, who was an overnight guest at chez Page/Siegel. We stayed up past 2am, talking about his “lab” in Teaneck, NJ, where he records, rehearses and repairs instruments. He owns hundreds of reed, brass and percussion instruments (20 tubas, he told me), which he reconditions and sometimes sells. Many of them are rare, obsolete or custom made. He is recording an improvised symphony comprised of him playing his musical ephemera, and is half-way through the first of four movements; he estimates it will take him 20 years to complete. The culmination of his 2015 residency at The Stone was his Orchestra Impossible, featuring well known New York musicians playing his assortment of obscure, rarely heard instruments. The day after the Jazz Shares concert, at Robinson’s behest, we visited some Northampton antique shops in search of old sound making devices. In Springfield, Robinson played a C melody saxophone, a tárogató (a Hungarian woodwind), and a cornet made in Springfield, Massachusetts by the John Heald Company in 1902 or 1903.

Robinson’s playing was magnificent, with complete control over all three horns. He used various extended techniques judiciously and conversationally, and always in service to the music. I liked the way he changed the dynamics of each section by moving closer or further from the microphone. At one point, he moved off-stage and played a drum, a bell and crash cymbals.

Sanchez has so much playing experience, I imagine she had no trepidation playing this new music with these new people. She just started a full time teaching job at Bard College, so she has lots of new in her life. Everything she played had an element of the unexpected, free from cliché, and delivered with confidence. She has become a real friend, and I look forward to seeing her next on October 30 at Real Art Ways in Hartford, with Terry Jenoure’s ensemble.

What a happy coming together of old and new companions, making live music for the benefit of us all.

A Large Helping of Sound: David Sanford Big Band in Florence

by Glenn Siegel

It goes without saying, that organizing a concert for big band is a heavy lift. You don’t just pick up a saxophone, gather a few friends and blow. The logistics, not to mention the finances, are daunting. So if you are a composer and arranger in the 21st century, and your “instrument” is an aggregation of 20, your gigs are few and far between. Such is the fate of David Sanford, a lauded, but under recognized master of the large ensemble, who gave a life-changing concert at the Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity on Sunday. The event was part of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares’ 11th season.

David Sanford, the Elizabeth T. Kennan Professor of Music at Mt. Holyoke College, was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States. But mention his name to the average jazz fan and you’re likely to get a blank stare. You will search in vain for Sanford’s name among the big bands in the Downbeat critic’s poll. But for my money, Sanford writes and arranges circles around better known ensembles led by Maria Schneider, Wynton Marsalis or Christian McBride. It has everything to do with exposure, of course. Sanford doesn’t have the resources of Jazz at Lincoln Center or the juggernaut that is the Maria Schneider Orchestra. Hopefully, the well-received release last year of A Prayer for Lester Bowie (Greenleaf), will help to elevate Sanford’s standing among big band royalty.

But on September 11, in sleepy Florence, Massachusetts, 200 of us heard an extraordinary mass of sound organized in extremely creative ways by the David Sanford Big Band. Drawing from jazz, rock, blues, funk and experimental music, Sanford’s writing had us leaning in with our ears pinned back. 

In April at UMass, I presented Adam Rudolph’s GO: Organic Orchestra with Brooklyn Raga Massive. Rudolph’s 30-person ensemble emphasized strings, percussion and flutes, and floated through Bowker Auditorium on a world-music vibe. Sanford’s outfit was more like some hip, roaring Stan Kenton band: five trumpets, five low brass (trombones and tuba), five saxophones and rhythm section. 

The energy tunes, including “poppit” and “Full Immersion”, brought us face to face with a powerful machine firing on all cylinders. The room was ablaze. On the latter tune, simultaneous tenor saxophone solos by Anna Webber and Lee Odom brought the house down. 

