Cool Jazz sax legend Lee Konitz stops by the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater tonight—in advance of his show, Washington City Paper talked to Konitz about his upcoming projects, working with the contemporary jazz trio Minsarah,  and Alan Greenspan. 

Washington City Paper: How did you get hooked up with Minsarah?

Lee Konitz: They invited me to play with them, someplace in Europe, and then to do a recording session. We all enjoyed that very much, and we recorded another record, a live record, at the Village Vanguard some months ago.

WCP: The new record is surprisingly different from the studio album.

LK: Well, the studio date was more prepared things. At the club was kind of a four-man jam session; we just played standards.

WCP: Are you playing with a different sax tone, too? Your sound seems more blunt.

LK: I try to change the sound every time I play, as well as the order of the notes. I don’t know if you realize, but I play two different saxophones, and I use a washcloth in the bell quite a bit of the time.

WCP: Now will you be doing the prepared compositions, or the jam session, when you play with Minsarah at the Kennedy Center?

LK: We’re going to pick up where we left off. We’ll just be playing tunes. We take turns choosing and starting off with a tune, and I just ask that whoever’s doing it suggest the melody at the beginning so we know what we’re playing.

I recently played a duet with Brad Mehldau where I began “Stella by Starlight,” and when he came in I didn’t know where he was. So I finally realized that he was playing “Cherokee,” and I joined him on the last chorus. So that’s a chance you take—he didn’t pick up that I was playing “Stella by Starlight,” obviously. Actually that happened once before: Brad and I played with Charlie Haden at the Montreal Jazz Festival, and as an encore I started “Stella by Starlight” and nobody came in. Finally Charlie came in, and I don’t know if he came in where I was but I joined him—and no Brad. I looked over and I could see his lips forming the words ‘What are we playing?’”

Read More “Tonight: Lee Konitz @KenCen Terrace Theater” »

The artist Jeanne-Claude, who, with her husband, Christo, was responsible for creating some of the grandest environmental installation pieces in contemporary art, died Wednesday of complications from a brain aneurysm. She was 74.

Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s best-known recent work was 2005’s The Gates, for which the artists installed more than 7,000 saffron-covered fabric panels along 23 miles of pathways in New York’s Central Park. The installation was as ephemeral as it was grand—within two weeks, The Gates was gone. Other notable projects have included wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin, the Pont-Neuf in Paris, and several small islands off the coast of Miami. Despite the massive amount of resources needed for each project, they financed each installation independently, never dulling their ambition.

The last time the artists were seen in Washington, it was for their show one year ago at the Phillips Collection, Over the River: A Work in Progress. The exhibition detailed their plans for their next large-scale installation—this time, draping six miles of fabric over a stretch of the Arkansas River in Colorado. Neither Blake Gopnik nor Jeffry Cudlin considered the Phillips’ show a success.
Read More “Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s Work Will Continue” »

Also, this video for “Everything Touches Everything,” directed by former Let’s French guitarist Max Sorensen, slipped through the cracks. Find it after the jump:
Read More “These United States Go 90s In New Video” »

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans: Watch Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage turn Harvey Keitel’s 1992 tortured cop into a whooping clown. Entertaining for the wrong reasons, and occasionally flat-out bizarre.

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe: What compelled the titular lawyer to defend alleged killers, terrorists, and rapists? This doc by Kunstler’s daughters gives mini-history lessons but not a satisfying answer. Read More “In Theaters This Week” »

Morning, y’all! Last night, I discovered the trailer for the new Jeff Bridges movie Crazy Heart. As far as trailers go, this one looks promising. Bridges, playing an alcoholic country star, has the Bocephus thing nailed down tight; Maggie Gyllenhaal, as the reporter who helps Bridges turn his life around, looks smart and womanly; christ, it’s got Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall, too. But then I thought back to the trailer for Men Who Stare at Goats, a Bridges vehicle if ever there was one, and the pile of broken dreams that movie turned out to be. Will it happen again with Crazy Heart?

Anne Thompson at Indie Wire thinks no. According to Thompson, Fox Searchlight initially intended to roll out Crazy Heart in spring 2010, but with Amelia looking less and less likely to pick up an Oscar nomination, Crazy Heart will now have a limited release next month. Thompson has seen a rough cut of the movie, and says it’s a contender. I’ll take that.

More arts shit after the jump.

