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 CHARLIE CHRISTIAN • FREDDIE REDD • L ARRY GOLDINGS GETS FUNNY

JULY/AUGUST 2021

JEN SHYU
Theater of Truth

VINCE MENDOZA
Arranging for Freedom

PASQUALE GRASSO
The Pianistic Guitarist

GUITAR
SPECIAL
DAVID GILMORE
LORNE LOFSKY
NICK MILLEVOI
DIEGO BARBER
ANDREW RENFROE

Mahavishnu at 50—and More By Jim Farber jazztimes.com

 JULIAN LAGE
SQUINT
Guitarist’s striking Blue Note debut weds expressive
songwriting with the deft interplay of his trio with bassist
Jorge Roeder & drummer Dave King.
NORAH JONES
’TIL WE MEET AGAIN (LIVE)
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from the US, France, Italy, Brazil & Argentina.
CHARLES LLOYD & THE MARVELS
TONE POEM
Sax master with The Marvels featuring Bill Frisell,
Greg Leisz, Reuben Rogers & Eric Harland
covering Ornette Coleman, Leonard Cohen & more.

DR. LONNIE SMITH DAVE McMURRAY JAMES FRANCIES

BREATHE GRATEFUL DEADICATION PUREST FORM
B3 organ legend live at Jazz Standard with his trio & Saxophonist turns Grateful Dead favorites into 3LDQLVWIROORZVXSKLVDFFODLPHGGHEXWZLWKDQHFOHFWLF
septet for his 75th birthday celebration, bookended vehicles for his own jazz expression with guests new album that taps into the essence of his artistry,
by 2 studio collaborations with Iggy Pop. including Bettye LaVette & Bob Weir And Wolf Bros. conjuring a world of sounds & textures.

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THE COMPLETE LIVE AT THE LIGHTHOUSE VINYL REISSUE SERIES VINYL REISSUE SERIES
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CONTENTS JULY/AUGUST 2021 x VOLUME 51 x NUMBER 6

In every issue

Features 3 JT Notes
4 Opening Chorus
JEN SHYU Larry Goldings’ comic sideline; Tali
24 Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses, the latest project by vocalist/com-
Rubinstein makes a case for the
recorder; Nick Millevoi; Pat Thomas;
poser/multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu, is multi-dimensional, a meeting Andrew Renfroe; John Chin on being
of jazz, traditional Asian musics, theater, and dance that blends the an Asian-American jazz musician;
themes of racism, sexism, climate change, and family grief. As and farewells
Michael J. West discovers, its creator is just as complex.

VINCE MENDOZA
30 Over four decades, Vince Mendoza has established a gold-standard
career as an arranger, composer, and conductor, winning half a dozen
Grammy Awards in the process. Now, for the first time, he’s produced
a work that’s explicitly political. A.D. Amorosi finds out why, while also
uncovering Mendoza’s sizable debt to Philly soul.

16 Chronology
The apotheosis of Freddie Redd
18 Before & After
David Gilmore
22 Overdue Ovation
Lorne Lofsky
48 Audio Files
Brent Butterworth on all-in-one
turntables
50 Chops
Diego Barber plugs in
52 Gearhead
The Bond Electraglide

36 PASQUALE GRASSO
His playing is straight-up amazing, a bold and hand-challenging
54 Reviews
Roy Hargrove and Mulgrew Miller,
transposition of pianistic ideas to the guitar. Ted Panken speaks to the Julian Lage, Dave Holland, JD
Italian virtuoso Pasquale Grasso about his classical background, his Allen, James Francies, Garage A
relationship with bop mentor Barry Harris, and his admiration of many Trois, Mosaic’s latest trawl through
modern jazz guitarists—although you can rest assured he won’t be the Louis Armstrong catalog, and
sounding like them anytime soon. more
64 Coda
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN Charlie Christian at Minton’s
42 Fifty years ago, he founded the Mahavishnu Orchestra and revolu-
tionized the jazz world. Today, he’s making music that reaches back
Cover image of John McLaughlin by Urve Kuusik
to his roots, and his first instrument (not guitar). In conversation with
© Sony Music Entertainment
Jim Farber, McLaughlin discusses both of these topics, as well as his Table of Contents image by Deneka Peniston
overcoming of hand problems that were nearly career-ending.

JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 1
 what's on
JAZZTIMES.COM
x Exclusive Content
Lee Mergner talks to Maria Muldaur about
her new collaboration with New Orleans’
Tuba Skinny, and Michael J. West selects
10 outstanding Horace Silver recordings in
our latest JazzTimes 10. Plus album and book
reviews, obituaries, and much more.
x JT News
Among the 2021 inductees to the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame is pioneering singer/songwriter
and poet Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011), who
made politically potent music in the 1970s
that fused jazz with R&B and who—although
he preferred to refer to himself as a “blue-
sologist”—is widely regarded as one of the
earliest rappers. The induction ceremony will
take place on October 30 in Cleveland, Ohio.
x Audio & Video
Our new performance series Jazz in Europe,
hosted by guitarist Dekel Bor, introduces a
world audience to some of the most impres-
sive voices on the European jazz scene. Ini-
tial guests include bassist Hans Glawischnig
and trumpeter Sebastian Studnitzky. Catch
it Thursdays at 3 PM ET on our Facebook
page (JazzTimesMag) and YouTube channel
(JazzTimesVideos).
2 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
ART & PRODUCTION
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JAZZTIMES FOUNDER: IRA SABIN (1928-2018)
 JT NOTES
Solo Flights frequently seems to hover right at the
extreme bounds of the possible.
He has a ready audience. Guitar-
larger than those who have a pre-ex-
isting affinity for it; in other words,
he needs to be heard beyond the gui-

W hen jazz guitarists step out on

their own, leaving the security
of accompanists behind, they face
ists—like yours truly—eat this stuff
up because we love few things more
than the sound of guitars, especially
tar ghetto. So if you haven’t heard his
Solo Ballads, Solo Standards, Solo Bud
Powell, Solo Bird, or Solo Monk yet,
special challenges. Yes, they can when we’re hearing them do things do yourself a favor and check them
handle chords and melody simul- we don’t expect. But what Grasso has out. I guarantee you won’t be bored.
taneously, much like pianists. But achieved deserves an audience far MAC RANDALL
their scope is way more limited, since
they only have six strings and five
fingers to work with (unless they’re
doing a Stanley Jordan, which ups the
complications considerably). Take
it from someone who’s been playing
guitar for nearly 40 years: Reharmo-
nizing standards for a solo spotlight SEPTEMBER
isn’t all that tough on paper, but when
the time comes to consider what your
24, 25 + 26
fingers can actually play, your options
diminish drastically. Clarity and
precision often come at the expense
of a full-bodied attack. Solo guitar
performances that feature both are
hard to come by.
Of course, that certainly doesn’t
mean such performances don’t exist.
Just look at the catalog of the great
Joe Pass, as well as Ted Greene, Bar- BRINGING
ney Kessel, George Van Eps, Lenny
Breau, and more modern players like
US BACK
Mimi Fox and Julian Lage. To those TOGETHER
names should now be added that of AGAIN!
Pasquale Grasso, the monstrously
ing Sponso
talented Italian guitarist profiled by sent rs
re
Ted Panken in this issue.
P

࠮࠮
࠮࠮
I could try and come up with a
࠮࠮࠮࠮࠮࠮

࠮࠮࠮࠮࠮࠮࠮࠮࠮
bunch of worthy adjectives to de-
scribe Grasso’s playing on his recent
࠮࠮࠮

series of solo EPs, but in this case

࠮

࠮࠮
࠮࠮

I think a picture does a better job: ࠮࠮ ࠮࠮

࠮࠮
࠮࠮࠮࠮࠮࠮࠮࠮࠮
specifically, the portrait photograph
of Grasso by Deneka Peniston on pg.
38. Just look at that left hand! What is
he doing? Is it wise? Does his doc-
Art by Andres Chaparro

tor approve?
The image reminds me of the sim-
ilarly contorted, spider-like paw that
graces the front cover of Allan Holds-
worth’s 1987 book Reaching for the
Uncommon Chord. Only Grasso isn’t
just reaching, he’s finding. Inspired
by pianists Art Tatum, Bud Powell,
and Barry Harris more than by any
3X WINNER
other guitar player, he has developed JerseyArts.com
an approach to his instrument that People’s Choice Award PRODUCED BY
FAVORITE MUSIC
FESTIVAL! MONTCLAIRJAZZFESTIVAL.ORG
 OPENING CHORUS
The Victor Borge of Jazz?
Keyboardist LARRY GOLDINGS has gained a new audience
online—as a comedian
A lmost everybody has seen it: Sailor
Sabol’s spectacularly out-of-tune
rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner”
at the February 2021 CPAC convention.
Dozens of videos are circulating on
social media, some of them presenting
the performance a cappella as it was
originally sung, some of them parodies
with after-the-fact accompanists trying
to follow Sabol as she wanders through
at least four excruciating key changes.
But the funniest of them all—and the
one that went the most viral by far—
was the brainchild of Larry Goldings,
the much-admired L.A.-based pianist,
organist, and composer. In it he portrays
both a hapless keyboard accompanist
who shows up late for the gig, having
missed rehearsal and soundcheck, and
the show’s exasperated director, whose
voice is heard in the accompanist’s head-
phones saying, “You’d better not screw
this up!” The singer’s appalling rendi-
tion is hilarious (if painful) on its own,
but Goldings’ quizzical looks, winces,
4 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
Larry Goldings as Hans
Groiner and (opposite)
“The Guy with the Gig”
growing sense of panic, and split-second
key adjustments make his video a come-
dy classic. To date, it’s gotten more than
2.2 million views on Facebook alone,
with thousands more on YouTube and
other sites.
“I didn’t expect all this. It was just me,
bored, trying to amuse myself,” Gold-
ings said recently via Zoom. “I’ve always
had a fascination with the musically
bizarre. When you hear somebody who’s
that naïve—the confidence, but it’s so
ill-informed. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for
the Trump era.”
Reading the comments on the day
he posted the video, Goldings noticed
that several people thought it was real.
“Somebody said, ‘Frankly, I’m surprised
Larry would take a gig like that!’”
But most people got the joke. “The
day the CPAC video went viral was the
happiest day for me of the pandemic,”
he said. “People were calling and texting
me who I hadn’t heard from in months
… Most comments I got were like, ‘I
haven’t laughed this hard in a year.’”
The Grammy-nominated Goldings
has released more than 20 albums under
his own name; he’s also a film and TV
composer, and he’s been James Taylor’s
keyboardist for the last two decades. His
work with Taylor has won him perhaps
his widest fame—until now, anyway.
“The pandemic gave me more time
to pursue it, but humor has always been
central in my life,” said Goldings, who
acknowledged loving Steve Martin
and Monty Python as a kid. “My father
turned me on to Victor Borge. I thought
he was a genius. I also loved P.D.Q. Bach
[a.k.a. Peter Schickele].”
Over the years, Goldings has made
something of a habit out of accompany-
ing bad singers for laughs. His unique
brand of musical comedy began in the
New York City phase of his career with
his “discovery” of a would-be singer
named Johnny “Bowtie” Barstow. In the
early ’90s, he recalled, “I was the pianist
for an open-mic at the Angry Squire in
Chelsea. And this 20-year-old kid came
in one night, signed up and got up there,
full of confidence, in this ratty tux.” He
sang tunes like “Thou Swell” and “Mack
the Knife” with a swinging, ring-a-ding-
ding attitude—and a profound musical
disability. “He loved music but was
tone-deaf and rhythm-deaf. He did have
stage presence.”
According to Goldings, Barstow was
awful in an entirely original way. “Instead
of my reaction being, ‘Okay, we can never
have this person up here again,’ it was,
‘You are invited anytime.’ Without even
thinking about it, from his first notes—if
you can call them notes—I immediately
started trying to help him and follow
him, and make him sound right.” Gold-
ings began to record Barstow, surrepti-
tiously at first, then with his cooperation
for a full album of Christmas songs and
standards, helped out by Goldings’ reg-
ular organ-trio partners, guitarist Peter
Bernstein and drummer Bill Stewart. A
Bowtie Christmas and More became an
underground hit. Its tracks, which defy
easy description, can easily be found
these days on YouTube.
“This just exposes me as a completely
sick person,” Goldings said, laughing,
“but I was just fascinated, and still am, by
him and people like him.”