There were lots of friends, family, colleagues and students of Sanford’s in the audience, who offered yelps of delight, dialogue, applause and laughter throughout the evening. At one point, “We love you, David”, rung through the sanctuary. It was, in fact, a love fest all around. Sanford has long time relationships with many of the people in his band, about half who are original members from 2003. Some are among his oldest and closest friends. Others, like tubist Joe Exley, was a last minute COVID-related replacement. Lee Odom, who Sanford first heard playing at Ornette Coleman’s memorial, and Anna Webber, now living in Franklin county, are both more recent collaborators. Towards the end of the evening, Sanford introduced the members of the band with descriptions of his personal connection to each. 

Then there is Hugh Ragin. The veteran trumpet player was a mentor of Sanford’s from his time in Colorado, and remains a valued collaborator. Sanford was deferential throughout the evening, happy to have his teacher on the bandstand. The 71 year old trumpeter led the band in his original, “The Moors of Spain”. Its catchy, loping melody was the most straight ahead piece on the program, and a perfect respite to the density of many of Sanford’s compositions.  Ragin, who has extensive performing credits with Roscoe Mitchell and David Murray, was a dynamic soloist throughout. 

There were other outstanding soloists, including trombonist Jim Messbauer and alto saxophonist Ted Levine. But the real star was the band itself, who executed Sanford’s vision as one precise and supple unit. They performed the night before in New York as part of the Festival of New Trumpet (FONT). If they sounded this good after one rehearsal and one concert, imagine if they were criss-crossing the country like the big bands of yesteryear, bringing joy to towns large and small.

Carried Away: Jazz Shares Season Begins with Pneuma

by Glenn Siegel

The range of the clarinet is similar to the human voice, so one might worry that an ensemble of three clarinets and voice would have a limited palate. But as 50 listeners witnessed at the Parlor Room on Friday, in the right hands, that configuration can yield expansive results.  

Clarinetists James Falzone, François Houle, Michael Winograd, and vocalist Ayelet Rose Gottlieb are Pneuma. They kicked off the 11th season of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares in Northampton, MA on August 19, with a deep, 60-minute concert of chamber jazz.

Pneuma means “wind”, “breath”, or “spirit” in ancient Greek, and Gottlieb intoned wind-inspired poetry by Christina Rossetti, Izumi Shikbu and Forugh Farrokhzad that projected a sense of longing and bitter sweetness.  “Do you hear the darkness blowing?”, asked Farrokhzad, the late modern Iranian poet. “Who has seen the wind?” asked Rosetti, the English poet from the 19th century.

I appreciated that both Gottlieb and Falzone recited the poems beforehand, giving us clearer access to the words. Gottlieb’s voice soared above the clarinets to deliver lyrics, then blended with them to spar and parry. Her beautiful instrument had depth and gravitas, and she was unafraid to let loose, producing worlds of wordless sound that brought feelings of freedom and playfulness. Gottlieb told us she conceived of Pneuma while grieving the loss of her grandfather, who played clarinet. Her piece “Passing Through/Lament for Harry”, was the impetus to form the band. 

The Jerusalem-born vocalist now lives in Montreal, and has closely collaborated with John Zorn, Anat Fort, and the string quartet ETHEL. Her latest project, “13 Lunar Meditations: Summoning the Witches”, is a song cycle about the moon and our connection to it, based on writings by women and girls from around the world. Over dinner, Gottlieb told me how as a 16-year-old in Israel she was forever changed after meeting the legendary saxophonist and educator Arnie Lawrence, who brought her into his band, taught her to be a professional singer, and shaped her fearless approach to music making.

Michael Winograd is regarded as one of the best working klezmer clarinetists today. He performs regularly  in Amherst at Yidstock, the Yiddish Book Center’s annual festival of new klezmer music. Like many in the field, Winograd is funny and quick-witted. He joked that he wanted to include “Someday My Blintz Will Come” on the evening’s set list. He told us he has always wanted to create the “Make a Knish Foundation”. His formative teacher was Sid Beckerman, whom he met at Klez Kamp as a 14-year-old. Winograd is a serious musician with chops, whose Semitic note bending added complexity and a certain melancholy to the stew.   

