Oct. 9
SaltmanKnowles has a single ambition: Melody. Bassist Mark Saltman and pianist William Knowles, both Howard music graduates and veterans of the D.C. scene, started the quintet specifically to combat the riffs and noodling they kept hearing; they want music that’s about lyrical tunes and memorable hooks. Their lush compositions make great ammunition for that cause, but the weapon that fires them is vocalist Lori Williams-Chisholm, distinguished by her clear voice, precise articulation, and the joy that’s evident in every note she sings. SaltmanKnowles plays Friday and Saturday nights at HR-57, 1610 14th St NW, $12.

Oct. 10
Forward-thinking bassist Dave Holland leads arguably the hippest quintet in progressive jazz, with unconventional approaches to form, harmony, and interplay between the musicians. Chalk it up to Holland’s uncanny ability to spot and coordinate talents–certainly it lends promise to any other combo he happens to be a part of. Take the Overtone Quartet: It includes Holland and saxophonist Chris Potter, two fifths of the Holland Quintet, but places them onstage with two jazz adventurers, pianist Jason Moran and drummer Eric Harland. The quartet played their first-ever gig in September, meaning their work here is sure to be fresh and exciting. The Overtone Quartet plays Saturday night at the Kennedy Center, $35.
Read More “Jazz Setlist: Oct. 8-14, 2009″ »

Twenty-five-year-old Chinese-Australian bassist Linda Oh knows more about tension and release on her instrument than do many bassists twice her age. It helps, of course, that on Entry (her leadership debut), Oh works with two of the most disciplined and creative young musicians in New York: drummer Obed Calvaire, whose flexibility belies his tautness, and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, an economist extraordinaire with the most moving tone imaginable. But Entry also works on the strength of Oh’s compositions, such as “Numero Uno”—which starts with a sprawling fanfare from Akinmusire before Calvaire and Oh assume command with a steely, take-no-prisoners aggression, channeling the trumpet melody into dark suspense. The trio even makes short, defiant work of the Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ “Soul to Squeeze.” Entry thus shows major promise for three musicians—but the valiant newcomer Oh most of all.

Roy Hargrove is no stranger to D.C., making frequent appearances at Georgetown’s Blues Alley and playing a headline engagement during 2007’s Duke Ellington Jazz Festival (now the D.C. Jazz Festival). Sunday night, however, he took a surprise detour from his four-night stand at Blues Alley to hit the clubs of U Street.

Tenor saxophonist Elijah Jamal Balbed reports that he was at U-Topia Bar & Grill at about 1 a.m., listening to the regular Sunday night band co-led by keyboardist Wayne Wilentz and drummer Jim West, when “next thing I know a man wearing a leather suit with black and orange Nike shoes is walking up to the stage to sit in with a flugelhorn. That was Roy Hargrove.” Over the next few hours, Hargrove’s impromptu sit-in became an open jam session featuring Jamal, singer Cheryl Jones, and local trumpet mainstays Donvonte McCoy, Joe Brotherton, and Israel Lattimore.

See what you miss when you decide you’ve “got to get up for work in the morning?”

Read More “Roy Hargrove Takes U Street by Surprise!” »

Oct. 1
1905 Restaurant sometimes gets labeled a speakeasy for its obscure location (the dimly lit second floor of a barely marked rowhouse at 1905 9th Street NW) and its absinthe-featuring drink menu. Like the classic speakeasies, it also regularly features some of the most interesting jazz on the local scene. The Cricket Fusion Quartet, led by trumpeter Joe Brotherton — with saxophonist Elijah Balbed, bassist Olvier Albertini, and drummer Jeff Franca — plays collectively improvised jazz on Thursday nights at 10 pm. It’s as moody as the eatery’s atmosphere and often quite melodic…but it may spontaneously thrust into directions nervy and unexpected.
Read More “Jazz Setlist: Oct. 1-7, 2009″ »

Koan
Tyshawn Sorey
482 Music

Young avant-garde jazz drummer Tyshawn Sorey’s stunning new disc contains little drumming and even less jazz, but plenty of avant-garde. Koan is a minimalist project primarily for guitar and bass that moves slowly and plainly, like a sonic desert landscape;  it makes its points with stark texture and in-the-moment harmonies that linger far beyond the moment of creation. Like the Zen mystical element for which the record is named, Koan is a meditative musing that taps into both the brain and the spirit, perplexes both, and mesmerizes them anyway.

You once knew it as the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival. For all of its five years, in fact. No more.

Festival boss Charlie Fishman reports that there’s been a dispute with the Ellington family over the rights to use the name of District jazz’s favorite son. Henceforth, then, it shall be known as the DC Jazz Festival, and shall be accorded all rights and privileges commensurate with that name.

