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?’”

WCP: So did Brad just not know “Stella by Starlight”?

 LK: Yeah, he knows it. I just didn’t play enough of the melody. That can be very confusing.

 So that’s what I’ll be doing at the Kennedy Center. We hope that Barack and Michelle, Joe Biden and Alan Greenspan, Leonard Garment and all those people will come in. But we know they won’t.

WCP: Well, Alan Greenspan is known to be a jazz fan.

 LK: And Leonard Garment [Nixon’s personal attorney during Watergate] played for a couple years in Woody Herman’s band, as a substitute. And if I’m not mistaken, I think I went to high school with Alan Greenspan in Chicago. And I was also pleased to learn that Walter Cronkite, the great TV journalist who died recently, played the soprano sax! And of course we know about Bill Clinton.

WCP: What’s special about playing with Minsarah?

LK: Well, they are very interested in what each of them are doing, and what I’m doing. And they respond in some way. There’s nothing like communication where people are responding to each other. So I welcome that with open arms, any time that happens.

WCP: And what other projects are you involved with right now?

LK: Oh, I’m going to be playing in Europe with a pianist named Dan Tepfer, who I just did an album with, then joining Minsarah again for some concerts. Then in December I’ll be working with Charlie Haden, Brad Mehldau, and Paul Motian at Birdland, plus a stint with Ethan Iverson and Mark Turner. There’s also a young French saxophonist I’ll be working with, named Alexandre Gamil. I never thought I’d ever be playing six clubs in three months, but there it is.

WCP: Well, surely being a legend helps with your bookings?

LK: Yeah, well, they all want to get me now, while I’m still around.

 Lee Konitz and Minsarah perform tonight at 7:30 and 9:30 at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, 2700 F Street, NW , (202) 467-4600. $35.

“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.
“That’s disappointing,” says Dustin Mollick, until recently a tenor saxophonist in the big band (and the only recent member available for comment today), of the breakup. “I haven’t been in the band for 3-4 months now…but I hadn’t heard about it from anyone.”

Mollick does suggest that there had for some time been dissension in the ranks. “Lots of people in the band had problems with the way Thad ran the band and rehearsals,” he says. “Especially the fact that we played the same charts so many times when we had a great opportunity with that group to play new music.”

Wilson intends to rebuild the band from the ground up. “I will always be doing something with the big band configuration,” he says. “I have some of my core players who are still willing to work with me. And I’m looking at bringing down some cats from New York.” He adds, however, that this version of the band will gig much less frequently than its famous weekly gigs at Bohemian Caverns: “I think part of the problem was that I overexposed us. You see us all the time, it’s less interesting.”

No word on the fate of the band’s long-delayed second CD, Movin’ On (for which your humble correspondent wrote liner notes).

In the meantime, Wilson—who also teaches music at GWU—promises to remain active in smaller group configuration. He also announced from the stage last night that his Movie Nights (i.e., playing the score of a film as it is screened) will now be a monthly feature at HR-57.

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.

Nov. 21
They call him a “cofounder” of cool jazz. That doesn’t do justice to the music of Lee Konitz. For over 60 years, the legendary alto saxophonist has pursued a deeply cerebral brand of improvisation, pushing through frontier after new frontier of sounds via the feathery, yet aggressive voice of his instrument. Konitz’s latest partners in his extremely prolific career are the trio Minsarah, an exploratory, vaguely avant-garde piano combo that features D.C. native Jeff Denson on bass. Together they make a sound that for Konitz is unique all over again. Konitz and Minsarah peform at the Kennedy Center, 2700 F Street NW, at 7:30 and 9:30 pm. $35.

Nov. 23
The daughter of the great João Gilberto, and niece of the great Chico Buarque, it’s surely fair to call Bebel Gilberto the crown princess of Bossa Nova. The scion of Brazil’s greatest songwriters (the nation’s other titan, Antonio Carlos Jobim, was a close family friend) claims her place on the cutting edge of bossa nova through her fusion of the traditional sounds to DJ’d samples and electronic beats. The highly original treatments have also let her establish herself, outside the shadow of the Brazilian musical legacy that follows wherever she goes; even when she covers her father (as on her newest album, All in One), Gilberto sounds only like herself. Her brilliant fusion of bossa nova’s danceability with club rhythms has garnered a huge international following – likely it’ll be a packed house at the 9:30 Club (815 V Street NW). Go anyway. It’s an early show, 6pm doors. $35.