During a wonderful clarinet workshop at the Northampton Community Music Center organized by Evan Arntzen, François Houle ran down his list of influences, which included John Carter, Perry Robinson, Don Byron, and especially Bill Smith, who was a mentor. Houle was born in Montreal and has lived in Vancouver since 1990. He is the only band member who didn’t attend the New England Conservatory of Music; he went to McGill University and Yale. The bulk of his best work can be found on Songlines, a label also based in Vancouver. Like Winograd and Falzone, Houle is a master technician, whose off-the-chart facility shone during sections of rapid, jagged, poly-tonal unison playing. That brilliance sat in winning combination with his emphasis on tone and emotion. 

I first met James Falzone in Chicago in 2013. Since then, Jazz Shares has presented his six-piece celebration of the clarinet family: the Renga Ensemble (2014), his Arabic and European folk music quartet: Allos Musica (2015), and his duo with bassist/vocalist Katie Ernst: Wayfaring (2019). Each project was distinct in instrumentation and orientation, but shared a commitment to mixing authentic music traditions in fresh ways. Falzone has a natural-born divinity that shines. He is a first rate teacher (now a Dean at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle), a creative and immensely talented musician, and a kind and considerate human being. I hope to see him every few years forever.

Except for a few brief introductory solos, it was difficult to tell who was playing what, so I closed my eyes and made it impossible to find out. The resulting sound became one living, breathing thing that vibrated through heart and soul. This concert, postponed by the pandemic, came right on time for me, and was an auspicious start to another season of live music.

Mixing it Up: Pitching and Presenting Jazz

by Glenn Siegel

Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares is in discussion to bring Knuckleball to western Massachusetts next season. Led by cornetist and composer Stephen Haynes, the band of six horns and a drummer conjures images of slow, dancing baseballs moving every which way. The allure of the knuckleball, which makes life so difficult for both batters and catchers, is its unpredictability, and the thrill that comes from not knowing what direction it will take. 

And it’s not just knuckleballs that are unpredictable. The whole art of pitching seeks to obfuscate and surprise. Here is how Amherst poet, Robert Francis described it: 

His art is eccentricity, his aim
How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at,
His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.
The others throw to be comprehended. He
Throws to be a moment misunderstood.
Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
But every seeming aberration willed.
Not to, yet still, still to communicate
Making the batter understand too late.

Jazz improvisers adopt a similar stance, and the more I think about it, my own programming philosophy owes something to that attitude. Like the musicians I present, throughout my career I’ve tried to “avoid the obvious and vary the avoidance”.

I feel sorry for presenters who won’t challenge their audience, who can’t introduce lesser-known artists or those breaking with convention. These producers are often hemmed by financial concerns, the need to put “butts in seats”. Their first option is always the safe choice. When you’re forced to “give the people what they want”, you can only get what they already know. It’s easier to hit a ball when you know what’s coming, but good hitters can put the ball in play even when fooled by a pitch.

I pitched in high school (William Cullen Bryant in Astoria, Queens) and college (SUNY, Oneonta). Maybe that explains my inclination to keep audiences off balance by mixing in curve balls. The cadre of folks who regularly come to my concerts have learned to embrace the unfamiliar; they don’t always need to know what’s coming next. I remember the great New Orleans clarinetist, Alvin Batiste describing the learning process as moving, “from the known to the knowable.” As I see it,  my job as curator is to expand horizons, to move people beyond their already known. 

I suppose everyone gets labeled, and long ago I became the “avant-garde jazz producer in western Mass”. So every once in a while I’ll present Steve Kuhn or Chris Anderson, Queen Esther, the Curtis Brothers or Ricky Ford, artists firmly rooted in “the tradition”. 