Goldings is even more infamous
for another musical prank: his comic
character Hans Groiner. This fictional
Austrian musicologist is best described
by his Twitter “bio,” which reads: “I
am a scholar of Thelonious Monk. I
improve his music by making it more
relaxing, and less offensive to the ear.”
Back in the mid-2000s, donning a black
leather jacket and a blond wig he bought
at Target, Goldings, as Groiner, made
a series of videos in which he played
de-flavorized, “corrected” Monk tunes
like “Bemsha Swing” and “Well You
Needn’t,” sounding more like Richard
Clayderman than Monk. The videos,
originally circulating on Myspace, be-
came an Internet phenomenon among
jazz cognoscenti and have earned tens
of thousands of YouTube views. They
even led to several live performances as
Hans, including a couple of well-attend-
ed “master classes” at NYC’s Smalls and
L.A.’s Blue Whale.
The CPAC video has launched a new
phase of Goldings’ comedy. He followed
up with another video featuring the
same keyboard-playing character,
whom he now refers to as “The Guy
with the Gig.” The new one places him,
thanks to green-screen magic and a
friend with Adobe’s Premiere video
editing software, inside the climactic
scene of Close Encounters of the Third
Kind, where “the guy,” late as usual,
has forgotten the sheet music for the
famous five-note synthesizer theme
needed to communicate with the aliens.
Happily, more comedy appears likely
in Goldings’ future. “People in the biz
have told me that, if I want to, I could
turn it into something, not just a hob-
by,” he said. “You know, my wife was
never really sold on me doing Hans. She
said, ‘You don’t see Brad Mehldau doing
that.’ I know it’s odd that I’ve spent so
much time on it, but I can’t really help
myself. If someone came along and said
let’s develop this for a YouTube series, I
would go for it.” ALLEN MORRISON
 OPENING CHORUS
Recorders Without Borders
TALI RUBINSTEIN redefines an instrument’s context and reach
T o say that the recorder has
no cachet in jazz is putting it
mildly. But that never deterred Tali
Rubinstein. In fact, the instrument’s
status as a tabula rasa in that genre is
part of what drives her artistry and
development. “I think the fact that
it hasn’t been explored very much is
exciting because it’s open to discov-
ery,” she says. “There are no rules.
There’s no aesthetic for jazz recorder,
so you have to be your own judge
and develop your own tastes in order
to decide what feels authentic.”
Rubinstein, 36, has caused many
to reevaluate the recorder’s station.
Breathing new life into these duct
f lutes, she echoes the boundless
enthusiasm that initially set her on
this path some 30 years ago while
6 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
growing up in Israel. “I started
playing recorder at six or seven,” she
recalls, “and it quickly became my
passion. My mom signed me up for
after-school classes and, after going
two times, my teacher, Ilana Hiller,
recommended private lessons. So I
transitioned into that pretty early.”
Although most children quickly
move on from the recorder, given its
widely accepted role as an instru-
ment of mass instruction serving as
a bridge to other winds, Rubinstein
felt no pressure to change. “Nobody
told me I should do anything else
or that there was anything wrong
with playing recorder,” she explains
matter-of-factly. “It was just the
most natural thing. Music was very
important in our house. It had a lot
of value to everyone; we were always
listening to music. So playing was
obviously encouraged. I didn’t feel
that my instrument was any dif-
ferent than what my siblings were
playing—piano and cello and violin
and clarinet.”
Supported and encouraged by her
parents, Rubinstein matured under
the wing of celebrated recorder play-
er and mezzo-soprano Bracha Kol,
developed an appreciation for early
music, attended the Thelma Yellin
High School of the Arts, and eventu-
ally went on to Tel Aviv University to
study classical music and math. But
it only took one year of higher edu-
cation for her to realize a change was
in order. “Things weren’t working
NOAM GALAI
for me, so I took a break and went to
 study at the Rimon School of Music,
which is an institution that partners
with Berklee College of Music. The
plan was to just take a year off—im-
provise, have some fun—and then
get back to something ‘serious’ that
I could make a career out of,” she
notes. “Of course, that second part
never happened [laughs].”
Jazz and creative music, pre-
viously filtered into Rubinstein’s
ears at home through her younger
sister’s piano studies, finally entered
the picture. And with them came a
whirlwind of changes and discov-
eries about personalized expres-
sion. Rubinstein took a deep dive
into theory and history, recorded
her first album—2012’s Lullaby, a
genre-blind duo date with bassist
Noam Shacham—and made the jump
to Boston, where she became the
first recorder player to matriculate
at Berklee.
Once there, she made an important
connection with Javier Limón, artistic
TRI-C
JAZZFEST
CLEVELAND
Live from Cain Park
21-0001 Sept. 11-12, 2021
director of that college’s Mediterra-
nean Music Institute. He would go on
to champion her work by fostering
the creation of 2014’s Tal y Tali, a
meetup with pianist Tal Even-Tzur
that highlighted original thought and
Hebraic roots; extending an invitation
for Rubinstein to appear as a fea-
tured guest on two f lamenco-related
projects (2013’s Promesas de Tierra
and 2015’s Latin Grammy-winning
Entre 20 Aguas: A la Música de Paco
de Lucía); and serving as producer for
her forthcoming singer/songwriter
debut, Mémoire. Adventures with a
wide variety of other musicians—in-
cluding appearances on record with
guitarist David Broza, pianist Alain
Mallet, and style-splicing German
band Wildes Holz, plus a dynam-
ic collaboration with pianist and
harpsichordist Apollonio Maiello that
culminated with the release of 2021’s
Cybird—have only furthered Rubin-
stein’s reputation as an artist who
capably pushes boundaries.
While she has yet to record a jazz
album, Rubinstein acknowledges
that it’s high on her to-do list. In the
meantime, she’s had no trouble draw-
ing admirers in that arena through
live appearances (pre-COVID) and
social media, where she can be seen
playing classics like Thelonious
Monk’s “Think of One” and Benny
Golson’s “Stablemates.” Rubinstein’s
work in this realm still occasion-
ally raises eyebrows, mirroring the
surprise that once greeted her when
she would take her recorders out at
Berklee and at jam sessions in New
York. But negativity never really sur-
faces, and any skepticism is quickly
erased by her performance. “Most
of the doubts I encounter happen
before playing the music. And I
don’t mind. I don’t expect people to
know because I didn’t know before
I tried it. So I’m never offended if
someone thinks it’s a joke or doesn’t
understand. I actually look at it as an
opportunity.” DAN BILAWSKY
Wall-to-wall live
music featuring
Lakecia Benjamin
and Pursuance,
Emmet Cohen Trio,
Marquis Hill, Banda Magda,
Spanish Harlem Orchestra,
Cleveland Jazz All-Stars
and more!
Tickets on sale now
tri-cjazzfest.com
 OPENING CHORUS
Nick Millevoi’s Maps
The guitarist, composer, and musical cartographer
documents Philadelphia and elsewhere
L ike an ornery real-estate magnate,
the work of Nick Millevoi screams,
“Location, location, location.” Whether
as a composer or as a guitarist, he makes
music that holds a distinct sense of
place wherever he roams. And so it’s no
surprise that this human GPS chose to
write a book of 25 compositions, Streets
of Philadelphia, named after streets in
his old Pennsylvania stomping ground.
It was published in 2019; an album of the
same name, featuring 10 pieces from the
book, came out late last year. Millevoi’s
“locations” teem with melody, feedback
and, more often than not, non-traditional
tunings—a mélange of shifting terrains.
“Part of my desire to create a Streets of
Philadelphia book relates to wanting to
have my compositions live in different
contexts,” says Millevoi, who not only
penned the Philadelphia notes and
charts but also had them printed in color
8 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
on risograph, as if his maps were the
truest of buried treasures.
“I wrote the 25 songs after recording
Twilight Time [his Desertion Trio’s 2019
album that covered songs by artists like
Gene Pitney, Santo and Johnny, and the
Platters]. I’d spent so much time in my
head arranging music for that record and
living in a ’50s and ’60s musical space,
which to me comes from spending a lot of
time in Wildwood, N.J. as a kid—which
still looks like the ’50s and ’60s more than
maybe anywhere but Palm Springs—that
I decided to just think about Philadelphia,
my experience living in the city, and let
that come out intuitively. No overthink-
ing, no preconceived ideas about scales
or motifs, just being present and trying to
tap into that vibe musically. Some of the
tunes have nice, singable melodies, some
are rhythmically and tonally claustro-
phobic, all are a little complicated, which
sums up my feelings about the city on an
abstract level.”
While the published Philadelphia
seemed to Millevoi a good way of
formalizing those compositions, the
recorded version (which features violist
Veronica MJ, cellist Tom Kraines, trom-
bonist Dan Blacksberg, and percussion-
ist Anthony DiBartolo in addition to the
guitarist) was meant to live on outside of
its creator as well—“so it’s not limited to
my playing, my sound, or my abilities,”
he says. Millevoi credits John Zorn’s Ma-
sada Book 3 and Bagatelles with inspir-
ing that idea, but the soulful openness
and windy bluster all over these Streets
are distinctively his.
They also occupy a very different
place from where Millevoi’s Desertion
Trio exist on Numbers Maker, a new
live album recorded at New Haven’s
Firehouse 12 in 2019 that blends the
sounds of early electric Miles with James
Bond-era John Barry (and Vic Flick).
The spy thing comes from Millevoi
wanting his new songs “to feel like you’re
hearing them with whatever the musical
equivalent is of a Dutch angle”; the Miles
vibe is all groove, all the time. “Deser-
tion Trio’s other stuff was about being
rhythmically free. It was time we really
rocked a pulse and [drummer] Jason
[Nazary] brought that, so we just leaned
into that pretty hard.” (Bassist Johnny
DeBlase fills out the group.)
This autumn will see the debut
release of another Millevoi project,
Grassy Sound—a duo with pianist Ron
Stabinsky (Mostly Other People Do the
Killing, Meat Puppets)—whose central
location seems to be the beach. “I wrote
a set of tunes for Ron and I to play that
gets into an avant-garde surf/lounge
kind of space inspired by my love of
water, surfing, and early easy-listening
jams, but also some Captain Beefheart.
“I love the guitar,” Millevoi enthus-
es. “And there are so many guitars that
are completely different from each oth-
er. What I feel when I play a Telecaster
versus a Jazzmaster can be so different,
and that is such an inspiring feeling.
Amps are the same way. And now we’re
in the golden age of guitar pedals,
which blows open all the possibilities.
But there’s enough in the guitar [itself]
KATIE REY
to never get bored. It’s completely
open.” A.D. AMOROSI
 OPENING CHORUS
[Ahmed] live (L to R): Pat Thomas, Joel Grip,
Antonin Gerbal, and Seymour Wright
He Out (and In) Here
Keyboardist PAT THOMAS explores many dimensions
within Britain’s jazz scene
B ritish keyboardist Pat Thomas has
performed alongside avant-garde
luminaries for decades, but somehow has
remained a relatively unknown quantity
on this side of the Atlantic. At age 60, he
has yet to play a live show in America.
However, he’s increasingly been releasing
music on U.S.-based imprints, includ-
ing Nights on Saturn (communication),
the most recent album by his quartet
[Ahmed], issued in late March by Astral
Spirits. While the group’s name pays trib-
ute to Ahmed Abdul-Malik (1927-1993),
a Thelonious Monk and Randy Weston
compatriot, its work strays far from his
swing, indulging instead in rhythmically
acute free improv that rarely relents in its
pounding explorations.
[Ahmed] started as a coincidence.
Several years back, Thomas and saxo-
phonist Seymour Wright had individ-
ually begun playing with bassist Joel
Grip and drummer Antonin Gerbal,
when the pair discovered a shared love
of Abdul-Malik’s music. On his leader
dates, the late bassist introduced a
sound world that, in Thomas’ words,
went “beyond Western tonality” and
helped “to free us from a static rhyth-
mic perspective.” That Abdul-Malik
never wrote for piano only emboldened
Thomas, who saw an opportunity to
use 60-year-old recordings as a starting
point for improvisation.
10 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
Nights on Saturn (communication)
expands on a composition of the same
name from the bassist’s 1961 The Music
of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, on which he was
joined by drummer Andrew Cyrille,
among others. Turning the seven-minute
original into an album-length improvi-
sation could have been an overwhelming
task, if Thomas didn’t see himself as being
surrounded by the proper collective.
“We don’t need to worry about the
rhythm section; they’re there and can
play in and out fantastically,” explained
Thomas, who’s recovered from a recent
stroke. “And Seymour was into this very
micro [concept of playing] the note and
slightly changing it. With the piano, I
thought it would be good to stick with
Seymour, but keep adding these sort of
rhythmic splinters as well.”
If Abdul-Malik is an overlooked
figure, Thomas himself deserves more
of the spotlight, having worked with
avant-guitarist Derek Bailey and impro-
vising reedist Lol Coxhill while record-
ing dozens of albums over a career that
stretches back more than 30 years. The
pianist also features on the recent 577
album Educated Guess, Vol. 1 alongside
Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.
As blocky and indebted to Cecil
Taylor as Thomas’ playing is at times,
his work with the improvising trio Shifa
on a pair of live releases showcases his
dexterity—both inside the acoustic piano
and at its keyboard. Saxophonist Rachel
Musson, who along with drummer Mark
Sanders rounds out the group, finds
Thomas to be an exhilarating partner
for his easy humor and his incisive style
of improvising.
“He’s very motivic and will hang on
to something for ages and ages, and then
just keep twisting it and developing it,
which is nice because it provides an arc,”
Musson said. “But then, he’s also very
happy to suddenly shift and change.”
Malleability has served Thomas well
in settings as varied as the 2019 Paul Bley
tribute BleySchool—another 577 release
where he swaps the aggressive tone he’s
become associated with for a lighter
touch—and his engagement with rock,
funk, and reggae in younger days. As
jungle became an important part of U.K.
club culture during the ’90s, he met the
genre on its own terms: as an experimen-
tal electronic music. Given that Lon-
don’s current jazz scene is inextricably
connected to grime (a hip-hop ancillary
with ties to the Caribbean), some might
draw a comparison between Thomas’
experiments from the jungle era and a
performer like D Double E appearing on
Sons of Kemet’s Black to the Future.
Thomas refutes the idea, though. “I
see grime as much more marketed,” he
began. “Basically, grime is coming out
of dubstep. And dubstep was mostly
instrumental music; a lot of it’s still reg-
gae-based. I think they called it ‘grime’
as the lyrics got more confrontational.
And so I don’t see it in the same way.
When [jungle] came out, it shocked
people the way early hip-hop did. It
shocked everybody.”
Such an expansive purview belies
Thomas’ musical experiences while
growing up in Oxford, where he still lives.
But an early chance viewing of Oscar
Peterson performing on TV resulted in a
dedication to jazz—in its broadest terms.
“I personally needed to see someone
like Oscar Peterson. I had a classical
training, and at that time I was thinking
of classical music only,” Thomas recalled.
COURTESY OF ASTRAL SPIRITS
“When I saw Oscar Peterson with that
facility, playing music I’d never heard of,
then finding out the music was created
by Afro-Americans, I couldn’t believe it.
And then when I couldn’t play it, that was
it.” DAVE CANTOR
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 OPENING CHORUS
High Tech, Liquid Tone
The electro-acoustic sound of guitarist ANDREW RENFROE
I fell in love with jazz way before I fell
in love with jazz guitar,” says Andrew
Renfroe. He goes on to explain that
he first learned about the music from
a high-school band teacher who fed
him a steady diet of Lee Morgan, John
Coltrane, and Wayne Shorter, explain-
ing their concepts on piano or trumpet,
leaving his student to figure out how to
apply them to the guitar.
Though Renfroe spent his teens jam-
ming with Jamey Aebersold play-along
records, normal guitar lessons didn’t
ensue until he attended the Hartt School
at the University of Hartford. Upon
attaining a master’s from Juilliard, he hit
the New York scene, forging his sound
through years of playing with peers like
saxophonist Braxton Cook, keyboard
player Taber Gable, and drummer
12 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
For your eyes only: Andrew Renfroe
Curtis Nowosad, all of whom appear on
his upcoming album Run in the Storm.
That sound differs from the headiness
of other New York-based jazz guitarists,
instead recalling the more earthy, vocal
approach of legendary R&B players like
Eric Gale and Cornell Dupree, while his
compositions meld the straight-ahead
drive of Bobby Broom with the harmonic
modality of John Coltrane. “It’s a com-
bination of a rootsy attack and time feel,
combined with transcribing Coltrane
to learn his phrasing and harmony,”
Renfroe says.
Still, Kurt Rosenwinkel’s influence
is almost inescapable for guitar play-
ers of a certain generation. In Ren-
froe’s case it comes in the guise of the
electronic sounds that pop up on the
album, influenced by Rosenwinkel’s
electronica-based Heartcore. “That’s my
favorite record of his,” Renfroe explains.
“All the tunes on my record began as
demos in Ableton Live. Ideas started with
electric drums and weird keyboard pads,
so it didn’t make sense for the band to
take a straight-ahead approach. When
something starts in Ableton or Logic,
some of the sounds become part of the
song itself.”
Despite the programmed origin of the
compositions, Run in the Storm presents
more as a live outing with electronic
accents. Said accents include Nowosad’s
occasional triggered sample interjec-
tions, as well as Renfroe’s use of the
Electro-Harmonix Freeze pedal, which
creates a short loop of a note or chord,
often indistinguishable from a keyboard
pad. “I always have it under my right foot
and play it like a piano sustain pedal on
downbeats, or whenever the harmony
changes,” he says. “Lately, I’m trying to
find moments where I can work it into
single-line playing as well.”
Effects aside, Renfroe’s unique timbre
begins with his instruments. Veering
away from the custom and vintage
guitars favored by his influences, he
wields Ibanez archtop models from the
company’s budget Artcore line. Though
more expensive instruments vibrate bet-
ter, he found those vibrations problematic
at higher performance volumes. A single
pickup in the neck position helps account
for the richness of his tone, as does his
usage of super-heavy strings. The forward
transients come from elsewhere. “I have
a little lavalier mic inside the [guitar]
body and blend that in at the mixing
board,” he reveals. “We all hear the sound
of the pick hitting the strings when we
practice; why wouldn’t you want that to
come across at any volume?” The result is
a tone that often harks back to the liquid
distorted lines of the ’70s, courtesy of
a Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive, with the
added attack of the mic providing some
modern aggression.
On Run in the Storm tunes like
“1998,” “Borrowed Time,” and “Dula,”
Renfroe’s gritty guitar and Braxton
Cook’s smooth sax often blend into a
single lyrical voice. “We have a lot of
common influences,” he says. “Brax-
LAUREN DESBERG
ton makes a melody sing.” The same
could be said for Andrew Renfroe.
MICHAEL ROSS
 OPENING CHORUS
The Challenge of
Indifference
Pianist JOHN CHIN on what it means to be an Asian-
American jazz musician
I n the wake of the March 16 shooting
in Atlanta that killed eight people,
violence against Asians hit the top of the
news cycle. It had been ramping up for
months as more and more Asians were
(and are) being attacked across the coun-
try. It’s not a new story, by any means,
but I’d never seen it reach the American
consciousness as prevalently as it did
that week. However, I felt like the narra-
tive that the news was conveying didn’t
represent my story or my state of mind.
I don’t think about being Asian. My
identity is not defined by my ethnicity.
The only time I think about it is when
I’m faced with it—either positively,
like when we’re celebrating culture, or
negatively, like when I’m faced with some
sort of racism. I didn’t want another set
of misunderstandings to take over the
conversation. One set was enough.
My experiences coming up on the
jazz scene in New York are not unique:
You practice, write, make friends, hit the
scene, play a few gigs (hoping for better
ones), have roommates, try and make
14 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
ends meet, and search for your own voice.
It’s a challenge to persevere, even under
the best circumstances. But the payoff is
in the playing, the music, and the cama-
raderie. I rarely felt racism around me
when I was among musicians, but when
I did, it would surprise me. I’ve always
felt that I’d been respected by my peers
for my musicianship. There is, after all, a
legacy of inclusion among jazz musicians,
when it comes to race.
But at the same time, I had to say
something about who I was as an
Asian-American jazz musician. I wanted
people to know some of the challenges
we face, and also encourage people to
acknowledge our story in this commu-
nity—this jazz community. So, on social
media, in light of these recent events, I
wrote the following words:
“I fought to be here. Sometimes I
had to be tough. I learned that from my
mother: She was a Korean immigrant
who crossed the 38th parallel in her
childhood, became an American citizen,
and raised me as a single mother in Los
Angeles in the ’80s. That’s one tough lady,
folks. I’m certainly one of the lucky ones
and it’s a miracle that I’d made it this far.
“When you think of a jazz musician,
what do you see? I can most certainly
guess that it’s not me. ... But here I am. I
made it. I’m fulfilling my dream of being
a professional jazz musician. Being a jazz
musician makes you the underdog, for
sure. And being an Asian-American jazz
musician … well, let’s just say that there
are more stars in the NBA than guys
like me.
“And every day, I thank my lucky stars.
I’m deeply appreciative of the people who
have supported me over the years. ... Peo-
ple that have hired me, encouraged me,
and offered me opportunities. ... People
that see me as an artist, a musician, a
human. ...
“There are unique challenges I face;
prejudices; preconceived ideas. Many
people think I’m a foreigner. I’m not.
Hateful people tell me to ‘go back to my
country.’ In Korea, I’m perceived as an
American, and they’re right. By all ac-
counts, I’m 100% American. Yet to many,
I’m a constant foreigner.
“But the biggest challenge I face is not
hate, but indifference. So many people are
indifferent about the Asian community.
Objectification of a person is the indiffer-
ence to a person’s humanity, after all. For
an artist, indifference is death. And death
was the result of a killer’s indifference to-
ward the humanity of those poor women
and families that day.
“I ask that you see the Asian people
around you. See our humanity. See the
Asian jazz musicians and listen to their
work. They’ve all fought hard to get
to wherever they are, and it’s been an
uphill battle for every single one of them.
Support them. Acknowledge them. See
an Asian person not as your sidekick,
but your friend. Not your cook, but your
brother. Not cute, but your colleague. Not
your masseuse, but someone’s mother. ...
“Thank you for listening and, from the
bottom of my heart, thank you for your
support.” JOHN CHIN
John Chin is a Grammy-nominated
pianist/composer who has lived in
New York since 1998. His latest re-
lease, a joint effort with singer/song-
MARA CHIN
writer Richard Julian, is Anything
Mose!, a tribute to Mose Allison.
 FAREWELLS
Sonny Simmons,an alto saxophonist
and English hornist who cut a unique
and long-overlooked figure in the jazz
avant-garde, died April 6. He was 87.
Raised in Northern California, Simmons
first gained attention in Los Angeles as
the heir apparent to Ornette Coleman.
He formed a partnership there with
saxophonist/flutist Prince Lasha, which
continued as both musicians moved first
to New York and then back to California.
Simmons—a pioneer of the English horn’s
use in jazz—also established a solo ca-
reer on both coasts; however, his profile
remained low and was brought even
lower by personal problems that left him
alone and homeless on the streets of San
Francisco, playing for spare change under
the name Blackjack Pleasant. Discovered
busking in the early 1990s by Parisian jazz
club owner Geraldine Postel, Simmons
built his career anew, gaining a substan-
tial audience in Europe and an almost
reverential following among musicians in
New York and beyond—momentum that
he sustained well into the 2010s.
Bob Porter, a Grammy Award-winning
record producer, broadcaster, writer, and
historian of jazz and blues, died April 10 at
his home in Northvale, N.J., of esophageal
cancer. He was 80. Although Porter began
his jazz career as a producer and liner-note
writer at Prestige Records (helming the
recordings of sessions by Houston Person,
Sonny Stitt, and Gene Ammons), he did
his most significant work as a producer
of historical reissues of jazz, blues, and
R&B albums for the Savoy and Atlantic
record labels as well as Prestige. And he
channeled his expertise into broadcasting
as a founding announcer on the Newark
radio station WBGO, beginning there in
1979 and debuting his long-running blues
show Portraits in Blue in 1981; the program
continued until his death. He was also the
author of the 2016 book Soul Jazz: Jazz in