They, and nine other groups performing American musical styles, were selected out of 130 applicants, 35 of whom were invited to audition in New York City this summer.

This means that next year, over the course of eight months, Abadey and Supernova (saxophonist Joe Ford, pianist Allyn Johnson, and bassist James King) will be touring 40 countries across the world, bunched into several tours of approximately four weeks. Abadey reports that he’s most excited about a visit to Central America that may last a full six weeks. Meantime they’ll also squeeze in free performances at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola in New York, and the National Geographic Society’s Grosvenor Auditorium in D.C.

Nov. 5
Once upon a time it seemed that New Orleans trumpeter Nicholas Payton was the reincarnation of Louis Armstrong, with his bright virtuosic phrases and Big Easy swing. Then came 2003’s Sonic Trance and last year’s Into the Blue, which transplanted Payton into slow, spacy fusion jams that had more in common with Bitches Brew than Satchmo Plays W.C. Handy. Though he now grounds himself with electronics (and occasionally even techno beats), Payton hasn’t sacrificed his roots in blues, lyricism, and swing—he just lifts them into the stratosphere. Payton performs with his quartet at 8 and 10 pm at Blues Alley, 1073 Wisconsin Avenue NW. $30.

Nov. 7
On the other hand, Marcus Strickland jumps freely back and forth between acoustic and electric musical projects. The tenor saxophonist has worked with drummers Roy Haynes and Jeff “Tain” Watts as well as the two (equal and opposite) major trumpeters of the era, the traditionalist Wynton Marsalis and experimentalist Dave Douglas, and finds a comfortable and unique niche in all settings. That also applies to his own bands – Strickland leads both the Twi-Life group, which flirts with electro-funk and hip-hop, and a straight-ahead trio. It’s the latter that appears at Bohemian Caverns at 9 and 11 pm, featuring Strickland’s identical twin brother E.J. on drums and DC native and this year’s Thelonious Monk Competition winner Ben Williams on bass. Don’t be fooled: the acoustic trio will offer plenty of surprises from the other side of the fence.

Nov. 8
Despite Art Blakey’s admonition that “jazz doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa,” musicians everywhere have never stopped trying to establish the link. Americans usually think of African music in terms of traditional percussion and tribal rhythms; guitarist Lionel Loueke, who’s from Benin, fuses his jazz with melodic West African pop. Its primary effect is to generate music of startling beauty. Loueke is an acoustic player, and the new songs often sound like folk music at first (an impression that Loueke reinforces with soft humming and tongue-clicking); the harmonic labyrinths and the focused interplay are the jazz element. Loueke performs with his trio at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Stadium Drive and Route 193 in College Park. $37.

November 11
They sometimes call them “organ-grinder groups” — the soul-inflected jazz trios centered around a Hammond B-3 organ, in the tradition of players like Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff. D.C.’s contribution is the Rodney Richardson Trio. Richardson is actually the guitarist; Will Rast is the organist (and Larry Ferguson is the drummer). But it’s Richardson’s subtle, delicate touch that pushes the trio into its idiosyncratic sound. Rast pulsates and explores, doesn’t jam, and Ferguson punctuates and makes surprisingly careful fills. It keeps audiences guessing, but also intrigued. Find them at Twins Jazz, 1344 U Street NW. $15.

It’s a rare jazz musician whose work earns its own name—and rarer still in an enthusiastic but small scene like D.C.’s. Yet Nasar Abadey—the District’s dominant jazz drummer, who performs this weekend at Bohemian Caverns with his Supernova ensemble—calls his music “Multi-D.” It locates its roots in the “spiritual jazz” movement that John Coltrane and his disciples developed in the ’60s and ’70s, but rarely stays there.

The sole Supernova album, 2000’s Mirage, mixes musical elements of bebop, Afro-Cuban and -Brazilian, fusion, funk, Eastern, and even new-age music atop its foundation of avant-garde intensity a la Coltrane.  Abadey, a Cheverly resident and teacher at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory, explains that the name “Multi-D” is derived from the music’s questing “in multiple directions, and also in and out of multiple dimensions at the same time.”