It is notable, however, that festivals with the names of famous musicians attached have tended to be second-tier festivals, held in fifth-tier cities. Who, after all, could forget the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Moscow, Idaho; the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival in Wilmington, Delaware; or the headline-grabbing Bix Beiderbecke Jazz Festival in bustling Davenport, Iowa?

By contrast, the big-time fests — Newport Jazz Festival, Chicago Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Portland Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival — are all named after the cities that host them.

So let’s call this name change a promotion, shall we?

With all of the talk of jazz needing young listeners, and in particular young African American listeners, it is unconscionable that Jose James—who sang a marvelous set at Bohemian Caverns Thursday night, is not the talk of the jazz world.

James, 29, doesn’t sound like a jazz singer. Oh, his throaty baritone and rapid “vocalese” (lyrical improvisation) is in the same lineage Eddie Jefferson, but his delivery full of is dark and earthy and philosophical inflections that place it more squarely in the realm of neo-soul. That was even the case in James’ cover (with self-written lyrics) of John Coltrane’s probing blues “Equinox”; James’ band (drummer Adam Jackson, electric bassist Chris Smith, and keyboardist Gideon van Gelder) captured the majesty of ‘Trane’s modal modern jazz, but James’ heady but understated declaration “I go to claim what’s rightfully mine” was impossible to limit to jazz. Doubly so, his gentle gospel waltz “The Dreamer”—the title track of his album, dedicated to Martin Luther King—on which he adopted a lighter, higher voice that might have made him the envy of the Quiet Storm movement in the 1980s. He sounded old enough to have done so, too, never once betraying his youth.
Read More “Jose James @ Bohemian Caverns: Travesty” »

Seen live jazz lately? got a twitter account? Put the two together: Tweet about your most recent jazz concert experiences, and include the who, the where, and the hashtag #jazzlives.

Some background:

Two and a half weeks ago, Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout set the jazz world a-buzzin’ with an op-ed entitled “Can Jazz Be Saved?” The article referred to a recently published NEA survey of Public Participation in the Arts, which says that the number of Americans who have seen a live jazz performance is in freefall, while at the same time the median age of those live jazz attendees is skyrocketing. Jazz, Teachout concluded, is in dire straits unless it can get more listeners, and younger ones, fast.

In the time since, jazz musicians, journalists, and otherwise devotees have questioned the accuracy of the NEA’s numbers based on context (e.g., aren’t the recession and the Internet revolution being taken into account here?), semantics (how exactly are we defining “jazz” anyway?), geography (doesn’t it count for something that people’s access to jazz is severely limited outside a few big cities?), and anecdotal evidence (how come I see jazz clubs filled with young people?).

Teachout’s response, stubborn but not unreasonable, has essentially been “Anecdotes are well and good, but they don’t square off against numbers. If you have think the statistics are problematic, come up with better ones.”

Howard Mandel, jazz critic extraordinaire and president of the Jazz Journalists Association, has thus proposed exactly that. His campaign is as described above: If you’ve seen live jazz recently, or will do so soon, say so on Twitter. In your 140-character allotment, say who you’ve seen, where and when you saw them, and include the hashtag “#jazzlives.” The goal is to see how many people we can find that actually are seeing live jazz.

Game on, folks. Rack ‘em up and hash ‘em out.

August, 2009, has been a horrible month for the jazz world. First it was Rashied Ali, then Les Paul. Now, AllAboutJazz.com and Time Out New York report that saxophonist and innovator Joe Maneri died last night at the age of 82.

Maneri labored mostly in obscurity, introducing the twelve-tone compositional technique into jazz and pioneering the use of microtones in composition and improvising. Though widely unknown, he was a great influence and mentor through his long stint as a teacher at the New England Conservatory, the first fully accredited jazz education program in the United States. In the ’90s, however, his son Mat Maneri – a jazz violinist who also engages with microtones – lured Maneri out into live performance and recording, where he found steady work in the Downtown scene until his death.

August sucks.

Al Stewart is best known for his 1976 hit “Year of the Cat,” but in my obsessive family merely owning the single or even the album wasn’t enough. My mother, 20 when “Year of the Cat” hit, promptly went out and purchased every album Stewart had ever made, from 1967 onward; she’s purchased every album since. Hence his (history-) bookish folk rock is the music I grew up on – before I was two I was toddling up to my parents with his 1980 record 24 Carrots in hand and humming songs.

So that’s why I simply can’t miss seeing Al Stewart tonight at The Birchmere in Alexandria. And I’d humbly suggest that you can’t either – that is, if you like British folk, ’70s singer-songwriters, or the obscure but fascinating historical tidbits he frequently writes about. (Know who Charlotte Corday is? Heard of the mystery of the Mary Celeste? Ever compared the worlds of an early 1920s migrant worker and then-President Warren G. Harding? Al Stewart might be the guy for you.) Besides, he’s got American country-folk singer Jesse Winchester opening for him, which is always a good thing. Tickets are $29.50.