the Black Community, 1945-1975, a history
of jazz as told through its position within
Black America.
Bill Brower, a writer, broadcaster, event
producer, and fixture on the Washington,
ALAN NAHIGIAN
D.C. jazz scene for nearly five decades,
died April 12 at Georgetown University
Hospital in Washington. He was 72. Brow-
er’s many services to the music include
co-producing the Capital City Jazz Festival,
organizing the Congressional Black Caucus
Foundation’s annual Jazz Day program-
ming, and many years of stage managing at
the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Al Schmitt, a revered sound engineer who
recorded more than 150 gold- and plati-
num-selling albums and won 20 Grammy
Awards for his work—more than any other
person in the profession—died April 26. He
was 91. Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Ray
Charles, Natalie Cole, and Diana Krall are
just a few of the artists with whom Schmitt
worked during his 70-year career.
Curtis Fuller (1932-2021) in 1999
Eulis Cathey, a record executive and
broadcaster known for his long stints
both at WBGO radio in New Jersey and at
SiriusXM satellite radio, died April 27 at his
home in Buffalo, N.Y., after a short illness.
He was 67. Cathey had a distinguished
career in broadcasting that spanned more
than 40 years, beginning at the campus
radio station of the University of Dayton
and progressing steadily until he became
a nationally broadcast announcer at
SiriusXM in 2007. He hosted daily programs
on the satellite service’s mainstream jazz
(Real Jazz) and smooth jazz (Watercolors)
channels. Before going national in radio,
Cathey had also developed a parallel
career as a record company executive;
between 1987 and 2003, he was variously
employed as a staff promoter, producer,
and artists & repertory representative at
Island, Virgin, Atlantic, and Verve Records
and at N-Coded Music.
W. Royal Stokes, a jazz critic, historian, and
former JazzTimes editor, died May 1 at his
home in Elkins, W.V., of myelodysplastic
syndrome, a condition related to leukemia.
He was 90. Although Stokes was a jazz
lover for most of his life, he only made his
published debut as a critic in 1972, at age
42; he had previously earned a doctorate
in the classics and taught Latin and Greek
language, literature, and history at five
universities across the United States and
Canada. In 1978, he pitched the Washing-
ton Post with his writing and soon found
himself working as the paper’s jazz critic
for the better part of the next decade. From
1988 to 1990, he was the editor of this mag-
azine, and for nine years he edited Jazz
Notes, the newsletter of the Jazz Journal-
ists Association (which gave him a lifetime
achievement award in 2014). He authored
five books on jazz; the most recent, The
Essential W. Royal Stokes Jazz, Blues, and
Beyond Reader, appeared last spring.
Curtis Fuller, a trombonist and compos-
er who was a key player in cultivating
bebop language on his instrument, died
May 8 in Detroit, Mich. He was 88. The
pre-eminent trombonist of the hard-bop
era, Fuller was known for his technical
prowess and rhythmic ingenuity, as well as
the colloquial flavor in his improvisational
style. He belonged to two of the era’s most
important bands: the Benny Golson/Art
Farmer Jazztet, of which he was a founding
member, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messen-
gers, participating in one of that band’s
most storied periods (with Wayne Shorter,
Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton, and
Reggie Workman). He also made nearly
three dozen albums under his own name
and appeared on many significant and
popular recordings as a sideman with the
likes of Bud Powell, Sonny Clark, Lee Mor-
gan, Quincy Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel
Hampton, Jimmy Heath, and Count Basie.
However, his single most famous moment
on record is undoubtedly his solo on John
Coltrane’s “Blue Train,” arguably the most
celebrated trombone solo in jazz history.
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 15
 CHRONOLOGY
Freddie Redd makes The
Connection at Van Gelder
Studio, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,
February 15, 1960
Out of the Shadows
FREDDIE REDD’s brief but memorable moment in the spotlight BY MARK STRYKER
O ne day in 1959, pianist/composer
Freddie Redd went to see alto
saxophonist Jackie McLean with some
new music and a unique opportunity.
Redd had fallen into a Bohemian circle
of painters, actors, and writers. Among
them was Jack Gelber, a young play-
wright whose debut, The Connection,
was being produced by the experimental
Living Theatre.
Combining a play-within-a-play
structure descended from Pirandel-
lo and an existential bleakness à la
Beckett, The Connection explores the
gritty reality of heroin addicts waiting
for their fix. Gelber’s script calls for an
onstage jazz quartet to perform “in the
tradition of Charlie Parker.” The musi-
cians have speaking roles too.
With Gelber’s blessing, Redd wrote
an original score and recruited Mc-
16 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
Lean, whose Parker-inspired alto and
animated personality were perfect for
the play. “When I heard the music, it
enraptured me and made me weep,”
McLean told Will Thornbury three
decades later in the liner notes for
The Complete Blue Note Recordings of
Freddie Redd (Mosaic). “I had to play
that music!”
The Connection, which opened in
July 1959, became a theatrical sensa-
tion. Most notable from a jazz perspec-
tive, Redd’s inspired score led to a pair
of remarkable Blue Note recordings
taped six months apart in 1960. The
Music from The Connection and Shades
of Redd granted immortality to a musi-
cian who spent most of his peripatetic
career in the shadows.
Redd, who died March 17 in Man-
hattan at age 92, was a profound com-
poser. Songful melodies merge with
soulful harmony, intriguing forms, and
the significant influence of Bud Powell
to create music delirious in its lyricism
and spellbinding in its drama. His LPs
from 1960 are precious documents, by
far the best he ever made: a magical
confluence of compositions, personnel,
record label, and culture just at the
moment the hard-bop hegemony was
starting to splinter.
A native New Yorker and child of be-
PHOTO BY FRANCIS WOLFF/©MOSAIC IMAGES LLC
bop, Redd worked with Cootie Williams
and Charles Mingus in the ’50s and
recorded with Tiny Grimes, Art Farmer,
and Gene Ammons. He made his debut
as a leader in 1955 on a Prestige 10-inch
LP, and his San Francisco Suite (River-
side) in 1957 is notable for imaginative
and urbane tone painting.
The Music from The Connection and
Shades of Redd showcase the symbiosis
of Redd’s yearning romanticism and
McLean’s passionate astringency. Both
records deliver a dialect of hard bop
now extinct: muscular vulnerability.
It was a New York sound of the early
’60s. Style, culture, race, hipness, and
drugs coalesced in bittersweet music
that swung behind the beat and aspired
to a state of wounded grace. At the risk
of putting too fine a point on it, it was
junkie music.
Ben Sidran once wrote perceptively
about musicians in this era chan-
neling the urgent intensity of young
artists trying to prove themselves but
tempered by the enforced relaxation of
heroin. The resulting tension—Sidran
calls it an attitude of “passionate
indifference”—helps define players like
McLean, Tina Brooks, Sonny Clark,
Billy Higgins, and Lee Morgan. Unlike
these musicians, Redd was never a hard
drug user, but he certainly knew the
emotional territory of blissful alien-
ation.
“Who Killed Cock Robin” opens The
Connection in a furious rush of syn-
copation and melodic pirouettes, but
feelings of longing seethe in the sub-
text. Chords move in descending major
or minor ii-V sequences that underpin
the song’s lyrical ache; such harmon-
FURTHER LISTENING
>Tina Brooks: True Blue (Blue Note,
1960)—McLean’s understudy in The
Connection captures bittersweet emo-
tions similar to Redd but with a wholly
personal spin.
ic movement is a Redd calling card,
especially the way he leans on evocative
half-diminished chords (min7 with a
flat fifth). The song is through-com-
posed—a 16-bar intro plus an unusu-
ally long, regenerating 56-bar melody
that divides into eight-bar sections—
another formal wrinkle that creates
surprise. “Wigglin’” is a wailing blues
in which 16-bar choruses in F minor
Redd was never a
hard drug user, but
he certainly knew the
emotional territory of
blissful alienation.
alternate with 12-bar choruses in F
major. “Time to Smile” captures the
euphoria of a heroin high. “Theme for
Sister Salvation” is tragicomedy: A
mocking minor-key march dissolves
into a ballad of wistful regret.
Redd is less compelling as a soloist,
but his two-fisted accompaniment goos-
es the action with smartly orchestrated
figures. McLean plays electrifying solos,
and his tart sound and pitch amplify
>Bud Powell: Jazz Giant and The Genius
of Bud Powell (Verve, recorded 1949-
51)—Affecting Powell originals like
“Oblivion,” “Strictly Confidential,” and
“I’ll Keep Loving You” contain the seeds of
Redd’s drama, melodicism, harmony, and
sequential construction.
the music’s honesty without lapsing into
sentimentality. Bassist Larry Ritchie
and drummer Michael Mattos aren’t
big names but they deliver the goods,
and the quartet is tight as family, having
played these songs nightly for seven
months before heading into the studio
in February 1960. (Shirley Clarke’s
1961 film adaptation of The Connection
captures the band in situ.)
Taped in August 1960, Shades of Redd
has a darker cast. Tina Brooks’ prayerful
tenor sax creates a spine-tingling
blend with McLean’s alto. The Detroit
bass-and-drum team of Paul Chambers
and Louis Hayes swings much harder
than Ritchie and Mattos, and the seven
Redd originals dazzle in their diverse
expression. “The Thespian,” a Byzantine
structure that unfolds as poetically as
a Keats lyric, begins as a lofty ballad
with a sinuous melody and ends with
that same material played twice as fast.
“Olé” takes us to the bullfights in Spain.
“Blues-Blues-Blues” returns us to Har-
lem via an A-B-A (12-8-12) structure
with a pedal-point bridge.
Over the next 60 years, Redd record-
ed sporadically and moved often. He
worked into his nineties, but he never
again soared as high as he did in 1960,
when he made two records that were
comets of truth and beauty. JT
>Howard McGhee: Music from The
Connection (Felsted, 1960)—Uneven
version of Redd’s score led by a veteran
trumpeter a few months after the cast
recording for Blue Note. Interesting to hear
but workaday and no magic. With Brooks,
Redd, Milt Hinton, and Osie Johnson.
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 17
 BEFORE & AFTER
David Gilmore
From a remote location, the guitarist praises Russell
Malone—and gets hip to Emily Remler and Jeff Parker
BY ASHLEY KAHN
W hen this Before & After took
place, the pandemic crisis was
less than two months old. The music
community had been upended, everyone
scrambling to re-navigate. David Gilm-
ore—whose pre-pandemic activities
included teaching guitar performance
studies at Berklee College of Music and
preparing his sixth career album for
release—was ensconced in his home in
upstate New York.
“As a part-time professor,” he noted,
“I’d normally travel up to Boston two
18 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
days a week but the lockdown has taken
the commuting aspect away, which is
kind of cool, but it’s really zapped the
teaching experience. Trying to work
with an ensemble from my home studio
via Zoom”—a recent discovery for him,
as for so many—“is just not the same
thing and we’ve all had to adapt to
delays and dropouts in the feed. Private
lessons are a little better, but there’s
nothing like being in the same room
with a student playing. I prefer to be
very hands-on with my teaching. At the
same time, I can reach more students
faster because I’m not traveling around,
so there are pluses and minuses.”
Gilmore’s new album was called
From Here to Here, and its title, like
those of previous recordings Energies
of Change and Unified Presence, points
to his spiritual outlook: “It comes from
a spiritual teacher named Mooji whom
I’ve listened to a lot over the years. He
once described life as a journey from
here to here: a story of an apparent
journey in search of one’s true self. We
are always here, we’re never anywhere
else, and there are a lot of themes that
go along with that idea. I tend to write
down these ideas, and when I write
music I’ll go to that file and match the
words to the mood of the piece. That’s
the feeling I get from this new music—
an extreme sense of presence.”
From Here to Here features Gilmore’s
guitar along with an uncompromising
rhythm section (pianist Luis Perdomo,
bassist Brad Jones, and drummer E.J.
Strickland), performing eight origi-
nals, plus covers of Sam Rivers’ “Cyclic
Episodes” and Bill Evans and Jim Hall’s
“Interplay.” The album was his second
for Criss Cross Jazz and faced a number
of delays, including the death of found-
er Gerry Teekens in October 2019.
Gilmore and the Teeken family—who
continue to run the 40-year-old imprint
from their home in Holland—dedicated
the album to Gerry.
Gilmore invited us into his home
studio (via Zoom, of course) to do his
second Before & After for JazzTimes.
The event proved especially interac-
tive: In addition to commenting on a
number of specially chosen tracks, he
answered a few questions from among
more than 40 fans who dropped by,
including one that seems inevitable.
“Have you met [Pink Floyd guitarist]
David Gilmour?” His answer: “No,
but I came close. I was playing with
the British pop singer Joss Stone at the
Live 8 Festival in 2004 in England, and
a special Pink Floyd reunion was on
the same bill. We were all backstage so
he was somewhere in the vicinity, but
I didn’t get a chance to run into him
and tell him that he should change his
JIMMY KATZ
name because it’s really messing with
my career! I’m still waiting for that
royalty check to accidentally show up in
my mailbox.”
1.Ronald Shannon Jackson
and the Decoding Society
“Man Dance” (Mandance, Antilles). Da-
vid Gordon, trumpet; Zane Massey, alto
saxophone; Lee Rozie, tenor saxophone;
Vernon Reid, electric guitar; Melvin
Gibbs, electric bass; Reverend Bruce
Johnson, fretless electric bass; Jackson,
drums. Recorded in 1982.
BEFORE: I think the guitarist proba-
bly leaped at the end of that one, right
off the stage! That’s killin’. There’s
this Ornette Coleman inf luence that
reminds me of [Ronald Shannon Jack-
son’s] Barbeque Dog album. It has that
energy and that vibe of the mid-’80s.
My brother and I used to listen to all
that crazy Ronald Shannon Jackson
stuff. Vernon Reid was in that band—
I’m trying to remember who else. It
could be him, but I don’t know about
the tuba. It also reminded me of Hen-
ry Threadgill, and Liberty Ellman has
been playing with Henry for a long
time, but it doesn’t sound like him. It
almost reminds me of Marc Ribot too.
Is the guitar player the leader?
It has that Ronald Shannon Jackson
vibe. I played with him for a little
while around ’89, and did a tour with
him. That was an interesting experi-
ence: Half of the dates got canceled
and we were stuck in Europe and had
to get back to the States on our own!
AFTER: I was right! I said Vernon Reid
but I didn’t recognize him. I’ve known
Vernon through the decades and he
really is, in a way, responsible for me
connecting with all the musicians
over the years. I joined the Black Rock
Coalition, which he organized along
with Greg Tate, and I went to some
of the very first meetings in SoHo at
this production studio a high school
friend of mine owned, and through
them I met the who’s-who of that day:
Geri Allen, Steve Coleman, Melvin
Gibbs, and others. I don’t think I
know this record Mandance.
I remember when I auditioned at
Ronald’s studio—this big warehouse
studio with tons of percussion and
cymbals on Sixth Avenue near 30th
Street. I don’t know if it was right
after Vernon, but it was me and [gui-
tarist] Anthony Peterson [a.k.a. Tru
Born]. Ronald handed me the sheet
music and I could not decipher what
I was seeing, it was like nothing I had
ever seen before. No black dots or bar
lines, just whole and half notes incor-
rectly stemmed here and there, and he
“I remember when I
auditioned at Ronald
[Shannon Jackson]’s
studio. He handed me
the sheet music and I
could not decipher what
I was seeing, it was like
nothing I had ever seen
before. He said, ‘Just
play it.’”
said, “Just play it,” and started doing
his thing. I soon realized that it was
more about listening to him and fol-
lowing his rhythmic f low. It took me
a while to get it, but it had a logic all
its own. So I ended up in a two-guitar
quartet with Ramon Pooser on bass.
There’s some video out there I’ve
seen—we’re somewhere in Connecti-
cut and I was experimenting with a
guitar synth a lot at that time.
Vernon’s one of the rock guitar
legends at this point, but to me he
comes from this avant-garde world
where I first heard him. He’s so mul-
tifaceted, a great human being, very
business-minded—he really led the
way for a lot of us. I got to witness his
band Living Colour, well before they
got signed when they were playing at
little venues like CBGB’s. When I was
young, I wasn’t really hip to many
black people playing rock music. I
didn’t know who Jimi Hendrix was
when I was growing up. I wasn’t really
into him until much, much later, or
any rock stuff. I was more in the R&B/
funk/soul camp in high school. When
I came to New York and heard Ver-
non’s band, Melvin Gibbs’ band Eye &
I, and all these other black rockers, I
was like, “Okay, I guess I should know
my history more.”
2. Jeff Parker
“Get Dressed” (The New Breed,
International Anthem). Parker, electric
guitar, sampler; Paul Bryan, bass; Jamire
Williams, drums. Recorded in 2016.
BEFORE: That’s cool, man. I dig that.
I have no idea who that is. The sound
was a little pixilated but I could catch
enough. It reminds me of what I do
sometimes—I used to jam to the
radio all the time, just playing over a
groove. He’s definitely in the pocket
and I like his phrasing. He’s using
four- and eight-bar phrases, structur-
ing his ideas around that, and I like
the balance of these sort of bebop-ish
lines mixed in with a little more
whole-tone stuff.
This is something I tell my students
all the time: There’s a difference
between playing a form and phrases.
It’s not just a vamp—you have to or-
ganize your ideas in a certain way. It’s
storytelling, you know. [Listens more]
I like what he’s doing in terms of that.
That’s what the best jazz improvisers
do—a certain call-and-response, ten-
sion-and-release type of thing.
It reminded me at first of that
London scene in the ’90s, like Ronny
Jordan, but it doesn’t sound like him.
Ronny was much more straight-in-
the-pocket, coming out of a Grant
Green, Wes [Montgomery] sound. I
thought of Guru and Jazzmatazz, and
I was thinking maybe Marvin Sewell.
But really, I’m not recognizing the
vocabulary or anything.
AFTER: Ah, Jeff Parker. Yeah, I wasn’t
hip to Jeff until a couple of years ago
and I need to check him out because I
think we both were on the Rising Star
list in DownBeat, which is funny to
say we’re still rising at our age. A few
other guys have made that observa-
tion: “Rising again, huh?” [Laughs]
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 19
 BEFORE & AFTER
[Looking at photo on slideshow]
He’s playing a [Gibson] 335 and he’s
got his pedals. I like his groove. You
have to tell a story.
Jeff is a great example of what’s
happening more and more these
days in jazz—player as producer,
creating tracks with digital record-
ing technology, using samples, then
adding live instruments. Are you a
self-producer?
[Laughs] I’m a self-reducer! I haven’t
done that kind of thing with my own
records. I’ve experimented with it in
the past but not really put it out there.
IT is my brother Marque’s forte. He’s
a drummer and lives over in Stock-
holm. We’re getting ready to embark
on a long-awaited Gilmore Brothers
project. He lived in London for 15
or so years when the whole drum ’n’
bass/jungle music scene was jumping
off, so he got into the programming
and live-drumming thing and carried
that forward. Now he uses electronic
samples and triggers with his drum
kit and is a wizard at putting se-
quences together. It just dizzies me
when I see the [computer] screen with
all these samples chained together in
multi-colors—I get blurry-eyed. So
I leave that to those people who are
really good at that stuff.
3. Emily Remler
“Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise” (East
to Wes, Concord). Remler, guitar; Hank
Jones, piano; Buster Williams, bass;
Marvin “Smitty” Smith, drums. Recorded
in 1988.
BEFORE: Burnin’, whoever that is.
That’s not easy to take that many
choruses in the studio and be burnin’
like that—the feel in the studio is
always different from a live situation,
and he’s bringing it [on] every chorus,
and there’s a development there.
“Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise.” It
could have been recorded yesterday,
it’s hard to tell. I think sonically
within the last 10 to 15 years. I don’t
know the recording, but he has a
semi-hollow sound. I was thinking
maybe Vic Juris but I’m not really
hearing his vocabulary, although
Vic was tremendously versatile and I
20 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
wouldn’t be surprised if it’s him. But
I don’t think it is. He—or she—has
got a great sound, very bluesy, in the
pocket. I like the arrangement of the
tune, the reharmonization is very
intriguing. It’s hard to do with some
standards like that one, and make it
sound fresh.
AFTER: Emily Remler! Okay. With
Smitty and Buster Williams. It did
sound like Buster. And Hank Jones.
I’m glad I said “he or she.” Emily was
an amazing player.
I haven’t checked out a lot of her
stuff, to be honest with you, as I don’t
listen to that many guitar players and
I don’t know if I do that consciously
or unconsciously. I’ve definitely got
“I can see Russell
[Malone] playing this
in the studio but only
after he tells about 20
jokes and has everybody
cracking up. His other
calling is a standup
comedian.”
to delve deeper. I saw something
recently, a video from long ago when
she was performing at Berklee, with
Mick Goodrick, John Scofield, and
John Abercrombie. Amazing.
I’ve had a couple of women stu-
dents who are really great, and it’s
encouraging to see that because the
balance has been way too male-dom-
inated for a long time—I would say
jazz in general. Sheryl Bailey just
become assistant chair of Berklee’s
guitar department, and the chair [of
the department] is Kim Perlak, which
is tremendous. I hope that continues.
4. Snarky Puppy
“Jambone” (We Like It Here, Rope-
adope). Jay Jennings, Mike Maher,
Justin Stanton, trumpets; Chris Bullock,
Bob Reynolds, tenor saxophones; Jan
Johansson, piano; Bob Lanzetti, Chris
McQueen, Mark Lettieri (solo), electric
guitars; Cory Henry, Bill Laurance, Shaun
Martin, keyboards; Michael League,
electric bass; Larnell Lewis, drums; Nate
Werth, percussion. Recorded in 2013.
BEFORE: [Listens to climactic down-
beat at end] He also jumped off the
stage there. I don’t know who that
is. When the solo started it had this
Wayne Krantz kind of thing going on,
but I know it’s not him. And then I
thought of Nguyên Lê, the Vietnam-
ese guitarist. It’s not him, for sure,
because his sound is much different.
He did a record with these African
musicians that’s one of my favorite
records: Maghreb [& Friends, 1998].
I don’t know who that is, but it’s
burnin’! Is it a French band? Oh,
hold on now. That wouldn’t be Mark
Lettieri, would it?
AFTER: That makes sense now,
because it’s a live thing, and [Snarky
Puppy] had been doing a ton of live
recordings, plus the horn section and
the groove, and Mark is very much
into African guitar, R&B, and gospel
guitar and he’s a rocker. He does all
that stuff. We did a workshop two
summers ago not far from here in
Big Indian [NY] that Joel Harrison
organizes [Alternative Guitar Summit
Camp] and it was me, Mark, Oz
Noy, Nir Felder, and Joel, and that
was the first time I had a chance to
meet him. He’s super-knowledgeable
with different styles and he’s got a
huge vocabulary.
5. Roy Hargrove’s Crisol
“Una Mas” (Habana, Verve). Hargrove,
trumpet; Gary Bartz, alto saxophone;
David Sánchez, tenor saxophone; Frank
Lacy, trombone; Chucho Valdés, piano;
Russell Malone, electric guitar; John
Benitez, bass; Horacio “El Negro”
Hernandez, drums; Miguel “Anga” Diaz,
congas; Jose Luis Quintana, timbales.
Recorded in 1997.
BEFORE: This is a tricky one at the
first. [Listens up to guitar solo, then
almost immediately] That’s definitely
Russell Malone—the way he’s playing,
his whole vocabulary. Those are his
notes, his intervals. When he goes into that screaming solo. So I gravitate clinic. I saw a little of it, but I had to
hyperdrive there after the second or toward players like Leo because run. He had it all laid out—a whole
third chorus, that’s Russell. But the they’re all about the groove, and slideshow presentation—I remember
guitar isn’t Russell. It sounds like he’s with the Meters, it was their whole him saying his guitar playing has
playing a solidbody and I’ve never compositional thing, a mosaic of been sampled more than anybody.
seen him doing that, so I don’t know rhythm. Everything fit just perfectly. Good for him. He deserves it. JT
what recording this is. He’s a blues They’ve been imitated and copied and
guy, you know. He’s got the blues in sampled countless times. Read the rest of David Gilmore’s Before
him and can rock out, but he’s a hol- I’ve seen Leo live in New York & After listening session, including
low-body guy. and was just blown away. He actual- comments on music by Pat Martino, Steve
The first time I was hip to Russell ly came to Berklee once and gave a Khan, and Miles Davis, at jazztimes.com.
was seeing Harry Connick on TV and
he was doing one of his hyperdrive
solos in the sort of George Benson,
picking-almost-every-single-note
attack, very aggressive style. He’s got
a vocabulary all his own where he gets
into this kind of dissonant, large-in-
terval stuff and he always has a certain
arc to his improvisation, and I can
recognize that.
I remember this record. I can see
Russell playing this in the studio but
only after he tells about 20 jokes and
has everybody cracking up. His other
calling is a standup comedian. He’s
hilarious. Great guy, great player.