A devout Sufi—the mystical branch of the Islamic faith—Abadey finds in his music a means of communion with higher spiritual planes. “Sometimes I’m practicing down in the basement, all by myself, and I hear voices saying ‘Yeah! Yeah, go ‘head, yeah!’” he says. “I open my eyes and I look around…and no one’s there. And that, to me, is spirits in a spirit world who are communicating with me, and they are inspiring me to continue.”

Still practicing every day, Abadey continues to develop nuance and experiment with color and texture in his sound. His latest development is to play just ahead of the beat—creating a feeling that the percussion pulls the music along—and, precisely opposite to jazz convention, keeps time on the skins and accents on the cymbals (a style he developed behind D.C. free-jazz artist Brother Ah).

As a composer, he insists that he is “still scratching the surface; I’m a baby at it,” but his output betrays an adult-size ambition: This summer he premiered his first large-scale work for jazz band and string quartet (aka “Supernova Chamber Orchestra”), the three-movement suite Diamond in the Rough, at D.C.’s Atlas Theater.

Abadey began his musical journey as a 4-year-old in Pittsburgh; he would join his grandfather marching in the Shriner parades downtown, where he fell in love with the drum sounds that he felt thumping in his chest. His interest grew after a move to Buffalo, where his older cousin, the bebop drummer Frankie Dunlop, first sat him down at a real kit. Before long, a friend of Frankie’s named Pete Epps became Abadey’s drum teacher and would loan him a set of drums for his earliest gigs.

“One night I had them set up in my living room,” Abadey recalls. “My mother was in the kitchen, unbeknownst to me, and heard me playing. After I had stopped she opened the door to the living room and said, ‘You know, I didn’t know you played drums like this.’ All she knew was that I had drumstricks, and I messed up the arms of her chair, her couch pillows, and the ironing board,” he laughs. Within a year, when he was 16, Abadey’s parents had bought him his own kit.

Miles Davis and Coltrane transformed Abadey, both with their legendary drummers (Tony Williams and Elvin Jones, respectively) and Coltrane with the ecstasy his modal jazz emitted. It was the direction he would follow for the next several years—most prominently in Birthright, the group he co-founded in 1973 with his longtime friends and fellow Buffalonians, saxophonists Paul Gresham and Joe Ford. Birthright’s two long-out-of-print albums, Free Spirits (1974) and Breath of Life (1976), show the heavy influence of Coltrane in their mantra-like repetitions, sheets of sound, and even a tune entitled “Jowcol,” named for John William Coltrane himself. Abadey can be heard combining Williams’ jittery, freeform cymbals and Jones’ explosive drum work with fusion grooves and frenzied accents of his own creation.

Moving to Washington in 1977, at age 30, Abadey found himself struggling to establish himself in the city’s jazz scene; in an effort to gig more often, he established Supernova. The name comes both from Wayne Shorter’s 1969 album and from the astronomical phenomenon and its ability to expand and contract—which Abadey wanted the band to do.

In its various configurations, from trio to big band, Supernova did indeed make Abadey’s name in D.C. Thirty-two years after his arrival, he is the go-to drummer for national and international headliners who come through; Abadey has played behind Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Cyrus Chestnut, and—just last week at the Kennedy Center—acclaimed singer Giacomo Gates.

Supernova is also, in whatever form it takes, one of the most consistently interesting acts in the District. Abadey, however, has consciously scaled back its appearances, in large part to allow for more time to assist his 18-year-old son, Kush, with his budding career. (Kush, who played this summer at Michelle Obama’s White House Jazz Concert, is now a freshman at Berklee School of Music).

But Abadey also wanted to create demand for Supernova by constraining supply. “When you perform too much in one area, it waters down your appeal and makes people not want to come out to see you,” he says. “Plus, the older I get the more important each quarter note becomes to me. I don’t want to waste any more quarter notes!”