Just when folks think they have me pigeonholed, I’ll present Dave Douglas with a “country” singer (Aoife O’Donovan) playing Christian hymns, ragtime piano player Reginald R. Robinson or Joe Fonda’s From the Source, featuring a tap dancer (Brenda Bufalino) and a vocal body healer (Vicki Dodd). You know, throw a change-up. 

I love when we get to hear an instrument not part of the typical jazz lexicon: a theremin (Rob Schwimmer) or a contra bass saxophone (Anthony Braxton) or a harpsichord (Jamie Saft). We got to see an ondes martenot (Suzanne Farrin) for the first time, as part of Sarah Manning’s Underwater Alchemy. After we’ve presented a string of conventional rhythm sections, out of left field we’ll throw a clarinet sextet (James Falzone’s Renga Ensemble) or a bass duo (The Marks Brothers). We’ve presented concerts of solo soprano saxophone (Sam Newsome) and solo drums (Milford Graves, Andrew Cyrille, Tyshawn Sorey), as well as large ensembles playing free jazz (William Parker’s Little Huey and Alan Silva’s Celestrial Communication Orchestras). Our listeners are intrepid, they are prepared for anything.

If you rely on the majority of jazz presenters and radio programmers as your sole source of information, you could come away believing that little has changed in 60 years. That presumption is patently false, of course, and robs the music of the vibrancy that is its hallmark. Pitchers who only throw fastballs when they are behind in the count will not be successful, and jazz that is trapped in stylistic boxes will lose the rule-busting urgency that has been fundamental throughout its history.

Some of the most exciting new developments in jazz have taken place at the intersection of African-American music and various traditions outside the U.S. That’s why I’ve made an effort to hire musicians who can introduce us to scales, instruments and musical practices from the Philippines (Susie Ibarra’s Electric Kulintang), India (Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Dakshina Ensemble, Joel Harrison’s Multiplicity), the Balkans (Slavic Soul Party), China (Jason Kao Hwang’s Burning Bridge), Cuba (Michaele Rosewoman’s New Yor-uba, Román Díaz’ Rhumba Ensemble), Iraq (Amir ElSaffar’s Two Rivers Ensemble), Brazil (Rob Maszuk’s Sao Paolo Underground), Japan (Miya Masaoka’s Brew), Guadeloupe (David Murray and the Gwo-Ka Masters) and Europe (Instant Composer Pool Orchestra, Uri Caine’s Goldberg Variations). It doesn’t all swing like Basie, but it will expand your mind.

I would often listen to WMUA, the student and community radio station at UMass, and come upon extraordinary sounds. I was so grateful for programs like Michael Ehlers’ “The Transnational Jazz Conspiracy” and Max Shea’s “Martian Gardens” that insisted on the latitude to be fearless in their programming. Nothing was off-limits, everything was on the table: from the outer realms of sound, to beauty and mystery of breathtaking proportions. They programmed for listeners with big ears, folks who didn’t need to like everything or understand it all. 

I claim that same curatorial freedom when presenting live music. I’ve always wanted to be the guy who could throw any pitch at any time.

Illegal Crowns Make Their U.S. Debut

by Glenn Siegel

Two years removed from our original concert date, music lovers in western Massachusetts finally got to see Illegal Crowns perform in person on June 19, 2022. The cooperative quartet: Taylor Ho Bynum, cornet, flugelhorn, Mary Halvorson, guitar, Benoit Delbecq, piano and Tomas Fujiwara, drums, captivated an audience of 50 at the Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity in Florence, MA on Father’s Day and Juneteenth.

Illegal Crowns pairs long-time collaborators Ho Bynum, Halvorson and Fujiwara, with the esteemed French pianist and composer, Benoit Delbecq. They received a French-American Cultural Exchange grant to cover expenses for their five-city tour.

The concert was twice delayed by the pandemic. COVID-19, along with exceedingly strict immigration restrictions placed upon artists during the last administration, meant that the $1,800 budgeted for Delbecq’s visa and legal services almost tripled. Despite the obstacles, the musicians and producers persevered, and we were the beneficiaries. 