6. The Meters
“The Flower Song” (Cabbage Alley, Blue
Note). Leo Nocentelli, electric guitar; Art
Neville, keyboards; George Porter, bass;
Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste, drums.
Recorded in 1972.

BEFORE: Wow, killing stuff. I likes, I

likes. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that
before, but that’s got to be the Meters
and that’s got to be Leo Nocentelli.
It’s just an unmistakable sound, and
I guess that’s Zigaboo [on drums]. I
don’t know what iteration of the Meters
that is, but that’s Leo’s sound and his
rhythm and he’s one of the pioneers of
in-the-pocket, groove-funk stuff. He
had those Wes octaves in there and a
little jazz sensibility thrown in too.
It’s funny—I’ve seen in print a
lot of people compare me to him
and I wasn’t hip to the Meters until
college years, so I was a latecomer to
them. I mean, it’s a compliment to be
compared because what I love about
guitar is the rhythmic aspect. I was a
drummer before guitar. I just love the
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then you can just leap up and take
 OVERDUE OVATION
Lorne Lofsky
An underrecognized Canadian picker is back on
international radar BY ALLEN MORRISON
A funny thing happened to the Ca-
nadian jazz guitar master Lorne
Lofsky as he walked down Mt. Pleasant
Road in Toronto one day a little over
40 years ago, a thing that would lead
the jazz piano titan Oscar Peterson to
produce Lofsky’s first album.
At the time, Lofsky was a young,
scuff ling, jazz-mad musician looking
for his first actual jazz gig. An alto
player named Jerry Toth—someone
he had never met—was coming to-
ward him. To his great surprise, Toth
stopped him on the sidewalk and
said, “Are you a guitar player?”
Lofsky had played a few coffeehouses
and bar gigs but so far had failed to
achieve his goal of breaking into the
22 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
city’s first (and, for a time, only) major
jazz venue, George’s Spaghetti House.
Toth had heard the young guitarist play
at some minor, now-forgotten gig and
must have liked what he heard. “I’ve got
a week coming up at George’s,” Toth
said. “Would you like to do it?”
“I said, ‘Are you kidding? Of course
I would,’” Lofsky remembered recently
over Zoom from Toronto, where he
still lives, plays, and teaches jazz guitar
and arranging. The gig with Toth led
to other offers from seasoned Canadi-
an jazz musicians, including trombon-
ist Jiro “Butch” Watanabe, who also
had a one-week booking at George’s.
One of the tunes he and Watanabe
rehearsed was “Hogtown Blues,”
written by the trombonist’s child-
hood friend Oscar Peterson. “Then,”
Lofsky recalled, “one night during
the engagement, Butch says, ‘Hey,
youngblood,’—that’s what he called
me—‘guess who’s coming in tonight?’
‘Who?’
‘O.P.’”
Sure enough, Peterson came in,
sat at a corner table, and heard the
band play his tune. Later the young
guitarist was introduced to the great
man. “Oscar was polite,” Lofsky
remembered. “And that was it.” Or so
he thought.
“About a month later,” Lofsky con-
tinued, “I’m at home and the phone
rings. ‘Lorne, this is Oscar Peterson.’
I almost fell over. ‘Are you signed to a
record company?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well, I’ve got
Norman Granz here.’” Granz got on
the phone and, on Peterson’s rec-
ommendation, offered to record the
young guitarist for his Pablo label.
The result, Lofsky’s first album,
It Could Happen to You, earned him
an international reputation leading
to stage appearances with Peterson,
other high-profile gigs in Canada
and, eventually, three years as a
member of Peterson’s quartet in the
mid-1990s. Lofsky, over the course of
his career, has also played with Chet
Baker, Joey DeFrancesco, Pepper
Adams, Ray Brown, Niels-Henning
Ørsted Pedersen, Rosemary Cloo-
ney, and Dave Holland—in addition
to Canadian jazz icons like his idol,
guitarist Ed Bickert (about whom
more later), trombonist/bandleader
Rob McConnell, and saxophonist
Kirk MacDonald.
American listeners have slept
for too long on this major figure in
Canadian jazz, whose gorgeous tone,
technical prowess, and cool, cere-
bral approach to improvisation may
remind admirers of the late Jim Hall.
One fan is the American guitarist
Peter Bernstein, who has played with
Lofsky at Toronto’s popular jazz bar,
the Rex. “You can tell that he loved
Jim Hall,” Bernstein told me, citing
his quiet tone, subtlety, and lyri-
DON VICKERY
cism, “but he has his own approach
and identity. [Hall’s) curiosity was
his greatest attribute … That’s an
attribute that Lorne has as well. His
playing is spontaneous, adventurous,
playful. I have the utmost respect
for him.”
Lofsky grew up in Toronto in the
’60s and ’70s, the golden age of rock.
“When I was 16, I had fantasies of
being like Eric Clapton,” he said. He
listened to Cream’s Wheels of Fire
obsessively, copying Clapton’s solo on
“Crossroads” note for note.
By 17, he said, “I was playing in bar
bands and sounding pretty good. But
the genre and skill set were pretty
limited. Blues-based rock music has
almost become a caricature of itself.
The vocabulary hasn’t changed one
iota. I got kinda tired of it. I loved
music and knew that’s what I want-
ed to do for my life’s work. And I
thought, ‘God, I can’t see myself at 50
doing bar gigs and playing the same
three or four licks.’”
Friends who were into jazz then
introduced him to Miles Davis’ Kind
of Blue. “I didn’t understand a note of
what I was listening to. But some-
thing reached me and grabbed my
heart and ear.”
It was all jazz, all the time, after
that. He attended York University
(where he now teaches) for a year and
a half. The academic approach didn’t
take, however; he preferred to listen
to Bickert records and “try to figure
out what he was doing … I would take
one of his solos and dissect it into lit-
tle Lego-like structures. I’d take those
parts and then found that I could
reassemble them.”
Now he teaches his students at
York and elsewhere to break down the
music in the same way—not to tran-
scribe, but to understand the compo-
nents and be able to reassemble them
in creative ways. “You don’t want to
go out onstage and do the musical
version of ‘To be or not to be,’” he
said. “People will say, ‘Wait a minute,
that’s not you, that’s Shakespeare.’”
Ultimately, Lofsky came into Bick-
ert’s orbit and lived out his dream
of playing with the great guitarist.
“It was like a master class with your
sensei,” he said. The two of them
anchored a quartet for about eight
years; the partnership included a joint
album on Concord, This Is New, now
a collector’s item. His 1994-96 stint
as a member of the Peterson Quartet
took Lofsky all over the world. He’s
featured on three Peterson albums
from the period, including the double
CD Oscar in Paris (Live at the Sal-
le Pleyel).
So why have so few Americans
heard of him?
“I’m not big on blowing my own
horn,” Lofsky said. Besides, as Bern-
“You don’t want to go
out onstage and do the
musical version of ‘To
be or not to be.’ People
will say, ‘Wait a minute,
that’s not you, that’s
Shakespeare.’”
stein said, “Guitar players know about
him. The people that know, know.”
Lofsky appreciated the opportuni-
ties Peterson gave him early on, but
“I didn’t look at it as a springboard
for launching a jazz career,” he said.
“I learned a lot from it. For me, it’s
always about the learning.”
The learning—and development—
continues on a new release, This Song
Is New, Lofsky’s first album as a leader
in more than 20 years. It features long-
time Lofsky associates Kirk MacDon-
ald on saxophone, Kieran Overs on
bass, and Barry Romberg on drums.
The album was semi-unplanned.
Lofsky and company had assembled
at Roberto Occhipinti’s Modica Music
Studio in Toronto to run down some
new tunes and arrangements with
the thought of making a demo to get
funding for a “real” album. There
was a last-minute decision to record
the session. “I didn’t think anything
of it,” Lofsky said. “But Kieran and
Roberto were saying, ‘I think you
got a record here.’ I said, ‘I don’t
know, man.’”
And how does he feel about it now?
“I can tolerate it,” he concedes. The
set includes five new originals, as well
as engaging reworkings of Benny Gol-
son’s “Stablemates,” done as a bossa
nova, and Miles Davis’ “Seven Steps
to Heaven” in a bracing 5/4.
“I’m not a prolific composer. I write
to learn something. I will revamp a
standard and play it in different time
signatures. It gets me out of my box,”
he said.
Those who are familiar with Lofsky’s
guitar approach often describe it as
pianistic. “I realized that it’s important
to listen to musicians who play instru-
ments other than yours,” he explained.
Most notably, he started listening to Bill
Evans and Lennie Tristano, and began
trying to apply to the guitar the kind of
dynamic control he heard them achiev-
ing with their hands. In other words,
he learned to regulate the volume of
melody and accompaniment separately,
something he found easier to accom-
plish by playing with a combination of
fingers and a thumbpick. “It gives me
more control,” he said.
Lofsky considers himself a lifelong
student of jazz. “My priority is playing
and studying music and gaining more
musical wisdom,” he said. He’s happy to
record more if the opportunity presents
itself, but if not, “I’m totally fine with
that too, because that is secondary to
the study of music. It’s not about the
product, it’s about the process. At some
point I might do a solo record. I’ve had
offers, but I say, ‘Well, maybe, we’ll see.’
“Because, for me, it cuts into my
practicing time.” JT
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
It Could Happen to You (Pablo, 1981)
With Ed Bickert: This Is New
(Concord, 1990)
With Oscar Peterson: Oscar in
Paris (Live at the Salle Pleyel)
(Telarc, 1997)
With Joey DeFrancesco: One
Take Vol. 1 (Alma, 2004)
This Song Is New (Modica, 2021)
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 23
 A EVER
B
O
U
T
24 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
YTHING

Vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer

JEN SHYU observes life with a wide-angle lens
By Michael J. West
MARY KANG

A scene from the 2019 Zero

Grasses theatrical premiere

JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 25
 J
en Shyu is slumped
over a desk. As a green spotlight
illuminates her long, dark hair
and shoulders, a disembodied female
voice imitates bird and animal calls.
The voice is Shyu’s, who—herself
mute—slowly raises her head and opens
her eyes as drummer Dan Weiss (sitting
in the shadows behind her) flutters
brushes over his snare. Her lips remain
closed as the animal sounds give way to
English words, again in Shyu’s (multi-
tracked) voice:
“New life. Breath. Wind. Sun. Re-
birth. Butterflies. New beginning.”
Now, finally, Shyu sings. “We live
on earth.” She looks upward smiling,
stretching the word “earth” in both
time and pitch. Other Jen Shyus join
her in harmony.
Welcome to her new theatrical pro-
duction, livestreamed from Roulette, a
theater in downtown Brooklyn. The vo-
calist and her band Jade Tongue (which
includes trumpeter Ambrose Akin-
musire, bassist Thomas Morgan, and
26 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
violist Mat Maneri along with Weiss—
although Adam O’Farrill is subbing
for Akinmusire on the livestream) are
marking the release of her new album,
Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses. As
it continues, Shyu will rise and dance
slowly across the stage to a grand piano
as she repeats, “Life is like a string/
That keeps on going.” She’ll change
costumes several times. She’ll play
the piano, a set of bowl-shaped gongs,
the Japanese biwa, and the Taiwanese
moon lute. She’ll sing in Japanese, Java-
nese, and Indonesian. She’ll lie on the
stage floor and watch a video she shot
from the back of a car driven by her late
father, Tsu Pin Shyu.
This is far from your average CD
release party.
“I grew up in theater and dance,”
Shyu explains in a conversation a few
days after the Roulette performance.
“These things were such a big part of
my life and my training, I had to incor-
porate them. But it wasn’t about ego or
ambition; it was more like, I have to be
true to myself. And what I have found
is that I have the capacity to do many
things, multiple disciplines.”
“It’s everything. Her work is about
everything,” adds Alexandru Mihail,
the Romanian stage director of Zero
Grasses. “And it can be anything: this
immense collection of ideas, thoughts,
musical pieces, and bits of experience
that she has collected.”
Even when she homes in on music,
as on the Zero Grasses album, Shyu—
whose avant-garde jazz credentials
include work with Steve Coleman and
Anthony Braxton, among others—uses
a vast lens. The album features two
full multi-movement pieces, as well as
two songs from her previous theatrical
work, 2017’s Nine Doors, and two songs
that are separate from those works but
that help tie the album together into a
unified, coherent project of its own.
DOUGLAS PARSONS
“It’s amazing,” says Weiss, who has
been in Jade Tongue since 2008, of
Shyu’s vision. “Not just as a singer, but
taking things from different cultures,
 “I never looked at my
ancestry as valuable. People
didn’t seem to appreciate it,
so why should I?”
learning the languages, the instru-
ments, the aspects of the culture, and
then bringing that into the music.
It’s really been impressive, what she’s
done.” Philanthropic organizations that
support the arts agree: Shyu has won
the Doris Duke Impact Award and been
a Doris Duke Artist, a Guggenheim fel-
low, and a United States Artists fellow.
I tell Mihail that my mission is to
distill Jen Shyu down to a few thou-
sand words. He all but laughs in my
face. “Good luck,” he says. “That’s
supposed to be my role too. Welcome to
the journey.”
On April 3, 2019, Shyu
was in Japan, weeks into a five-month
fellowship to study both the biwa and
the Japanese language. During a lunch
break, she found an odd message in her
email inbox:
Dear Ms. Shyu: I am a deputy with
the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office
in Richmond, Texas. I am sorry to
inform you that your father TSU
SHYU has passed away. I was asked
as a courtesy by your Mother to email
you since she did not know how to get
a hold of you.
“I thought it was some scam,” she
recalls. “It was just so strange. I told
my Japanese teachers, and they kind of
laughed and were like, ‘What?’” Just to
be sure, she called her mother. It was
true. A seemingly healthy man who
was enjoying retirement, her father
had settled in for a pre-dinner nap and
never woke up.
Life went on hold. She left Japan
without even packing her things and
went directly to Texas. She and her
brother Linus (who lives in St. Lou-
is) helped their mother through the
trauma, then got her into a retirement
community; they handled the estate,
cleaned the house, and prepared it for
sale. Shyu made it back to Japan to
collect her belongings but suspended
the fellowship. Instead, she moved on
to Italy for a teaching and composing
residency in Siena.
Her mother had found her childhood
diaries in her dad’s closet. In Italy, she
began reading.
“I discovered and rediscovered many
things,” she says. “All about the family,
and my childhood, my experiences
with racism at an early age, and how my
dad was always in the background.”
The diaries included details about
family car trips to national parks. John
Zorn had already commissioned Zero
Grasses as a musical-theatrical piece
about the environment and climate
change; Shyu’s writing about the parks’
natural features allowed her to enmesh
the diaries—i.e., her larger personal
and family narrative—into the piece.
Along with that came her recent preoc-
cupation with her own fertility, which
had obvious familial overtones as well
as a play on the “barrenness” evoked
by the title Zero Grasses; the end of a
long-term relationship; and thoughts
about #MeToo and sexism within music
and the arts. Zero Grasses had become a
sweeping Künstlerroman.
There was little music ready when
she presented the outline to Mihail,
but “all these things were there,” he
says. Though Mihail is an experienced
theatrical director, on Shyu’s pieces
he’s more like an editor, combing
through her ideas and material with
a theatrical and narrative eye. “She is
always interested to make work that is
very personal to her, and together we
built a story; she made the songs in line
with the story we made. Her journey
through life.”
That journey was a
heavy one. Shyu was born in Peoria,
Illinois, to a mother and father who
were immigrants from East Timor and
Taiwan, respectively. The family lived
in Dunlap, a rural village about 15
miles outside of Peoria. During Shyu’s
childhood, its population was around
800, and hers seems to have been the
only Asian family. Her schoolmates
never let her forget it.
“When I won the spelling bee in
sixth grade, everyone booed,” she
recalls. “I was teacher’s pet, so maybe
they just resented me, but there was one
girl who said, ‘You might be really good
at piano and ballet, but you’ll always be
Chinese.’” In another incident (which
appears in the lyrics of Zero Grasses),
she sold a younger boy a candy bar, and
he called her a “chink.” What friends
she had were the town’s three Black
children and a girl from Croatia. “We
were a group: the outsiders. The people
of color.”
Ironically, growing up, she had little
relationship to her family’s roots, be-
cause her parents were anxious for her
and her brother to become “American.”
They didn’t speak Mandarin at home or
engage in cultural practices beyond an-
nual Chinese New Year parties. Instead,
performing arts became her identity.
She began ballet at five; by eight she was
playing both piano and violin, joining
the Central Illinois Youth Symphony
in Peoria. As a teenager, she sang and
acted in community theater. “My confi-
dence came from doing these produc-
tions and activities outside of school,”
she says. “I had hope. I had ambition:
Maybe one day I could be Miss Saigon!”
She matriculated at Stanford Universi-
ty, where she studied theater and opera.
Shyu remained in the San Francisco
Bay Area after graduating from Stan-
ford in 2000. Though still aspiring to
opera, she was increasingly infatuated
with jazz; she met saxophonist Francis
Wong and pianist Jon Jang, two artists
at the center of an Asian-American
improvised-music community, which
caused a sea change in her perspective.
“Jen was just out of college and try-
ing to be a jazz singer in a more classic
mode,” Wong says. “But our thing was
that we as Asian Americans should
express who we are through our music.
So she started singing songs from her
parents’ backgrounds, and rendering
them within her own musical expres-
sion. That was very exciting to us: her
beginning to tell her own story about
who she is, who her parents are, and
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 27
 At the Roulette album release show
incorporating that into original works.
Having something to say beyond inter-
preting the standards.”
“They really encouraged me to look
into what my ancestry offered me, and
to consider where my parents came
from as inspiration,” Shyu says. “I never
looked at those things as valuable.
People didn’t seem to appreciate it, so
why should I? But their mentorship
allowed me to discover that material.
And they were jazz musicians—who
looked like me!”
Shyu recorded her first album, 2002’s
For Now, with Wong and other mem-
bers of the community. Soon afterward
she became acquainted with one of its
alumni, pianist Vijay Iyer—still a close
friend and colleague—and, through
him, saxophonist Steve Coleman. Shyu
began singing with Coleman’s band
Five Elements; in so doing, she fulfilled
a lifelong dream, moving across the
country to New York.
Though Shyu is now estranged from
Coleman, she credits him as a mentor.
“Definitely a huge influence,” she says.
“He centered me in terms of going for
28 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
what I really wanted to leave behind
and do here in this life. He was the first
person to clarify that for me.”
Initially, his influence was more
musical, as can be heard on her 2008
album Jade Tongue. “In the begin-
ning, she had some more difficult,
written-out material,” says Weiss, who
played on the album. “A lot more intri-
cate stuff, rhythmically and form-wise.”
Mindful of what she’d learned from
Wong, Shyu decided in 2011 to im-
merse herself in southern and south-
eastern Asian traditions. She spent the
next seven years living in Indonesia,
South Korea, East Timor, China, and
Taiwan. It completely transformed the
music she made, as on 2015’s Sounds
and Cries of the World and 2017’s Song
of Silver Geese—the latter the basis of
the theatrical production Nine Doors.
(Her first production, the solo opera
Solo Rites: Seven Breaths, premiered
in 2014.)
“It’s more realized,” Weiss says.
“She has so many different elements
there now: the multi- instruments, the
multimedia. It’s more open and a lot
more improvisational.”
Music was not her only focus: She
also soaked in the cultures and, most
astonishingly, the languages. As of
2021, Shyu speaks 10 languages … and
she’s working on three more.
“She’s so thorough with everything
that she does,” says her friend, bassist
Linda Oh. “She does it with pure dedi-
cation and passion. Flying overseas and
spending months at a time in one place,
learning the language and spending
time with the people—she’s just a
huge inspiration.”
A few months after
Zero Grasses’ 2019 theatrical premiere
at National Sawdust in Brooklyn,
WOLF DANIEL/COURTESY OF ROULETTE INTERMEDIUM
COVID-19 struck. The deadly dis-
ease was a nightmare, the attendant
lockdowns paralyzing. Then came racial
unrest following the police killings
of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor,
followed by a spate of violence against
Asian Americans. It was too much for an
artist of Shyu’s scope to ignore.
Before schools went to remote
learning, Shyu had begun work on
 “I added the subtitle Ritual for the Losses as
a reflection of what we experienced in the last
year. My personal losses, but also the many
lives we lost—and the kids, they lost a part of
their childhood, at such a formative time!”