Read More “Arts Morning Roundup: Will Jeff Bridges Let Us Down Again?” »

Although HR-57 advertised last night’s screening/score performance of Elevator to the Gallows as featuring the Thad Wilson Big Band, the evening actually found Wilson leading a quintet, featuring 19-year-old Elijah Jamal Balbed on tenor sax and D.C. veterans John Ozment (piano), Michael Bowie (bass), and Jimmy “Junebug” Jackson (drums). More appropriate, since the film was originally scored by a quintet, but why not the band as advertised?

“The band basically mutinied on me, so I shut it down,” Wilson explained during a set break. “The bottom line? Money fucks up everything. The gigs just weren’t there. But I also felt like the discipline just wasn’t there with a lot of people. They didn’t get the hard work and rehearsals that come with a big band, and they weren’t into the ensemble work either. It was more an attitude of ‘Hey! I can solo in this band!’”

The ensemble, variously billed as the Thad Wilson Jazz Orchestra or the Ugetzu Big Band, had been a staple of the Washington scene since January 1998. It had become something of a required course for D.C. jazz musicians, with players from Nasar Abadey and Reginald Cyntje to Bowie and Jamal passing through its ranks over the years.
Read More “Thad Wilson Jazz Orchestra: “Shut Down”” »

Thanks to Ted Scheinman for covering last week.

Nov. 20
Local trumpeter Kenny Rittenhouse has a  straightahead, hard-bop approach, but always produces a probing, thoughtful sound—almost like a flugelhorn—that distinguishes him in the U.S. Army Blues, the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, and his own trios, quartets, and quintets that gig around town. Those pretty notes, to paraphrase Louis Armstrong, go right through you. Hear how quickly they sink in when Rittenhouse performs with his quintet at Bohemian Caverns, 2001 11th Street NW. $20.
Read More “Jazz Setlist: Nov. 20-25, 2009″ »

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Directed by Chris Weitz

Twilight backlash has proved a force as fierce as Twilight love. Except unlike the adoration, with its Teams This vs. That, the hate has been more equal-opportunity: Bella’s boring! Stephenie Meyer is a terrible writer! Kristen Stewart acts with her hair, Taylor Lautner isn’t tall or buff enough, and, for the love of Bram Stoker, the vampires sparkle!

In New Moon, however — the second film adaptation of Meyer’s four-book series now dubbed The Twilight Saga — glitter is the least of the lead bloodsucker’s problems. Because even the harshest critics of the tween-scream franchise have got to admit that being cast as Edward, the Hawtest Vampire of Them All, has, ironically, done star Robert Pattinson no favors. His main job in the first film was to brood, crush on, and brood some more, acting like he’s the sexiest, most pretentious being un-alive.

In the follow-up, he’s onscreen half as much but looks twice as ridiculous: The story has the sullen Cullen dumping his true-but-mortal love, Bella (Stewart), after she suffers a paper cut at a birthday party thrown by his family. Even though the Cullens are “vegetarian” vamps, the trickle of blood sends even the most well-intentioned of them into a feral tizzy. Edward, being the controlling 109-year-old ass that he is, decides that it’s too dangerous for them to be together. He and the fam abruptly leave town, giving Bella no further explanation than “You’re no good for me.”

Read More “Reviewed: The Twilight Saga: New Moon” »

Afternoon, y’all! I keep forgetting how self-righteous music critics can be when it comes to the term “indie,” which was coined as shorthand for “independent music,” or music that is made and released independently of the Big 4.

But as with other words–”gay” no longer means thrilled to be alive, and “damn” will no longer send one straight to hell–the meaning of indie has changed to connote, as often as not, an aesthetic.

Read More “Afternoon Open Thread: Music Fogies Fight the Evolution of Language” »

They’ve spared us any one-liners about crossing the road, or having flown the coop. But something about Koen VanMechelen’s “Cosmopolitan Chicken Project” at Conner Contemporary brings out the punniest in bloggers and writers everywhere. It’s easy to see why: There’s an abundance of material, from the classic chicken or the egg scenario to the deliciousness of nuggets and wings. So who’s managed to come up with the cheesiest chicken headline? Here’s a rating of various instances of Cosmopolitan Chicken-related wordplay (note: articles about previous iterations of VanMechelen’s chicken art are have been included).

Read More “A Wing and a Prayer: The Chicken Puns of Koen VanMechelen” »