Oct. 30
The Brooklyn-born pianist Randy Weston was reared in blues and gospel, grew up with some of bebop’s revolutionaries, and as an adult began exploring musical traditions from all across the African continent—from Somalia to Nigeria to Morocco. His vision manages to assimilate all of those sources into an insoluble whole, equally able to interact with a Harlem big band or the Master Musicians of Jajouka. Weston’s music encompasses many musical traditions and also many human experiences: His sound can be dark or joyful, gnarled or straightforward, folksy or erudite—sometimes all at once. The only two things you’re sure to encounter at a Weston concert are the fierce but complex rhythm he generates with his percussive piano style and the profound emotional impact that explodes out of every performance, no matter what he plays. Weston’s African Rhythms Trio performs at 8 P.M. and 10 p.m. at Blues Alley, 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. $30.

Oct. 31
It’s tempting to call Nasar Abadey a “drummer, composer, and mystic”—but the distinction would be false. Certainly Abadey doesn’t recognize it. The District’s dominant jazz drummer, who came of age on the Buffalo jazz scene, calls his music “Multi-D”—meaning that it moves “in multiple directions, and also in and out of multiple dimensions at the same time.” It’s also some of D.C.’s most consistently interesting and proficient jazz, and profoundly spiritual—not bad on the eve of All Souls’ Day. His band, Supernova (a name that extends to formats from trio to big band) makes a rare appearance this weekend at 9 and 11 p.m. Bohemian Caverns, 2001 11th Street NW. $15 advance, $18 door.

Nov. 3
The foremost qualities of jazz vocalist Gretchen Parlato’s artistry are her breathy gentleness and sensuality—she doesn’t sing so much as insinuate. Throughout her latest, In a Dream, she exhibits a supple, nuanced airiness that puts the disc leagues ahead of the year’s other vocal jazz recordings. Om fact, Parlato, a past winner of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, is poised to become a major star – she’s made the first-round voting in three 2009 Grammy categories, including Best New Artist and Album of the Year for In A Dream.  See why on Tuesday evening at Blues Alley, with sets at 8 and 10 p.m.

Nov. 4
Bossa, in Adams Morgan, has established itself as perhaps the most adventurous music venue in Washington. It’s predisposed towards the various forms of Latin music, but in fact the bar and Italian bistro serves up music of all varieties and all nations: ska, indie rock, avant-garde, house, even exotica. On Wednesday, Bossa hosts an evening of experimental jazz. On the bill are Peeping Tom, a Swedish/French trio who play bebop standards by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie…without the boundaries; New Loft, a trio from Richmond who proudly include among their instrumentation “PVC tubing” and “things”; and our town’s own DC Improvisers Collective (DCIC), whose completely improvised music incorporates rock and classical in addition to jazz. All this for $7!

Oct. 23
With his gravity-defying hair and temperamental attack on the piano, comparisons between Eric Lewis and Beethoven are probably inevitable. They’re also apt: Lewis is a brilliant talent who loves to throw conventions to the wolves. His solo sets tend to include jazz standards, pop songs, rock anthems, even TV and movie themes—whatever gets his audience’s attention. As if that were ever a problem. The flamboyant Lewis treats his piano as though he were up against it in a boxing ring, giving jabs and feints while giving his whole body a workout on the bench. Lewis performs at 9:30 p.m. at HR-57, 1610 14th Street NW. $20.

Oct. 25
Loide personifies the notion of “world jazz.” Born and France and raised in the United States, her family descends from Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. The latter supplies her native (singing) tongue, Portuguese—although her music’s basis in bossa nova rhythms suggest that she draws on Brazilian heritage instead. Loide brings her entire cultural mix into the jazz universe, where she continues the Sarah Vaughan tradition of harmonically sophisticated, emotionally deep vocal interpretation. In June she committed that sound to record with Loide Live at Bohemian Caverns—a title that you can experience firsthand during her CD release party at 7 p.m. at Bohemian Caverns, 2001 11th Street NW. $12 advance, $15 at the door.

Oct. 26
October marks the fifth anniversary of JazzAlive, the live showcase for the Jazz Studies program at UDC. In celebration, program director Allyn Johnson (also one of the District’s finest pianists) will lead the university’s two large ensembles, the UDC Jazz Ensemble and the Calvin Jones Legacy Ensemble, in a tribute to the dean of D.C. jazz: tenor saxophonist Roger “Buck” Hill. Hill will join Johnson and the two big bands, which feature some of the best young players on our local scene, Monday night at 8 p.m. at University Auditorium, 4200 Connecticut Avenue NW Building 46-East. $15.