a commission for choral students at but also the many lives we lost—and designers to conceive the show,” he
New York’s William Alexander Middle the kids, they lost a part of their explains, “then Jen finds ways to
School. She had asked the kids to write childhood, at such a formative time! I adapt and evolve it, developing it
about two topics—springtime and thought people could relate.” more by herself as the one-person
living—then shaped their words into The album wasn’t created with the orchestra that she is. if you know
lyrics for one movement of the piece. intent of making a larger theatrical Jen, you know that she is this river
After lockdown, she asked them to piece from it—but neither could one of enthusiasm, and she’s very brave.
write again, about quarantine. expect Shyu to promote its release She has the courage to try anything.
“I saw a lot of common themes,” she with a simple, conventional concert, I help give it form, but it’s Jen’s show
says. “‘I took everything for granted’ especially when live audiences are and she makes changes that I don’t
was a big one; ‘cooped up in this small still prohibited. know about.”
cage, you can’t go out’ was another “Jen’s always been a person who’s For Shyu, it’s just another aspect of
common one. So I took the most interested in creativity not from just being true to herself. “I tell my students
poetic of those expressions, reordered one lens,” says her friend, percussionist this: Always take what I say with a
them, and I might have added one Tyshawn Sorey, who has often collabo- grain of salt,” she says. “What I think,
or two lines to make a line better, rated with Shyu onstage. “I understand and what I advise someone to do, may
but it’s really their words, which I it because I’m the exact same way—we not be what’s right for them even if I
think is amazing. You can hear their both share so many interests and ideas. have the best of intentions. I don’t think
reflections on quarantine, and their When you’re performing with Jen, that you have to limit yourself based
angst, in the second, third, and fourth there’s an element that’s way beyond the on someone else’s standards; it’s really
movements.” The four-part “Living’s a idea of just presenting a concert.” based on your own. So be skeptical of
Gift” constitutes the second full-length This, says Mihail, is an organic advice that anyone gives you. You just
piece on the album. part of her process. “We worked with have to know yourself.” JT
Shyu wrote a new song, “Lament for
Breonna Taylor,” based on interviews
with the mother of the woman killed
by police officers in her Louisville,
Kentucky home in March 2020. She
and Jade Tongue also re-recorded
three older songs. “The Human Color,”
from Jade Tongue, was a rumina-
tion on race; “A Cure for the Heart’s
Longing” and “Display Under the
Moon” came from Nine Doors, which
had been based on the tragic death of
her friend, the Javanese performer Sri
Joko Raharjo, and his family. (Raharjo
wrote the lyrics to “A Cure for the
Heart’s Longing.”)
Put together with Zero Grasses,
these pieces made a new, longer musi-
cal work that was more than the sum
of its parts. “I added the subtitle Ritual
for the Losses as a reflection of what
we experienced in the last year,” Shyu
says. “The loss. My personal losses,
 JAN MALY/COURTESY OF CSNO

30 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
Back
to the

World
Making a political statement—with a rapper and a full orchestra—is the most unexpected
move in composer and arranger VINCE MENDOZA’s distinguished career



JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 31
 With soloist Terence Blanchard at
the 2011 Monterey Jazz Festival
I
n the fall of that notorious
election year of 2016, six-time
Grammy-winning arranger/com-
poser Vince Mendoza was working
on a commission from the Czech
National Symphony Orchestra. The
five-movement piece, called simply
“Concerto for Orchestra,” was driven
by how much his gut churned at the
mere possibility that 45—not once in
our interview does he use the name
Trump—might win the presidency.
“The temperature of America was
shifting, and the music was a mostly
emotional reaction to that,” Mendoza
says of its soaring, shouting strings.
“As I was putting the structure of
the concerto together, it became
more than an emotional and musical
exercise. It was the realization that my
music couldn’t be separated from what
was happening in the world.”
October turned to November, and
the dreaded possibility became reality.
Mendoza’s musical response developed
in real time. He began to think about
other artists whose work embraced
the winds of political change, good
and bad. “In particular, Nina Simone’s
32 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
quote about how artists must reflect
their times—that got me. That’s when I
really started making the structure of
the piece reflect what I had hoped this
cycle of noise, protest, eventual justice,
and understanding would portray.”
With this concept in mind, the five
movements were completed. Or so
Mendoza thought. Years passed. The
CNSO recorded the piece in July 2019,
with help from saxophonist Joshua
Redman, bassist Derrick Hodge,
and drummer Antonio Sánchez. But
something still seemed to be missing
in the final movement. A rap came to
mind—something spoken, rhythmic,
and righteous—that would offer a
necessary punctuation, the answer to
what the composer hoped to achieve.
“Then,” Mendoza continues,
“George Floyd happened, as did the
reaction to George Floyd.” He had
already been talking to rapper Tarik
“Black Thought” Trotter, mouthpiece
of the Roots, about creating a text for
the final movement. Now, in the midst
of a season of death and rage, the
desired message of that text became
clear: Freedom is life’s most important
element. “Freedom over everything,
for everybody, is what we should aspire
to,” Mendoza says. “Even though
Tariq’s rap offers no resolution—there
is no resolution to our problems until
everyone is free and safe.”
Freedom Over Everything is also the
title of Mendoza’s latest album—his
debut on the new Modern Recordings
label—of which “Concerto for Orches-
tra” forms the centerpiece. Jazz with
a social conscience is hardly new, of
course; Max Roach’s We Insist!, Archie
Shepp’s Attica Blues, Ornette Cole-
man’s Skies of America, and Wynton
Marsalis’ Blood on the Fields all come
to mind. But Freedom Over Everything
is something different, a Copland-es-
que masterpiece as rich, varied, and
literary in its tone, as well as in its
defiance and historicity, as the equally
COURTESY OF MONTEREY JAZZ FESTIVAL
epic trilogy of novels that make up
John Dos Passos’ U.S.A.
“Just a look [at] Vince’s work shows
his ability to deal with very different
musical characters and genres,” says
Modern Recordings’ owner/CEO
Christian Kellersmann. “You can
talk to him for hours about different
styles and influences. No matter if
it’s contemporary or vintage. This
open-minded approach fits Modern.
We like unexpected combinations.”
The composer himself happily notes
that Freedom Over Everything started
as a piece of music with a certain
structural idea. “Then,” he adds,
“things happen. Then other things
happen. We change gears. Move left
instead of right. Go through a groove
that’s unknown and find another way.”
That pretty much
describes Mendoza’s life going all the
way back to Norwalk, Connecticut,
where he was raised, learning classical
guitar, trumpet, and piano early on.
From there he snagged a degree in
music composition at Ohio State
University, then completed post-grad
composition/conducting studies at
USC, with stints writing music for film
and television within that time frame.
Before he gathered steam on any
instrument’s technique, though, Men-
doza was a preteen radio fanatic en-
thralled by the Sound of Philadelphia,
Gamble & Huff and, in particular,
songwriter/arranger Thom Bell. “The
Spinners, the O’Jays, Harold Melvin—
the whole scene that was Philly soul
was where the light went on,” he says
Goldsmith.” Another clear influence,
Gil Evans, surprisingly didn’t become
a thing for Mendoza until he’d gotten
into arranging; for jazz ensemble
writing, it was Henry Mancini (“all the
way, from the time I was six listening
to the Mancini ’67 record”) whose
inspirational light shone the brightest.
The professional composer in Men-
doza first came out while befriending
kindred spirit Peter Erskine. He wrote
for and with the Weather Report
drummer on 1986’s Transition, their
first of many recordings to come under
each man’s name. From there, Men-
doza’s compositions would quickly
begin gracing albums by the likes of
Joe Lovano, John Abercrombie, Gary
Burton, Pat Metheny, Michael Brecker,
Charlie Haden, and Kurt Elling.
“Musicians don’t live in a bubble,”
he laughs. “We function and grow as
part of a community. That’s the most
beautiful part of it. We play with
them once, and we’re friends forever.

answering his line-writing problems.
As for arranging, Mendoza picked
up on that algebraic skill set after
he’d already begun working on his
own big-band compositions in the
mid-’80s. “I didn’t seek out arrang-
ing. Somehow, when I started doing
concerts with radio bands, in Europe
in particular, our guests would come
in and ask me to arrange something.
I began a pattern of doing these
arrangements that people must have
liked, because I started getting calls to
do the same for their records.”
That Mendoza arranged for jazz
icons such as Zawinul and Return
to Forever’s Al Di Meola as well as
younger jazz contemporaries Mike
Stern and Kyle Eastwood was one
thing. To be invited to arrange for pop
giants such as Joni Mitchell (2000’s
Both Sides Now, which won Mendoza
a Best Instrumental Arrangement
Accompanying Vocalist Grammy in
2001), Björk (2001’s Vespertine), and


happily. “I wanted to write music that
sounded like that. I wanted to be in the
   

studio conducting the orchestra with
the singers at their most harmonious.  

I wanted to be inside of that groove.
I’m not thinking about the Berlin
Philharmonic when I’m thinking of a
glockenspiel, but rather Thom Bell.”
To this writer’s ear, much in
Mendoza’s work also seems to stem
from the masterful asymmetry of
soundtrack composer Jerry Goldsmith,
a man whose scores for Chinatown and
Planet of the Apes are somehow evoc-
ative of a time and place that can’t be
easily pinpointed. “You’re right on the
money with Goldsmith, as he is my fa-
vorite of all Hollywood-pantheon film
composers,” he says. “Now, I would be
remiss if I didn’t say that there was a
connection between Goldsmith and
Stravinsky and Bartók, composers
I revered. But Jerry was a master of
his art and his craft. That Planet of
the Apes score is incredible, my go-to
In regard to starting with Peter, he
was the drummer in my head then,
as a result of all he had done on those
amazing Weather Report albums. Our
relationship resonated with a shared
language, and a similar approach to
rhythm. Parenthetically, Joe [Zawinul]
and Wayne [Shorter] were also voices
in my head because of those same re-
cordings. Through them, I learned that
you could have one idea that inspired
the next idea that inspired the next
next idea. The idea of an A-B-A form—
that boxy structure—suddenly went
out the window.” To this day, Mendoza
insists that using the question “What
would Wayne do?” is often a way of
Elvis Costello (2006’s My Flame Burns
Blue) was quite another. “Their interest
in me always came from recordings
that they had heard and liked,” he says.
“Fortunately, they and their producers
made the leap of faith that I would
have the ability to step into their situ-
ation and be able to paint the picture
they wanted to hang.”
Which brings us to the unusual case
of Black Thought’s performance on
Freedom Over Everything, in which
the painting (Mendoza’s composition)
had already been painted. “Unlike
a soloist, [he’s] not changing the
original track,” Mendoza notes. “This
brings about a great question: What
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 33
 in and inspired by the politics of the
moment is a recent phenomenon for the
composer. “I’ve always been interested
in history, but that’s never linked up
with my music. Until I started working

