I neglected to mention last week’s hottest jazz ticket—singer Kurt Elling’s performance at the White House state dinner—on the grounds that I assumed it was impossible to get admission.

Not so much, turns out. So in case you’ve been inspired to take your chances with the Secret Service, here’s the week’s big event: Dave Brubeck accepts a Kennedy Center Honor on Saturday night.

Now let’s get down to it.

Dec. 5
Too much is made of Esperanza Spalding’s singing. Technically adept, she’s also emotionally callow at this point in her career. Don’t let it fool you; at 25, Spalding is already one of the major bass players of her generation. Indeed, on her instrument comes the nuance that is missing from her vocal, and it matches the astonishing technique she exercises. (Taken together, it got her a job teaching at Berklee, the youngest professor in the school’s history.) What’s more, she’s an adventurer— imbuing standards like “Body and Soul” with clever rhythms and harmonies —who is on the cusp of real mainstream success with her light touches of pop and hip-hop, even while she works with hardcore jazzers like Joe Lovano and Nicholas Payton. See the young phenomenon with her quartet at 8 pm at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. $30.
Read More “Jazz Setlist: Dec. 3 – 9″ »

Nov. 27
Antonio Parker is a smallish-built fellow, with dapper dress and a huge smile. His looks may leave you unprepared for his sound on the saxophone: 100 percent pure brawn. So much muscle is flexed in any one of his solos that his astonishing harmonic sense—trumpeter Kenny Rittenhouse notes how he “devours the changes”—can almost be overlooked. Not quite, though—the jazz repertoire is such easy prey in Parker’s hands that one can genuinely see the devouring happen on the bandstand. The Antonio Parker Quartet performs 9:00 pm at HR-57, 1610 14th Street NW. $12.
Read More “Jazz Setlist: Nov. 26 – Dec. 2″ »

Former Thad Wilson Big Band saxophonist Brian Settles

The Thad Wilson Big Band was on the bill last Thursday night at HR-57—but that’s not what took the stage. Instead, trumpeter Wilson led a quintet (with tenor sax, piano, bass, and drums) through Miles Davis’ score for the 1957 film Elevator to the Gallows, which showed as the band played. The change wasn’t inappropriate, since Davis had used the same instrumentation in the film…but why not the big band, as advertised?

“The band basically mutinied on me,� Wilson explains during a set break. “So I shut it down.� This was a surprising bit of news from an ensemble that has been a staple of the Washington scene since January 1998. It had become something of a required course for D.C. jazz musicians—most of the scene’s regulars have passed through its ranks—and was, one member remarked, “the only game in town.�

“The bottom line? Money fucks up everything,� Wilson says. “The gigs just weren’t there, and so the money wasn’t there. But I also felt like the discipline 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!’�

“We didn’t quit because of the money,� says Brad Linde, the band’s former baritone saxophonist. “It was because the time and effort wasn’t worth the musical direction. The band has potential with a book of originals, but Thad was playing the same 10 tunes every week.�

Read More “Brass Exodus: The sad ending of the Thad Wilson Big Band” »

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” »

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″ »

Good news this morning from Nasar Abadey, D.C. jazz drummer and leader of the ensemble Supernova. Abadey and Supernova (this time in quartet form) have been accepted as part of the U.S. State Department’s international cultural-exchange program (in partnership with Jazz At Lincoln Center), “The Rhythm Road: American Music Abroad” for 2010.

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.

Read More “Jazz Setlist: Nov. 5 – 11″ »

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.”
Read More “Nasar Abadey: Travels in Multi-D” »

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.

Read More “Jazz Setlist, Oct. 29 – Nov. 5″ »