Sunday’s Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares event, an afternoon affair, was the last gig in tour that included stops in Washington, Pittsburgh, New York and Boston. These were their first live performances in the United States. After the show, the band headed to Firehouse 12 in New Haven to record their third album.

What sublime music we witnessed. Everyone in the band contributed compositions, and the consistent variety of sounds and moods meant that an hour flew by without me noticing I was sitting on a wooden pew. Swing, funk and ballads mingled naturally with abstract elements to produce, in Ho Bynum’s words, “a hybridized and willfully corrupted musical vocabulary.”

We hardly noticed the absence of a bass instrument, as Halvorson and Delbecq provided the rhythmic bottom, while simultaneously creating swirling beds of sparks and momentum. Despite liberties taken with harmony and meter, lyricism and form ruled the day. 

Writing about the band in Point of Departure, Ed Hazell summed it up: “Their every gesture is defined, specific, and placed within the flow of music so it harmonizes with what surrounds it. Sure there’s tension and release and dissonance and noise, but there’s never a clash or an element out of place.” 

Halvorson has been through these parts multiple times since she first performed at UMass with Jessica Pavone 10 years ago, but I have never heard her sound more tuneful. Of course, she employed her usual arsenal of note-bending pedals and piquant ideas, but these elements were folded beautifully into an organic ensemble sound. 

Delbecq also exerted a consonance over the proceedings that made the avant-garde accessible. On occasion, he inserted twigs between the piano strings, producing a kalimba-like buzz. After the concert, he showed me his bag of bark-less sticks, some of which had thumb tacks attached. He knew the wood type for each of his devices, as well as the location of each tree. The technique gave things a world-music vibe that added depth and dimension to the music. Incidentally,Delbecq’s solo record, The Weight of Light(2021, Pyroclastic), is a gem. 

The tour and the forthcoming record were supported by the French-American Cultural Exchange Foundation, a program of the French embassy in the U.S.. Their mandate: to foster meaningful interaction between French and American musicians, results in some fascinating collaborations. I still remember vocalist Emilie LesBros’ performance with Darius Jones at the 2015 Vision Festival, supported byFACE.

It’s always interesting when a new person enters an established group. Ho Bynum, Halvorson and Fujiwara have known each other for half their lives, and appear frequently in each other’s bands. Ho Bynum told me afterwards he loves the influence Delbecq exerts on the ensemble. Perhaps that’s why the cornetist sounded especially sweet at Bombyx. His smeared sounds and tattered phrases sounded very good alongside his chugging bandmates. Ho Bynum is becoming a master of mutes, using a bowler hat and funnel, among other devices, to provide texture and humor. 

Fujiwara was his usual dynamic self, playing precise rhythms on every part of his drum kit and at all volumes. He articulately framed each piece, making it easier for us to follow the composer’s intent. The breadth of the compositions gave us a chance to hear his incredible range as a drummer.

It’s been great to have Ho Bynum, Halvorson and Fujiwara, who all grew up in the Boston area, make regular visits to western Massachusetts. Thanks to them for introducing us to Benoit Delbecq, and expanding our known circle of talented pianists and composers. 

More Than Notes On a Page: Music Follows Fellowship

by Glenn Siegel

Because the music is largely improvised, and depends heavily on the listening skills and collective decision making of its participants, jazz is a relationship-based art. Those relationships extend to listeners and producers, as well as musicians. Collectively, we shape the music and dictate its outcomes.

The importance of relationship was highlighted as the Jessica Pavone String Trio came to the bucolic grounds of the Institute for the Musical Arts (IMA) in Goshen, MA on June 9, as part of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares’ 10thseason. The point was also underscored by a week-long residency by Terry Jenoure’s Sextet that included work at IMA, the Shea Theater and the Northampton Center for the Arts.