   on this record. Suddenly, I couldn’t sep-

arate what I was feeling and thinking

 
! from what I was composing and play-
ing. Daily occurrences were affecting

  
"  my creative process. It just happened.
if you had recorded this together,
or allow elements to change, just as
what happened when instrumental
improvisational solos came into view?
Would the rap have been different?
Would the music have been different?
It is conceivable that if we were in the
same room, Tarik might have chosen
to do something different.” Expect an
upcoming Mendoza project to explore
these matters.
For all of the work
he’s done with others, it’s still the
albums Mendoza has made as a leader
that are his most intriguing. Looking
back at early solo releases like 1990’s
somber Start Here (with its elegant
French-horn sound straight out of
Philly) and 1991’s intricate Instructions
Inside, we joke as to whether or not
Mendoza “nailed it” on them. “Are
you trying to say I didn’t?” he laughs.
“I think that I nailed each for where I
was at that time. That’s not to say that I
wouldn’t do the nuts and bolts of their
writing differently or change the struc-
ture somewhat. I tell everyone from
young musicians I play with to students
I teach: When it comes to making a
first record, it sounds simple, but make
sure you have something to say, and in
a very organized way. I believe I did—I
had already been writing ensemble
music, had a voice and a particular way
of saying things that made me know
that I was strong enough to start. I only
wish I had a better time making it, as
my first album featured some of the
greatest musicians on the planet, and I
was just so serious about getting it done
properly. I never stopped then to realize
just how amazing those players were
and enjoying the moment.”
34 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
For pure enjoyment’s sake, there is
the Vince Mendoza/Arif Mardin Proj-
ect’s Jazzpaña with the WDR Big Band
from 1992, an album where Mendoza’s
deep love of flamenco had a place to
land. “Although I studied classical gui-
tar and Spanish guitar music, I didn’t
know anything, really, about flamenco
except that I loved it,” he says. “With
this, going forward with the WDR, I
continued to try to figure out how it
all worked.”
His mention of the WDR, based
in Cologne, Germany, brings up a
significant point: This American com-
poser of American music sure spends
a lot of time working with European
ensembles, from the WDR and CNSO
to the Dutch Metropole Orkest and
the Berlin Philharmonic. “The first
group I worked with in Europe, in the
late ’80s, was the WDR,” he explains.
“I was invited to arrange the music
of Joe Zawinul, then stayed to do
concerts of my own music. To this day,
I have this relationship, as I’m working
on another new project with them
starting this June. The thing about that
group, similar to the Metropole Orkest
[of which he was chief conductor
from 2005 to 2013], is that they have
dedicated seasons to projects of music
they truly love and believe in. These
European ensembles provide music
for the radio that they find interesting,
that will engage listeners, and reflect
their aesthetic vision. That’s how they
survived any political turmoil.”
Speaking of political
turmoil: The music that Mendoza
writes has always looked inward, but on
Freedom Over Everything, that vision
turns itself inside out. Being interested
Where once I could separate the two
things, suddenly it became time to pay
attention to what was going on out
there, and if I could somehow share my
point of view through music—to put
some light into the current situation.”
Mendoza points out that the fifth
movement of his concerto nods to Dr.
Cornel West in lines such as “The blues
responds to the catastrophic with com-
passion, without drinking from the cup
of bitterness.”
“West is a big jazz and R&B fan, and
a lot of what he writes and lectures on
deeply resonates for me,” says Men-
doza, who wrote to West during the
preparatory run-up to Freedom Over
Everything. They talked about African
American poets, critics, and other
literary source material: Amiri Baraka’s
writing on jazz, Lucille Clifton, Andra
Lord, Ralph Ellison, and Zora Neale
Hurston. As for the piece that follows
the “Concerto for Orchestra” on the
album, “To the Edge of Longing,” Men-
doza turned to the work of German
poet Rainer Maria Rilke. “I was looking
for something that would have a seed
of basic humanity,” he says. “After
the difficult road of the ‘Concerto,’ I
needed to have something that would
send us off in an optimistic, encour-
aging way, to go out, create, and live
life. And I found that in Rilke and The
Book of Hours [originally published in
1905].” Operatic soprano Julia Bullock,
whose reference came from trumpeter/
composer Terence Blanchard, handles
the duty of singing Rilke’s words (in
English translation).
Antonio Sánchez—no stranger
himself to socially conscious jazz (see
his Bad Hombre and Lines in the Sand
albums)—says, “It’s a cleansing process
for any artist to bring all those negative
feelings to the forefront of his or her
work and transform them into some-
thing with beauty and purpose. That’s
 exactly what Vince so masterfully did
with this album.”
The concerto, he further notes,
“didn’t really have a drummer in it.
I think it was [originally written for]
several percussion players doing dif-
ferent parts, so I had to come up with
a composite that would make it groove
and gel as much as possible. But one
thing is to practice it to the recording
and another one is when you’re in
the middle of that big orchestra, so
naturally I had to adapt to what the
INES KAISER/COURTESY OF WDR
moment required.”
Sánchez expresses his utmost admi-
ration for Mendoza the conductor in
such situations: “He doesn’t miss any-
thing, and he also has a very calming
and reassuring demeanor that makes
everybody feel comfortable and relaxed
… unless you’re not coming up with the
goods. Then he has no qualms about
calling you out, but always in a very
diplomatic way.”
You could call it diplomacy of a
sort, but Mendoza refuses to connect
the dots between the past jazz pro-
testations of Roach, Shepp, Marsalis,
et al., and his own. “I approach my
subject matter with great humility,” he
states. “I can say that I am expressing
my reaction. Projects such as the ones
you mentioned, as well as the music
of Gil Scott-Heron or John Coltrane’s
‘Alabama’ … I am not aspiring to make
protest jazz, even if there are parallels.”
One thing’s for sure: Freedom Over
Everything marks a seismic shift even
from the albums that immediately
preceded it, 2017’s Homecoming and
2011’s Nights on Earth, and Mendoza
doesn’t foresee a return to their sound
any time soon. “Nights on Earth was
quasi-autobiographical, and I was glad
to tell that story of my personal journey,
with songs representing different people
and different occurrences in my life. But
this new one has greater purpose for me.
It also took two years to make—so it was
difficult and different.
“I won’t be able to go back,” he ac-
knowledges. “Freedom Over Everything
has changed me. Changed the game.” JT
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 35
EXPANDING
T
FRETBOARD
G g
)))
On an astonishing series of solo EPs,
PASQUALE GRASSO presents a distinctly
pianistic approach to the guitar
By Ted Panken
Photography by Deneka Peniston

JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 37
 I absorbed Pasquale Gras-

As so’s performances seriatim

on the Sony Masterworks
digital EP releases Solo Standards, Solo
Ballads, Solo Monk, Solo Bud Pow-
ell, and Solo Bird, two aural illusions
emerged. Frequently, it seemed that a
pair of virtuoso guitarists were in syn-
chronous dialogue. A less frequent but
equally palpable trompe l’oreille was the
sensation that Grasso’s nimble fingers
had prestidigitatiously transformed his
guitar strings into 88 piano keys, all
the better to apply his comprehensive,
creative refraction of the language of
Art Tatum and Bud Powell: the long
arpeggiated runs, the harmonic ex-
tensions, the disjunctive comping, the
complex rhythmic shapes, the impecca-
ble pocket, the poetic sensibility.
In point of fact, Grasso, who record-
ed the tracks in 2017 and 2018, generat-
ed every note, chord, and voicing on his
signature Trenier guitar, unmediated
by post-production overdubbing or
sonic manipulation. His tonal personal-
ity is unique, not only for the abundant
imagination and prodigious execution
with which he tells his stories, but also
for the aesthetic focus that they signify.
Grasso’s wheelhouse is prebop and
bebop. He uses a restored 1953 Gibson
GA-50 amp. He eschews the postbop
harmonic extensions that inspire the
preponderance of Millennial, Gen-X,
and Boomer jazzfolk. He shuns the
plugged-in onomatopoeia—feedback
loops, distortion-skronk, alternate
tunings—that so many post-Miles
Davis guitarists customarily deploy in
their narratives. Although he grew up
on a farm in Ariano Irpino, a hillside
town of 20,000 in Campania, three
hours from Naples and four hours from related that the EP project began to were doing it. I love Joe Pass but was
Rome, where his grandmother made ol- gestate in 2012, soon after he received his never a big fan of solo guitar—the jazz
ive oil and raised pigs and chickens and degree in classical guitar from Bologna’s style. I always loved piano players. My
lambs, Grasso, 32, conjures the notion Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini, ears wanted that sound.”
of a missing link: a heretofore unknown obtained an artist visa, moved to New A few years into this Sunday sinecure,
mid-century virtuoso who’d developed York, and took a solo Sunday cock- Grasso was still operating in relative
a fresh, original bop argot in contempo- tail-hour engagement at Mezzrow, the obscurity. But his peer group knew
raneous response to his heroes’ terms Greenwich Village duo room. what was what. One admirer was Peter
of engagement. “I did that gig for a few years, and got Bernstein, himself a master bebop prac-
“The only pedal I have is my foot- together some repertoire,” Grasso said, titioner, who played several two-guitar
stool,” Grasso told me at the dinner in fluent, lightly accented English. “I quartet gigs with Grasso in 2020.
hour in early April via Zoom, on which transcribed some piano solos by Tatum “Guitar players like Jimmy Raney and
he’d spent the day teaching students at and Powell, as well as Thelonious Monk, Tal Farlow really absorbed the bebop
SUNY Purchase. Restored by a pre-con- Billy Kyle, and some language,” Bernstein says. “To different
versation walk and an espresso, Grasso Teddy Wilson, just to see how they degrees, so did everyone from Kenny

38 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
Burrell to Jim Hall to Grant Green to
Wes Montgomery. But it wasn’t as much
of a direct translation from Bud Powell.
Pasquale has really figured out the linear
part of bebop (Bird), and what Bud
Powell did (and Barry Harris) in playing
pianistic voice-leading things, the way
he wrote out for bass lines and all the
contrary motion in his approach. I love
that music, so to hear a guitar player get
so deep inside it—what’s not to love?
Pasquale is an example of someone who’s
like, ‘What obstacles?’”
Another fan was Pat Metheny, who
told Vintage Guitar magazine in 2016 that
Grasso was “the best guitar player I’ve
“The only pedal I have is
my footstool.”
heard in maybe my entire life.” “I am of-
ten prone to enthusiastic exaggeration ...
lol,” Metheny clarified in a recent email,
before elaborating on Grasso’s qualities.
He wrote: “Pasquale’s connection with a
quite specific area of the music that had
been largely defined by piano players is
notable for the diligence that is required
to achieve the level of fluency he has
gotten to in that realm—difficult on any
instrument, but especially on guitar. It
puts him in a category of his own. But to
me, those materials, as viable as they are,
are secondary to what makes Pasquale
so special. It is his innate musicality and
musical spirit that shines through.”
Before that Vintage Guitar article
appeared, veteran producer Matt Pierson
(whose résumé includes multiple albums
by Metheny, Brad Mehldau, Joshua Red-
man and Bob James) heard Grasso’s solo
set. “I was like, ‘Why doesn’t everybody
know about this guy?’” Pierson says. “I’d
never heard anyone play guitar like this—
the incredible ballad playing, the sense of
melody and orchestration and story-
telling, pulling off two and sometimes
three things at once.” He adds that soon
thereafter, during the “Who have you
been hearing?” portion of a phone call
with Metheny, the guitar icon told him,
“Man, you’ve got to hear this guy named
Pasquale Grasso.”
Pierson faithfully attended Grasso’s
shows, proposed they work together,
and convinced Sony Masterworks to
record him. “I wanted to release five solo
tracks a month: an EP every month for
10 months, with one focus track a month
for the streaming platforms, until we’d
recorded 50 tracks,” Pierson says. “I
thought solo was a great way to connect
people to his personality. Also, it was af-
fordable; we’d record 15 tracks at one ses-
sion, then go in a few weeks later and do
another 15. Once we released this string
of recordings, we’d start recording him
in other settings. For various reasons, it
ended up as a two-year project, but that
gave each issue a bigger window to find
an audience—and when the pandemic
came, we had material left to release.”
NEW YORK DREAMS
Before Pierson caught Grasso at Mezz-
row, he’d seen him at Smalls in a band
that included saxophonist Chris Byars,
pianist Sasha Perry, and bassist Ari
Roland. All native New Yorkers, they’d
played together hundreds of times since
their early teens, when they gleaned the-
ory from Barry Harris and applied it in
encounters with such no-nonsense bebop
elders as C. Sharpe, Frank Hewitt, Jimmy
Lovelace, and Leroy Williams. They were
the band at Smalls in 2009 when Grasso,
19, on his first night ever in New York,
came by with his alto-saxophonist older
brother Luigi, whose devotion to Charlie
Parker parallels Pasquale’s to Bud Powell.
“We looked at each other and were
like, ‘This is where we have to be,’” Grasso
says. After he sat in, Roland, Byars, and
Perry felt similarly. “It was like he’d been
there with us the whole time in terms of
what he was concentrating on, the deep
dive he’d already made,” says Roland,
whose deft arco improvisations match
Grasso’s legerdemain. He and Grasso
bonded—Roland estimates that during
the past decade, when both are in New
York, they play together, in one context or
another, “a minimum of six times a week.
“Pasquale was part of the group right
away, so to speak,” Roland continues,
noting Grasso’s seamless transition into
this tight-knit cohort of Gen-X purists,
as well as the bands of saxophonist
Charles Davis and pianist Freddie Redd,
themselves both master boppers. “I heard
his existential affinity with Bud Powell,
combined with the classical training that
enables him to put it on the guitar.”
Grasso’s identification with Pow-
ell—and the New York gestalt—dates to
early childhood. “All our lives we were
listening mainly to music that was made
in New York, by people who were either
born there or migrated there,” Luigi says.
“These people gave New York a lot of
energy. It’s still there. You can hear it in
Monk’s music and Bird’s music and Bud’s
music—the tragedy and joy and strength
of all of it. New York has its dark side,
and their music has a dark side as well
as light. But we always dreamed about
New York, and tried to project ourselves
into it, which is why we got so comfort-
able there.”
Luigi was Pasquale’s earliest inspira-
tion. He started playing alto saxophone
at seven at the suggestion of a pediatri-
cian who suggested it might ameliorate
his asthma. Luigi’s learning curve was
rapid, and five-year-old Pasquale told
his parents—his father, Rocco, was an
auto mechanic; his mother, Anna, now a
nurse, was then home with her children;
both were informed fans of jazz and
classical music—that he wanted to start
playing. His father took him to the local
music store to find an instrument.
“As soon as I saw the guitar, I was in
love,” Grasso says. “It was a normal-sized
guitar, but my dad got it for me after I
promised to practice. My mom learned
music with us—she bought a book and
taught us solfeggio, how to read music.
She’d show us the notes on the piano,
then tell us to turn around, [and then]
play a note and have us identify it. She
discovered that we had perfect pitch; we
were lucky to have good ears, because
that’s what’s important.
“I had a cassette of George Benson,
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 39
 which I played so much that I ruined it.
At some point Luigi told me, ‘No more
George Benson; here is a recording of Bud
Powell—listen to this!’ I loved it. That’s
when I decided what I wanted to do in
life. Later I remember getting the first
volume of Art Tatum’s Solo Masterpieces,
and I listened for 24 hours. It was so great
I couldn’t stop.”
TRAVELS WITH BARRY
By the time Luigi was 11 and Pasquale
was nine, they were performing locally—
repertoire like “My Little Suede Shoes,”
“My Funny Valentine,” and “’Round
Midnight” (“my father’s favorite”). Their
parents’ proactive ministrations further
accelerated their development.
“My dad recorded Sonny Rollins
concerts that RAI-TV broadcast in the
middle of the night for us to watch, and
he got records every month by people
like Dexter Gordon, Coleman Hawkins,
and Don Byas,” Grasso says. Circa 1997,
Rocco and Anna initiated a Saturday
ritual of picking up the boys after school
for a 3½-hour drive to a suburb of Rome
to take a lesson with Agostino Di Giorgio,
a New York-born guitarist and peda-
gogue who’d studied with bop master
Chuck Wayne. Di Giorgio had been part
of Barry Harris’ circle before moving to
Italy, and at his urging, in the summer of
1998, the Grasso family drove 14 hours to
Switzerland for a Harris workshop.
“I remember that Barry played ‘I
Want to Be Happy’ as soon as we got to
class,” Grasso says. “We were so happy;
it was the best feeling I ever had. Barry
was coming to Europe once a year—we
attended workshops in Spain and Hol-
land and Switzerland. Then he started
doing the workshop in Rome twice a
year. That was a little better, because it
was closer. The workshops lasted a week;
Barry taught 12 hours a day. Great mu-
sicians came from all over. We’d record
everything with a MiniDisc player, then
transcribe and practice everything he’d
taught when we got home. That was our
game. All I did was go to school and
practice guitar. I couldn’t wait to get out
of school because I wanted to transcribe a
Bud Powell solo.”
There’s a YouTube video from 2004
in which Harris, playing a concert
in Verona, introduces Pasquale and
40 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
Luigi—who by then
were functioning as
teaching assistants
at his workshops—
as “the two best
young musicians
in the world.” Both “Jazz guitarists
brothers regard
Harris as a surrogate play chords or
grandfather. “I
think our relation-
play melody, but
ship got so good
because we love
the classical guys
Bud Powell in the play chords and
same way,” Pasquale
says. “He figured melody together—
out Bud’s stuff but
has his own sound,
like a piano, like a
his own touch, his small orchestra.
own phrasing. He
wasn’t trying to I thought, ‘That’s
transcribe every
little thing. Barry
exactly what I want
says that sometimes
you couldn’t get
to do with jazz.’”
what Bud was doing
because your ear
was too slow. So
everybody would
come out with different stuff.” hand, which comes from Chuck Wayne
Grasso began the process of actual- and Agostino Di Giorgio. He amazed me,
izing the sound in his mind’s ear after because when he transcribed something,
viewing a video of the eminent classical he would stay on it and investigate it for
guitarist David Russell. “I was shocked months and months. It was obvious that
because of the amazing sound and touch what he was doing wasn’t easy, and it was
and the way that he was playing,” he remarkable to see how strongly he wanted
recalls. “I thought I should study classical to get that sound and find the gestures
guitar to really learn the instrument. Jazz on guitar.”
guitarists play chords or play melody, but
the classical guys play chords and mel-
ody together—like a piano, like a small
FREEDOM AND
orchestra. I thought, ‘That’s exactly what ROMANCE
I want to do with jazz.’ My technique was It’s interesting to contrast Grasso’s spring
okay, but there was something missing.” release, Solo Ballads, culled from the
Again following the lead of Luigi, who 2017-2018 sessions, with its June 2021
had already matriculated at the Bologna followup, Pasquale Plays Duke, which
Conservatory, Pasquale enrolled in 2008. features five of the earlier solo tracks and
“By my second year, I started to see that seven songs that he cut in March with his
my hands worked better,” he says. “I was working trio, comprising bassist Roland
more coordinated. My touch improved. and drummer Keith Balla. Sheila Jordan,
The hard thing is how to play legato on 93, channels late Billie Holiday on a
the guitar, how to finger the pianistic haunting “Mood Indigo”; up-and-comer
stuff. That’s the challenge for art, to find Samara Joy, 23, sings the bittersweet,
a way that makes it work. But that’s just soigné lyric of “Sophisticated Lady” with
practicing and trying to figure it out.” nuanced optimism. A different version
Luigi adds: “Pasquale came up with of Grasso’s trio, with Kenny Washington
something that mixes his classical on drums, accompanies Joy on her own
playing with jazz picking with the right eponymous, Pierson-produced debut,

and later this year, Grasso and Pierson
intend to record trio interpretations of
“hard bop” repertoire—Horace Silver,
Sonny Rollins, Elmo Hope, perhaps even
John Coltrane’s “Moment’s Notice.”
“I want to play more with the trio,”
Grasso says. “I love playing solo, but trio
with bass and drums is what I like most.
Luigi and I always played without piano
when we were growing up. I was stub-
born that I wanted to do the piano part.
Playing trio, I can float on the time, play
a melody with chords without interfering
with the pianist’s chords, play certain
voicings, and nobody will be bothered.
I can be free to play whatever I want.
Playing in the style of a pianist from the
’40s and ’50s—with the arrangement—is
the sound I like.”
In Pierson’s view, Grasso’s preference
for vintage repertoire does not consti-
tute stylistic conservatism. He recalled
challenging Grasso early in their rela-
tionship on his indifference to the glories
of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Joe
Henderson, Woody Shaw, and Kenny
Wheeler. “I said, ‘That’s all so advanced,
it’s so modern,’” Pierson says. “Pasquale
said, ‘What’s more modern than bebop?’
And he’s right—tritone substitution,
melodic minor scales and all the parts
that go into playing bebop constitute a
very advanced harmonic concept. Now,
is it polychordal tonality that Wayne
wrote? No. But if you mention that to
Pasquale, he’ll say, ‘Yeah, but here’s what
Bud Powell played—that’s polytonal.’ He’s
right. If you look at a Woody Shaw line
with all those fourths in it, I don’t think
it’s fair to say that’s more modern or more
advanced than bebop. Those elements
were being played by bebop musicians.”
I mentioned to Grasso Metheny’s
praiseful observation in the aforemen-
tioned Vintage Guitar piece that Grasso
doesn’t reference such 21st-century jazz
guitar signposts as Metheny, Bill Frisell,
John Scofield, or Kurt Rosenwinkel.
“I really respect them; they’re all great
musicians,” Grasso said. “But my favorite
guitar players are Charlie Christian,
Oscar Moore, and Tiny Grimes. If I want
to hear some jazz guitar, that’s who I like
to put on. I still think Charlie Christian
is the best guitar player—nobody plays
like him. What I really like about swing
music and bebop and hard bop is the feel
people had, the story they tell—and the
fact they played for people to dance. It’s
important to know the story of a song,
and I love to hear the lyrics from the ’40s
and ’30s. People were so romantic, so
dreamy, so nice back then. I am like that.
I am a dreamy person. I am a romantic
guy. I love Love.”
Grasso reflected that, as he matures,
his focus apparently is morphing away
from overall execution and toward the
specific components of the feel to which
he refers: the flowing phrasing, the
passion, the bounce, the melody. “During
my twenties, I played unconsciously,”
he said. “But over time you realize that
some things work and other things don’t.
I’ve changed a bit. Maybe before I would
play more things. Now maybe my taste
in music changed too—but I still love Art
Tatum. Guitars are sensitive. If the weath-
er changes by five or 10 degrees, or if it’s
dry, it becomes a different instrument.
One day you feel confident and you play
more notes, more double-time. Another
day you’re like, ‘I can’t do that, let’s not do
that today.’ One day, if I feel anxious, I’ll
play more; another day, if I feel every-
thing is okay, I don’t play as much. The
beauty of music is that every day is a little
different.” JT
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 41
 McLaughlin in the ’70s