Oct. 28
Associated with the AACM, jazz’s premiere avant jazz organization based in their hometown of Chicago, the Markov Jazz Process is a trio featuring reeds, piano, and drums—no bass—on an experimental jag. They flirt with the brashness of Chicago jazz, along with a freeform approach to polyphony and rhythm that sounds great in their tackling of blues and (especially) Latin jazz. Yet they’re not wholly experimental: Markov brings traditional and “out” jazz together in ways unexpected, unpredictable, and sometimes even arbitrary. They perform at 9 and 11 p.m. at Twins Jazz,  1344 U Street NW. $10.

Oct. 17
An unstoppable force, Benito Gonzalez is a pianist of tremendous versatility. He’s played with everyone from Christian McBride and Roy Hargrove to Pharaoh Sanders and Hamiet Bluiett, and everyone in between. And, lest his eclecticism overshadow his abilities, Gonzalez was the 2005 winner of the Great American Jazz Piano Competition. But he remains a staple of the D.C. jazz scene—as likely to be found in the jazz clubs’ seats as on their bandstands (though when his peers see him in the former, they usually invite him to the latter). Friday and Saturday nights find him at Twins Jazz, 1344 U Street NW, with his trio and Azar Lawrence, a great spiritual-jazz saxophonist from Los Angeles. $20.

Oct. 18
Somi calls her music “New African Soul”; in reality, it stands at the confluence of neo-soul, jazz, and traditional musics of West and South Africa. The sound has heady, soulful leanings, but surprisingly strong folk roots. It’s smooth, beautiful, and melodic, but has an edge nonetheless, with biting harmonies and challenging rhythm that make it as fun to listen to as it is mellow. Not purely jazz? Perhaps not, but Somi is pedigreed enough to appear at Bohemian Caverns, the District’s most venerable jazz club, on Sunday night for two sets (7:00 and 9:00). $20.

Williams, who grew up in Michigan Park, graduated from Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and has played with D.C. jazz stalwarts including Allyn Johnson, Nasar Abadey, and Thad Wilson, was awarded a record deal with Concord Music Group and a $20,000 scholarship. Williams has already completed his master’s degree at Juilliard, “But ohh, don’t worry,” he says. “I got plenty of bills from school that these will go toward nicely.” (Second place winner Joe Sanders received $10,000, with $5,000 for third-place Matt Brewer.)

The competition began Saturday with the semifinals, held at the Natural History Museum’s Baird Auditorium. Fifteen bassists from around the world were required to play a program of three tunes each, with the backing duo of pianist Geoffrey Keezer and drummer Carl Allen. Aside from the finalists, contestants included Chinese-Australian Linda Oh; an eighth grader from the Bronx, Daryl Johns; and another D.C. bassist, Corcoran Holt. Also included was Dutch player Clemens van der Feen–who was so stylistically original and advanced that it was a genuine shock when his name wasn’t on the finalists’ list. But you will be hearing more from this guy.

The finals round required each contestant to play only two selections, giving them less time to make an impression. But the challenge was greater still: One of the two songs put the bassist behind vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater, a fearsome predicament for anyone since she’s both a tremendous talent and a born ham. Brewer and, especially, Sanders showed their nervousness playing with Bridgewater, who traded them eight-bar phrases with energetic abandon. (Sanders was also shaky on his first tune, slightly off pitch on his arco intro and clumsy with the rhythm later on; his second-place finish was a major upset.) Williams, however, followed her every melodramatic move with ease, practically daring her to turn up the intensity with his fierce rhythm and legato phrasing. Halfway through the second song, his victory was already obvious.

Of course, the jazz world is already hearing a lot from Williams; he’s a regular member of pianist Jacky Terrasson’s trio, and also of vibraphonist Stefon Harris’ group Blackout – where until recently he played with another Washingtonian, pianist Marc Cary, and together brought go-go rhythms to Harris’ new album Urbanus. (Williams will return to the Kennedy Center with Harris on November 14.) Still, this win should increase his profile, and bring him closer to the star status he richly deserves. It’s a feather in the cap of D.C. jazz, too.