Pavone’s trio: Aimée Niemann, violin, Abby Swidler, violin and viola and Pavone, viola, are on an extended tour in support of their new release, …Of Late (Astral Spirits). Sandwiched between dates in Chicago and New Haven, the Trio provided 20 local listeners with a glimpse into the unique sound world of Jessica Pavone, who composed and arranged an hour of dense, sometimes unsettling music.

Although the music was scripted, the musicians retained the latitude to choose notes, determine entrances, and create sounds within compositional parameters. The pieces, drawn mostly from the new recording, all had distinct points of view. There were the long, bended notes played in unison on the disquieting, “Done and Dusted”, for instance. Or a composition that summoned some ancient, from-the-gut country music. The band decided against electric lights in the barn, save for the tiny lamps on their music stands. By the finale, “Hidden Voices,” which slowly introduced vocals into the mix, the evening’s natural light had faded, and we sat in stunned silence as this mysterious, otherworldly music washed over us and the darkened space we occupied.

Reviews are typically confined to what transpires on stage, but the music evolves as the musicians grow, and much of that growth takes place off the bandstand. The opportunity to share meals, stories, and histories creates a web that holds the music. We introduced Jessica, Aimée and Abby to IMA and two early champions of elevating women in music: Ann Hackler and June Millington. We talked about Leroy Jenkins, the great violinist, who mentored both Pavone and our dear friend, Terry Jenoure. We discovered that Jessica’s parents graduated from the same high school I did: WC Bryant, in Astoria, Queens. In a jazz world of meager financial returns, evenings like this are priceless.

Meanwhile, from June 5-11, the violinist and vocalist Terry Jenoure invited five musical friends to spend the week in western Massachusetts to create music. Using funds provided by a South Arts’ Jazz Road Residency grant, Jenoure brought together Anglica Sanchez (piano), Joe Fonda (bass), Avery Sharpe (bass), Wayne Smith (cello) and Reggie Nicholson (drums) to perform at the Jazz Shares annual meeting/party at IMA, rehearse and interact with area artists at the Shea Theater, and give a culminating concert at 33 Hawley St, in Northampton. 

For the Jazz Shares event, Jenoure divided the musicians into three groups of two, each improvising for about 15 minutes. The duo of Jenoure and Fonda segued seamlessly to Sanchez and Smith, before giving way to Sharpe and Nicholson. The pairings were inspired, and the music they produced unfolded spontaneously, but with an inevitability that seemed preordained.

Jenoure’s concert at the Northampton Center for the Arts had all six musicians on stage and featured a piece dedicated to Jenoure’s father, Maurice, who recently passed.  Developed during the residency, the piece, “Letters From Papa”, included excerpts of her grandfather’s letters sent from Canada to her grandmother in Jamaica. 

It was instructive to see the music grow as the group cohered. The six musicians had varying levels of familiarity with each other. Jenoure has known Sharpe, Fonda and Nicholson for decades, while Sanchez and Smith are newer colleagues. As they shared meals, made music together, and relaxed in the country, the group cohered. That’s how bands are formed. For me and my wife Priscilla Page,  the chance to spend time with our out-of-town friends (Fonda, Sanchez, Nicholson), was a joy.

On a side note, Jenoure is also a superb visual artist. She has curated, “Syncopate: Homage to Jazz”, up through July 2 at Gallery A3 in Amherst.

On another side note, Felipe Salles and Lois Ahrens produced a fantastic concert, “Tiyo’s Songs of Love” with Zaccai Curtis, Avery Sharpe, and Jonathan Barber on June 12 at Bombyx in Florence, which we were also privileged to witness. 

I titled a small book marking the 25thanniversary of my Magic Triangle Jazz Series, “Close to the Music.” That’s been my life’s ambition, to stay close to the music and help nurture it any way I can. Strengthening the web by spending time with creative friends and engaging with their music, is what it’s all about.