42 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
 “Spiritual Who Said

Music
Should Be
Quiet? ”
JOHN McLAUGHLIN has been asking that question
for at least 50 years—ever since the founding of the
Mahavishnu Orchestra. In this exclusive interview,
he recalls the origins of that epochal band and
discusses his new album, Liberation Time.
DON HUNSTEIN/SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

By Jim Farber

JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 43
 F
ive decades ago, John McLaughlin
sensed something monumental was
coming in music. “I knew things
were going to change,” he said. “All the
musicians felt it. All of us wanted it. Then,
just a few months later, I got to be part of
that change.”
In fact, he got to be a foundational
part of it. In the incredibly dense year of
1969, McLaughlin played a crucial role
in the creation of nearly every work that
would herald the fusion revolution, in the
process refiguring the entire texture and
history of jazz. The British-born guitarist
had come to New York at the start of
that storied year to help form what many
consider to be fusion’s ground-zero band,
Tony Williams’ Lifetime. But before they
even had the chance to record their debut
album, Emergency!, Miles Davis borrowed
the guitarist to help create two of the
genre’s other inaugural works, In a Silent
Way and Bitches Brew.
Just one year later, McLaughlin was
ready to lead his own band into history.
At the end of 1970, he began formulating
plans for the Mahavishnu Orchestra, a
group that would bring to fusion a level of
ferocity no one had previously imagined
or would subsequently match. Mahavish-
nu mixed rock and jazz in the same way
that a madman mixes fire with gasoline.
They burned down every place they
played. Between McLaughlin’s incendiary
runs, the spiraling electric violin work
of Jerry Goodman, the loop-de-loop
synthesizer lines of Jan Hammer, and
the gut-punch drums of Billy Cobham,
Mahavishnu created cataclysms in sound.
At the same time, their music could
evoke a deep sense of tranquility, offering
passages that rippled with the serenity of
a cool mountain stream.
August will mark 50 years since the
Mahavishnu Orchestra released its roiling
debut, The Inner Mounting Flame. To
mark the occasion, John McLaughlin
spoke at length by phone from his home
in Monaco about the creation and intent
of the band. He talked, too, about his
striking new project, Liberation Time,
which evokes the jazz world he grew up
loving, whose principals helped him to
patent a sound of his own. McLaughlin
also spoke of his undimmed productivity
at age 79 and of the physical challenges
that almost stopped his career cold seven
years ago. Throughout our talk, he spoke
44 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
very much like he plays—with speed,
spontaneity, and great animation.
JT: You created Liberation
Time during the lockdown, but
it’s anything but melancholy.
It’s full of enthusiasm.
JOHN McLAUGHLIN:
If you don’t have enthusiasm, you have
no gas in your car. You can’t go any-
where. And we had plenty of it. I was
going crazy from the lockdown. It got
to the point where my creative kettle
was steaming, then it started to boil,
and then this came out.
You worked with different
configurations of musicians on
each track of the album rather than
using a stable unit as you usually
do. Why?
Choosing the musicians was a function
of the piece itself. Whatever atmosphere
each piece called for, it got. And there are
so many great musicians to work with.
Because of the lockdown, the players
had to record their parts separately.
That must have been a challenge for
music that requires improvisation.
Even though we were in different coun-
tries, in different time zones, once you
put on the headphones you feel like we’re
in the room together. On the other hand,
sometimes the music that came back to
me was so formed that I would have to
redo my part based on what the other
musicians had put into it. That changed
the direction of the piece. But I welcomed
that because that’s the nature of sponta-
neous music.
Two pieces on the album feature you
alone on piano, an instrument you
rarely play.
I actually recorded those two pieces 40
years ago. Piano was my first instrument,
so it represents a side of my musical
heart. But I don’t play it anymore. I don’t
have the technique. These performances
are very short. I wanted to briefly share
them with the listener because they have
a different color, and because they’re
part of my history, which fits into this
whole album. Essentially, the album is a
recapitulation of the music I loved in the
’50s and ’60s when I was a teenage jazz
fanatic. I was listening to Art Blakey and
“I need
structure. In
fact, the more
restraints I put
on myself, the
happier I felt.”
the Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver, and
some of the first albums Miles did with
Gil Evans, especially Miles Ahead, which
knocked me sideways, and Sketches of
Spain. There’s a piece on Miles Ahead
called “Blues for Pablo,” which is a blues
but there’s such a strong Hispanic influ-
ence in it. I was already very influenced
by flamenco music. I discovered it when I
was about 13 and it marked me for life.
Why do you think you went back to
those early influences now?
Why? That’s a question that doesn’t be-
long in music. [Laughs] It just came out of
the feeling I had. I never intend the shape
or genre of a piece I play. The sound I hear
in my head dictates the music.
It’s clear from this record that you
haven’t lost any of your finger speed
or dexterity. That’s rare. How do you
think you managed that?
I’m lucky. Also, I keep my interior life
very healthy with a routine of meditation
and yoga. That’s important, because
everything comes from your inner life.
But, from a physical point of view, I can
be candid about this: About seven years
ago I got hit by arthritis in both hands.
I thought maybe that’s it for me. But I
started seeing doctors and having steroid
injections every three months and it was
very helpful. But I got to a point where I
thought I should be able to heal myself.
So, before my morning meditation I be-
gan to talk to my hands. I told them how

beautiful they are and how grateful I am
to have them. I know that sounds loony,
but I don’t care. Within about six months
I told my doctor I feel so good I don’t
need to have a needle in my hand. To
this day I don’t have any pain. What the
human mind is capable of is phenomenal!
That story speaks to the power of the
spirit you’ve cultivated ever since
Sri Chinmoy gave you the name
Mahavishnu in 1970. Tell me about
how you came to form Mahavishnu
Orchestra just after that.
I have to give credit where credit is
due. I was sitting in the band room
with Miles in a club just outside of
Boston. We had just finished a gig and
I played like shit. I was apologizing to
him, and he said, “Don’t worry about
it.” A few seconds later he said, “It’s
time you formed your own band.”
That was the last thing I expected
to hear from Miles, but he was the
most honest person I ever met and I
took everything he said so seriously. I
thought, “If he thinks I can do it, I’m
going to do it.”
How did you pick the players
you wanted?
I had just recently hooked up with Billy
Cobham on the Jack Johnson album with
Miles. And I loved the way Billy played.
We got really tight after that. So he was
the first guy I called. Then I thought, “I
have to get a violin player.” But I didn’t
want a jazz player. I wanted an R&B
violin player, which is a tall order. It
took some looking around, but I finally
found Jerry [Goodman] in this band the
Flock in Chicago. I called him and he
said yes right away. I first had him play
on my album [My Goal’s Beyond, 1971],
which was an acoustic album that also
had Billy. My original choice for bass was
Tony Levin. But he told me, “Oh man, I
just took a gig with Gary Burton.” Then
I remembered Rick Laird, because we
played together in Brian Auger’s band in
London and he was the house bass player
at Ronnie Scott’s place. At the same time,
At home in Monaco
I had gotten close with Miroslav Vitous.
I asked him to join the band but he said,
“We’re making our own group with
Wayne [Shorter] and Joe [Zawinul]”—
which of course became Weather Report,
one of the best bands ever! Miroslav said,
“We want you in our band, John.” But I
was under orders from Miles to form my
own band! So I asked him about other
keyboardists and he said, “Jan Hammer.
He’s a great pianist.” I said, “I never heard
of him.” Miroslav said, “He’s out playing
with Sarah Vaughan.” I thought, “If he’s
playing with her, he’s no slouch. He’s got
to be swinging!”
By that point, did you know what
sound you wanted for the band?
I knew I wanted more rock, more funk,
more R&B, more meat in the music. It
had to be more raw. There were so many
elements that went into it, from my jazz
roots with Miles and Coltrane in the ’60s
to James Brown. James had this pure
concept of funk that struck me as glo-
rious and I wanted to take that concept
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 45
 to the guitar, then match it to the funk
drums. Billy felt that funk, so I knew
we were made for each other. Billy and
I had been rehearsing together material
that I had written when I was still with
Tony Williams. I had much more music
than I could use. So by the time the other
guys [in Mahavishnu] came in, they
saw that Billy and I were tighter than
anything. They were thinking, “Wow, let
me get on this train.” They knew it was
going somewhere.
You called that band an “orchestra,”
which took some hubris since there
were only five of you.
Why not an orchestra? We were defi-
nitely as loud as an orchestra! [Laughs]
And an orchestra is full of dynamics and
different sounds, which was just what
this band was. It had so many elements,
and the dynamics we had would go from
pianissimo to fortissimo in five-tenths of
a second.
The dynamics in Mahavishnu weren’t
confined to the music. There was
also a striking contrast between
the visual image of the band—with
your monk-like white outfits and
serene song titles like “Dawn” and
“Resolution”—and the incredible
violence of the music.
I got some baffled looks over that! I re-
member doing a TV show in Germany
and I had to do an interview and this
lady said, “You’ve got this spiritual
vibe, yet what you’re playing is so loud
and violent.” I said, “Who said spiritual
music should be quiet? That’s just a
preconceived notion.”
Do you think that the bracing speed
and tumult of the music is what made
it appeal to so many rock fans?
Yes. Rock bands need intensity. They have
to be bold and we were all about that. We
had that fire in the music.
One inspiration for you on the rock
side was Hendrix, correct?
To me, Jimi was a one-man revolution.
When I heard him play, I had to find
a way to build a bigger amp because I
didn’t want this kind of cool jazz tone
anymore. What Jimi did with just an
amp, a guitar, and a wah-wah pedal was
incredible. I’ll never forget talking to
46 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
Miles about Jimi. He had never seen
him, so I said, “There’s an art film
theater downtown that’s playing the
Monterey Pop Festival [movie] and
Jimi is in it.” I took Miles to the movie
and when Jimi came on, Miles was
like, “Damn!” He was floored because
Jimi was daring. And that’s what we
wanted to do.
“Before my
morning
meditation I
began to talk
to my hands. I
told them how
beautiful they
are and how
grateful I am
to have them.”
In the same vein, Jan Hammer
was finding new ways to push
his instrument in Mahavishnu,
wasn’t he?
When Jan started playing the Mini-
Moog, that was revolutionary. People
didn’t know what that sound was. I
remember Chick [Corea] coming to
see us at the Felt Forum [in New York]
where we were opening for this English
rock band Gentle Giant. Afterwards,
Chick came backstage and said, “Man,
that was amazing. I’m going to form a
band just like that.” Stanley Clarke was
there at the time too. Then they made
Return to Forever. Chick always said
that Return to Forever were Son of Ma-
havishnu. I was immensely proud that
he would say such a thing. I miss him
so much. 52 years of friendship! Such a
long time.
If rock bands responded really well
to both Mahavishnu and Return
to Forever, did that piss off some
jazz folks?
Very much so. But are you going to listen
to them or to your heart? Purists think
they know what the real thing is, but it’s
just their particular preferences, isn’t it?
When Mahavishnu first started, did
people get what you were doing right
away or was there a certain learning
curve for the audience?
At the beginning, they didn’t get all of
it but they got something. Even if they
didn’t quite know what it was, they came
back and bought the album and, at some
point, they finally got it. I know exactly
what that’s like. When I bought A Love
Supreme in 1965 it took me a year of
playing that just to comprehend what
Trane was doing. But at that time, audi-
ences were ready to make an effort more
than they are now. Today, they want to
be entertained pretty quick.
By the time Mahavishnu’s second
album, Birds of Fire, came out in 1973,
fans got it big-time. That album went
gold, a rarity for an all-instrumental
album at that time. How surprised
were you by that?
Shocked! It was nothing I expected. But I
also remember thinking, “I’ve got to take
it with a pinch of salt.” If you get carried
away with your own success, you’re in
deep doo-doo.
One thing that struck me about
Mahavishnu’s albums was that,
despite all the solos you had,
most of the music was very
structured. No matter how far out
you guys went, you always seemed
connected to the core riffs and the
central melodies of the songs.
That was vital. The discovery of that
happened for me in the ’60s. Around
’66, I was living in Belgium playing in
DON HUNSTEIN/SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT
a free-form band, but it didn’t last long
for me. It was self-indulgent. I realized
then that I need structure. In fact, the
more restraints I put on myself, the
happier I felt. There’s a quote from
Stravinsky that reads, “It’s through
restraints that I will find my freedom.”
That’s beautiful! I love to obey this
rule with the time structure and that
Mahavishnu Mark 2, 1974 (L to R): Carol Shive, Ralphe Armstrong, Steve Franckevich, McLaughlin, Steven Kindler,
Jean Luc Ponty, Narada Michael Walden, Bob Knapp, Marsha Westbrook, Phil Hirschi, and Gayle Moran
one with the harmonic structure, and
then find a way through those things
to be free.
At the same time, Mahavishnu had
four soloists, and even Rick had
an important bass solo in the song
“One Word” on Birds of Fire. Was it
hard to negotiate that ego-wise?
No. I tried to distribute the solos as
democratically as possible. The whole
philosophy and discipline of jazz
allows that. Collectively, we have to
be able to play together in order to
help each other go beyond what we
each know.
The original band recorded a third
studio album, but it wasn’t released
at the time. Instead, a live album
came out [Between Nothingness
and Eternity] that featured some of
the same material. Why was that
decision made?
We made the third album in our favor-
ite London studio, Trident, and at the
end of mixing everyone seemed happy.
A couple of weeks went by, then they
[Jan and Jerry] told me they didn’t
want to release it. They never told me
why. As a result, we recorded the Cen-
tral Park show to replace it.
Obviously, that demonstrates the
internal tension in the band. You guys
broke up shortly thereafter. What
went wrong?
Jan and Jerry had become intransigent.
Don’t ask me why, because to this day
I don’t know. From the outset, I asked
them both what was the problem. Even
if I was the biggest asshole in the world,
let’s fix it. But they wouldn’t tell me. It got
the point where I told the band I was not
interested in making music with people
who refused to speak to me. Of course,
this is my side of the story. Maybe they
had good reason to behave as they did. I
was into my own trip, meditating, vege-
tarian, no hanging out, no girls, no drugs.
As far as they were concerned, I was
pretty antisocial. For the record, I never
asked them to meditate or anything. I
didn’t care what they did.
Did you ever have a rapprochement?
Years later, Jerry and I became friends
again, but Jan, never. I ran into him from
time to time but he still wouldn’t speak
to me. I have to give credit to Rick Laird
and Billy. They never got involved in
such stupidity, and a big thanks to Jerry,
who let it go. It was a tragedy it ended in
such a way. As bands go, it was one of the
greatest ever.
You did go on to form other
incarnations of Mahavishnu that
included players like Jean Luc
Ponty and Narada Michael Walden,
and since then you’ve worked with
so many other great bands, from
Shakti to your most recent group,
4th Dimension. Do you have a core
principle that has guided you through
all of it?
I was talking about this recently with
[drummer and wife of Carlos Santana]
Cindy Blackman. She was telling me that
she asked Wayne [Shorter], “What is the
meaning of jazz?” And Wayne said, “I
dare you.” [Laughs] I thought that was re-
ally cool. That means you’ve got to stand
up and be yourself. It’s like when your
trousers are down by your ankles. You’re
naked in front of the world and you’re
free. Now go and be inspired! JT
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 47
 AUDIO FILES
Giant Steps
At long last, turntables with built-in speakers are starting to sound better
BY BRENT BUTTERWORTH
V inyl enthusiasts love to brag that
last year, the dollar volume of
record sales surpassed that of CDs for
the first time since the 1980s. But ask
them what people are playing those
records on, and they’ll likely clam
up. That’s because the vast majority
of people play their sides not on elite,
high-end turntables such as those
from Pro-Ject and VPI, but on all-in-
one record players purchased for less
than $100 at big-box stores such as
Best Buy or Walmart.
Whether or not you agree with
audiophiles’ claims that vinyl sounds
better, there’s little chance that those
sonic benefits could find their way
through these record players’ cheap
ceramic phono cartridges and tiny
speakers. And the extremely heavy
48 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
tracking force applied by these players
is enough to do significant damage
to a record groove after just a few
dozen spins.
Still, the appeal of a simple, all-
in-one record player is undeniable.
While audiophile turntables typically
require complicated setup with $50 to
$100 worth of specialized tools— and
sometimes the addition of a special
preamp to boost and EQ the signal—
all-in-one record players require no
extra components or cables, and no
setup. Just turn on the power, place
a record on the platter, and lower the
needle into the groove.
Fortunately, a few audiophile-fo-
cused companies have started to offer
higher-quality all-in-one (or close to
all-in-one) models, and at least one
mass-market brand is working to
make its players sound better.
The Problems with Cheap
Players and More
Inexpensive record players are available
under various brands, but they all tend
to look suspiciously the same; insiders
have told me most come from just a
handful of factories in China. They start
with a crude playback mechanism—a
non-adjustable tonearm tipped with a
cheap ceramic cartridge. In an effort to
keep the needle from skipping out of the
groove, the tonearm has high tracking
force, i.e., it pushes down very hard on
the needle, which wears out records
prematurely. Most of these players have
tracking force too high for my digital
tracking-force gauge to measure. I’d
Left to right: The Pro-Ject Juke Box S2, Victrola
Eastwood, and Andover Audio Model-One
estimate it at about seven or eight grams,
while two grams is more typical for
high-quality turntable setups.
Whereas high-quality turntables take
pains to isolate records from the rumble
of their motor, inexpensive models
usually let the motor’s hum pass right
through the record into the needle, from
which it then emerges out of your speak-
ers. The speakers and amps built into
these turntables, especially the small
portable models, are often crude enough
to make Charlie Parker sound like he’s
playing through a Marshall stack
Stepping Up to Better Sound
Despite their flaws, these record play-
ers—at least the larger models—can
be fun to listen to. When I played my
old copy of Jeff Beck’s Wired on the
Victrola’s retro-looking Plaza record
player, it reminded me a lot of the Sears
Silvertone player I first heard Wired on,
more than 40 years ago. But I knew they
could be a lot better, which is why I was
excited when Victrola told me they were
introducing the Eastwood, a $99 record
player that includes an Audio-Technica
AT-3600LA moving-magnet cartridge.
I was shocked from the first moment I
lowered the Eastwood’s needle onto Bill
Evans and Toots Thielemans’ Affinity,
because the piano and harmonica both
sounded clearer and more detailed than
they did through the rather soft-sound-
ing Plaza. Even more important, though,
was that the Eastwood’s tracking force
measured 3.9 grams, just a little above
the 2.5 to 3.5 grams Audio-Technica
recommends for the AT-3600LA. The
tonearm’s not adjustable, so there was no
way to bring the tracking force within
spec, but at least I wasn’t as worried that
the Eastwood would put excessive wear
and tear on my records’ grooves.
The Plaza’s larger chassis and speakers
gave it a fuller sound than the Eastwood,
and I immediately found myself hoping
that Victrola equips some of its larger
players with the AT-3600LA. However,
the Eastwood has a built-in Bluetooth
transmitter, so you can get better sound
by listening through a good set of Blue-
tooth speakers or headphones.
If you want the convenience of the
Eastwood with better sound quality,
there are a few options. Pro-Ject’s $599
Juke Box E and $799 Juke Box S2 are
high-quality turntables with built-in
amplifiers; just connect a good pair of
speakers and you have a system with real
audiophile-grade stereo sound and all
the convenience of a one-piece record
player. Andover Audio’s $1,999 Mod-
el-One builds a Pro-Ject turntable into a
single enclosure along with four 3.5-inch
woofers, two tweeters and a 150-watt
amplifier, plus a Bluetooth receiver that
lets you play music from your phone.
Granted, this isn’t a lot of options,
especially for a category that’s been
around since before bebop was invented.
But manufacturers I’ve talked to tell
me we can expect to see and hear more
high-quality, all-in-one record players
in the coming year—just in time for
crate-digging to resume after the pan-
demic subsides. JT
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 49
 CHOPS
Synths and Strings
DIEGO BARBER’s new compositions filter his concepts through circuits BY MICHAEL ROSS
T hose only familiar with Diego
Barber’s Sunnyside Records
output might be taken aback by his
latest release on the label, Drago. Its
largely electronic sounds seem to
be a major departure for a virtuoso
on the nylon-string guitar in both
classical and jazz settings. But those
who are aware of his collaboration
with electronics whiz Hugo Cipres
on the 2013 Origin Arts release 411
will be less surprised. That record saw
Barber, on processed electric guitar,
joining Cipres, Seamus Blake on tenor
sax and EWI, Johannes Weidenmuel-
ler on bass, and drummer Ari Hoenig
to cook up a delicious stew of jazz,
groove, and electronica.
Fact is, this Spanish-born, Brook-
lyn-residing guitarist harbors a strong
affinity for modern sounds. A lover
of Chicago and Detroit dancef loor
50 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
tunes, he also enjoyed Berlin’s elec-
tronic scene while in residence there.
“My first step towards electronic mu-
sic was 411, but I always loved classic
electronic music,” he reveals. “I also
listen a lot to classical musicians like
Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John
Adams, who are closely related to
electronic music.”
This affinity led Barber to make a
record that minimizes his main in-
strument. “Guitar is my best weapon,
but I didn’t use it to compose Drago,”
he explains. “I felt that if I used the
guitar the music would follow my
fingers.” Instead, Barber wrote the
album’s music more in the manner of
a classical composer: first conceiving
the electronic textures, and only then
figuring out how to best imple-
ment them.
Classical music also inf luenced the
tempos, which are more f lexible in
that style of music than in the elec-
tronic variety. “Bryce Canyon,” for
example, starts slow and speeds up
every four bars. “The first step was to
put the tempo changes in Logic, be-
fore I had any idea what else I wanted
to do,” he says. Another way Barber’s
classical background informs Drago
is in his attention to sonic detail. “For
classical guitarists, sound production
is of major importance,” he explains.
“We spend more time working on our
nails than practicing.”
Barber had previously used Logic,
Apple’s digital audio workstation,
much like a tape recorder to record
musical ideas as he played guitar, so
to do a full-on electronic record he
had to tackle a steep learning curve.
A rare upside to the pandemic was
that no touring and less teaching
 “For classical guitarists,
sound production is
of major importance.
We spend more time
working on our nails
than practicing.”

meant plenty of time for learning how

to use the plugins, software synthe-
sizers, and processing tools employed
by makers of electronica. “Usually, I
make all the sounds with my fingers,”
he says. “Fortunately, I have many
producer and DJ friends who helped
me learn.”
He became f luent in digital sounds,
but sometimes “there ain’t nothing
like the real thing.” Though ma-
rimba is easy enough to mimic with
synthesizers, Drago’s mallet sounds
came from the actual instrument,
rented for a recording two years
earlier. After that session, Barber had
the percussionist play different lines
as potential fodder for a later com-
position. “It was the best marimba,
recorded in the best studio in New
York,” he recalls. “If you compare it to
the marimba sounds in Logic or Om-
nisphere, you can hear the difference.
The real marimba is full of life.”
Pure guitar may rarely appear on admits. “It was not the most important composition and combining of textures.
the record, but Barber did use his thing in this recording.” “Reading scores while listening to an
“best weapon” to generate many You can hear Barber play guitar on orchestral recording tells me a lot about
of the album’s sounds. He would the tune “Zion Park.” “I am playing how to compose lines and how things
employ a MIDI-equipped guitar to harmonics, processed to sound like sound together,” he says. “I love to listen
record a MIDI track, later used to a piano because I got the idea from a to a symphony while reading only one
trigger a Spectrasonics Omnisphere Craig Taborn album,” he reveals. His line. When I finish, I start again, reading
software synthesizer and Kontakt trusty nylon-string makes a cameo, but another line. It’s a good exercise.”
sample libraries. “That way I can get Barber’s modification includes using its Delayed by the current lockdown,
sounds that are far removed from the piezo pickup to run it through distor- his new project will see a return to his
actual guitar,” he says. Less often, he tion. On “Santa Monica” his electric classical roots. “I will be recording 20
recorded his guitar without MIDI guitar is sent through a harmonizer, Domenico Scarlatti sonatas with [vocal-
and disguised it with effects. For the creating a Jon Hassell-like tone for the ist] Theo Bleckmann,” Barber says. “I’ll
non-MIDI parts, Barber went direct solo. “I play a minute and a half, two play 10 alone and another 10 with Theo.
and just grabbed an amp from Logic’s minutes of improvisation,” he says. “It is I want to record it in a church built 1,800
wealth of modeling options to form a probably the only improvisation on the years ago.” Drago was not a one-off or
ANTONIO PORCAR (2)

foundation on which he would then whole recording.” aberration, however. “I will still keep
build. “The guitar sound was mod- On Drago, Barber has largely left composing electronic music because
ified many times, so I didn’t spend his jazz persona behind, relying on his I really love it,” he says. “Composing
a lot of time on the basic tone,” he classical identity to guide him through without my guitar is exciting.” JT

JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 51
 GEARHEAD
A closer look at the Electraglide’s “staircase” fingerboard and
LED readout and (right) a view from the top
Taking a Glide
Andrew Bond’s semi-digital fretless wonder from nearly four decades ago BY MAC RANDALL
I n the 1980s, as synthesizers and
drum machines threatened to take
over popular music, electric guitar
manufacturers tried to come up with
instruments that were more relevant
to the times—or at least looked that
way. Guitars made from non-standard
materials like graphite and fiberglass
began showing up in music stores;
many of them (the most famous being
Steinberger’s “headless” axes) were vi-
sually striking, indicating that a major
guitar-design rethink was underway.
One of the oddest examples of this
was the Bond Electraglide, devised
by Englishman Andrew Bond (an
ex-bus conductor) and produced in a
purpose-built factory in Muir of Ord,
a village in the Scottish Highlands.
Its black carbon-fiber body, graphite
neck, and aluminum fingerboard
set it apart immediately from more
traditional wooden models. But even
more distinctive was that it lacked
52 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
one of the central characteristics of
your typical guitar: frets.
This unusual design feature didn’t
mean that you could just slide up and
down the neck with no barriers, though.
Instead of being divided by the usual
horizontal metal strips, the Electra-
glide’s fingerboard was shaped much like
a staircase, with each “step” represent-
ing where a fret would normally be. As
if that weren’t strange enough, all the
guitar’s controls for volume, tone, and
pickup selection were digital, and it had
a built-in mother board, like a computer.
(In the photos above, note the LED read-
out screen on the body’s lower bout.)
Bond built about 1,400 Electraglides
between 1984 and 1986. The guitar’s
most famous adopter was probably U2’s
guitarist Dave “The Edge” Evans, who
used it extensively on the band’s Gram-
my-winning 1987 album The Joshua Tree.
Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, Mick Jones
of the Clash and—at the time—Big Audio
Dynamite, Will Sergeant of Echo & the
Bunnymen, and John Turnbull of Ian
Dury & the Blockheads also gave it a try
(enticed, no doubt, by Bond’s business
partner Ian Flooks, one of the most suc-
cessful talent agents in Britain). Beyond
those rockers, however, very few took an
Electraglide home. Unfortunately, the
same digital features that made it look so
alluringly futuristic also required that it
have an external power supply, and most
guitarists aren’t fond of the kind of plug-
ging in that involves a bulky charger pack
and a wall outlet. Manufacturing these
injection-molded instruments for a mass
market proved tricky as well, and the
company dissolved after only two years in
business. Andrew Bond died in 1999.
These days, the Bond Electraglide
is more a curiosity than a collector’s
item, but it remains an interesting early
example of what you can get when you
combine digital technology with good
old-fashioned guitar making. JT
 W Jet Powered
Many guitar hounds have noted the marked similarities between the
Collings OM1 JL, designed in partnership with Julian Lage, and the classic
Gretsch Duo Jet. Let’s just call it an homage, shall we? A more loving
one would be hard to imagine. This gorgeous, fully hollow electric has a
Honduran mahogany neck and body with maple laminate top, 22-fret ebony
fingerboard, two Ron Ellis Ellisonics pickups, and a Bigsby B3 vibrato
tailpiece. Available in Antiqued Blonde, Antiqued Sunburst, and Antiqued
Black (which’ll really put George Harrison fans on cloud nine).

$6,600 MSRP | collingsguitars.com

X Wherefore Art Thou?

Inspired by the Los Angeles skyline (or so the press release says), the semi-hol-
low Eastman Romeo LA electric guitar certainly makes a good first impression. It
sports a striking Celestine Blue finish, along with three gold knobs that control its
pickup duo of Seymour Duncan Radiator Gold Foil P-90s. The top is spruce lami-
nate, the back and sides mahogany laminate, the neck maple with a swept-curve
joint, and the nickel-plated vibrato tailpiece is by the German craftsmen at Göldo.

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W Classic Sans
Back in the 1990s, Tech 21’s SansAmp DI pedal quickly became the go-to box for electric
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company branched out into other product lines, and five years ago the original SansAmp
was discontinued. But now it’s back as the SansAmp Classic. The analog circuitry remains
the same, allowing you to select from among eight preamp/power-amp “character” set-
tings, which are in turn adjustable with four front-panel knobs.

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X Return to the Delta

For its new line of low-wattage amplifiers, Supro harks back to the tube amps that
made it famous in the ’50s and ’60s. The smallest, and cutest, of the bunch is the
Delta King 8: one glorious watt of power with a 12AX7 tube preamp, 12AU7 triode
power amp, and eight-inch speaker. Meant for large halls? Well, no, but it makes for
a nice recording amp, and the line out placed before the master volume also allows
you to use it as a separate, cool-looking preamp.

$449 MSRP | suprousa.com

W Catch a Wave
One particular feature that sets Bose Professional’s AMM loudspeakers apart is
called the Beamwidth Matching Waveguide. This proprietary device, located just
behind the speaker grille, seals the acoustic volume of the woofer and controls
low-frequency dispersion with a unique vent pattern. Translation: Sound covers a
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two-way speakers—ideal for monitor or main use—come in two sizes, the
AMM108 and AMM112, with a companion subwoofer, the AMS115.

Prices TBA | pro.bose.com

JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 53
 REVIEWS
“Like ballplayers in a round of pepper”:
Roy Hargrove (L) and Mulgrew Miller
Brothers in Spirit
Vintage duets from Roy Hargrove and Mulgrew Miller
ROY HARGROVE/
MULGREW MILLER
In Harmony
Resonance
This two-disc set
was compiled
from two different
performances, one
recorded at Merkin
Hall at the Kaufman
Music Center in
New York, in January of 2006, and the
other at the Williams Center for the
Arts at Lafayette College in Easton,
Pennsylvania, in November of the
following year. Aside from the quality
of the music, the recordings are nota-
ble because they’re the only ones Roy
Hargrove made without a drummer;
Mulgrew Miller, who died in 2013,
played a handful of drummer-less
dates over the course of his career.
With their unerring synergy and
the deep-grooved rhythmic impetus
they summon together, these artists
do not seem at all to miss the pres-
ence of a stickman. Miller, of course,
has the responsibility to make full
use of both the piano’s melodic and
rhythmic capacities, and he does so
f lawlessly throughout, as Hargrove
deftly inserts his trumpet lines into
54 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
ALBUMS xBOOKS
the spaces Miller leaves open—often
in unexpected places, heightening
both tension and release. For the most
part, Hargrove maintains a f lat-tim-
bred, vibrato-less tone (clearly the
Miles inf luence), which means that
the emotional depth of his playing is
dependent solely on the musical ideas
he germinates; no bathos or sentiment
to make things easy, for either the
listener or him. But on more cele-
bratory outings such as “Con Alma”
and “Invitation,” he overlays his
tone with a brilliant sheen, pumping
up both volume and intensity, with
clarion-like ascents and upper-range
testifying. His extended lines at times
echo Clifford Brown’s with their
fusion of dexterity and precision, as
well as their recasting of classic bop
patterns. Miller, meanwhile, confines
his explorations primarily to his right
hand, using his left as a rhythmic
and chordal base on which to dance;
his exploratory drive is focused
and relentless.
As resolutely as these two highly
disciplined improvisers hew to what
are now considered conventional
notions of melody, pitch, intonation,
and harmony (glorying in the some-
times-forgotten art of extracting new
riches from well-mined lodes), their
music is never dry or pedantic. Even
on ballads such as “This Is Always,”
“I Remember Clifford” (which gives
Hargrove full range to explore his
Brownian side), and Monk’s “Ruby
My Dear,” a sense of irrepressible
playfulness makes itself felt, as trum-
peter and pianist toss ideas back and
forth like ballplayers in a round of
pepper: every moment new and spar-
kling, celebrating a brotherhood of
the spirit bonded by joy, deepened by
inspiration, and anointed with love.
DAVID WHITEIS
JULIAN LAGE
Squint
Blue Note
What consistently
stands out in Julian
Lage’s guitar play-
ing is his bursting-
at-the-seams sense
of energy. Music
practically spring-
boards from the Santa Rosa, Califor-
nia native’s fingers, gently grabbing
listeners by the ear and demanding
full immersion. Though Lage claims
he was going for a love-bent “fuzzi-
ness” on his Blue Note label debut, his
Technicolor chords and precise pick-
ing make Squint, his 12th release as a
leader, as extroverted and jubilant as a
sunny Fourth of July celebration.
Lage’s determination to put robust
songwriting next to his ample guitar
chops makes Squint both focused and
free. His penchant for composing by
improvising to the speeches of such
iconic figures as writer James Baldwin
and poet Nikki Giovanni contributes,
perhaps, to the elastic nature of his
new material, which is furthered by
the accompaniment of bassist Jorge
Roeder and drummer Dave King.
JOHN ABBOTT (HARGROVE), MARK SHELDON (MILLER)
Squint opens with a lovely, prismatic
solo piece, “Etude,” followed by the
swinging “Boo’s Blues,” which folloes
an Old West path, hinting at George
Jones and Buck Owens. The title
track is informed by a catchy melody,
beautiful picking, a little grunge, a
lot of Duane Eddy, and King’s punk-
swing. Johnny Mercer’s “Emily” is
romance personified, Lage’s lush tone
and lilting gait pure perfection. On
the harder-driving “Familiar Flower,”
dedicated to Charles Lloyd, the guitar-
ist’s wiry runs and wide-span chords
hopscotch around King’s precise
drumming. “Day and Age” could be
Bill Frisell; the rich solo intro of “Qui-
et Like a Fuse” recalls Pat Metheny;
“Short Form” goes off reservation,
an unsettling, oddly familiar melody
framed in a bittersweet hue.
Lage’s fans will gobble up Squint.
New listeners will count their bless-
ings. KEN MICALLEF
DAVE HOLLAND
Another Land
Edition
Considering all
of Dave Holland’s
spectacular work
over the past five-
plus decades—from
the bassist’s tenure
with Miles Davis
through his numerous leader and
collaborator releases for ECM, and on
and on—sometimes he sounds most at
home fronting an unfussy small group
that’s in it just for the fun of it. This is
one of those times: Holland has been
calling on guitarist Kevin Eubanks
for the occasional workout since
the early ’90s, and it’s a natural fit.
Drummer Obed Calvaire hasn’t been
around nearly as long as the others but
makes anyone sound better. They first
performed live together around five
years ago; Another Land is their debut
recording as a trio.
This music is not devoid of raw
power, but it’s also got plenty of grace
and delicacy; there’s a casual tone to
it all, as though the three went into it
sans expectations and this is simply
what emerged when they hit the record
button. The nine tracks, all originals,
range from the refined, airy title
track—a stately showcase for Holland’s
unflagging dexterity—to the fierce
“Mashup,” which ought to dispel any
notions that Eubanks dwells perma-
nently in the gentle side of town. The
guitarist is explosive here, providing
Calvaire with ample reason to tear
away madly, and if Holland (who plays
electric as well as standup bass on the
album) seems less adventurous by
comparison, it’s only because someone
had to keep this thing anchored.
Besides, Holland has plenty of other
opportunities to be the chief path-
finder. On “The Village,” he’s tentative
initially, feeling out the tune’s param-
eters, but by midway he’s had enough
of that; the ensuing jam rivals any of
rock’s great power trios for ferocity, all
three players leaving any semblance of
decorum behind. JEFF TAMARKIN
JD ALLEN
Queen City
Savant
JD Allen has spent
a career honing
no-frills artistic ex-
pression, fashioning
a catalog that em-
phasizes relatively
brief, thematically
cohesive original compositions. So it
made sense that, after being initially
flummoxed and deflated by pandem-
ic-induced isolation, he would pivot
to the creation of Queen City, his first
album for solo tenor saxophone.
In the liner notes, Allen writes that
the purpose was to recenter his life
in hope for the future. After listening
to other solo sax records to help him
chart his course, he composed nine
new originals, each under four min-
utes, and bracketed them with four
Depression-era tunes that have be-
come standards. Though each of these
13 selections can stand on its own,
they’re meant to resemble a mural,
vignettes belonging to a bigger picture.
As always, Allen is charismatic,
resonant, and decisive. He comes into
“Three Little Words” sideways and
low-toned like Sonny Rollins, im-
mersed in playful discovery, retarding
and rushing the tempo or starting,
backtracking, then triumphantly
declaring a string of interpolated
phrases. He’s more faithful to the
melody on the Carter Family’s “Wild-
wood Flower,” smoothing its lyricism
into elegance.
The nine originals are at once
restless and concise, brimming with
phrases that bump and skid, then
pause, as on “Gem and Eye,” or
contrast oscillations and flutters with
elongated notes that peal upward and
downward (“Mother”) or abruptly
splat (“Maude”). Queen City is named
after Cincinnati, where the album was
recorded, and the title song features
a sturdy riff and an open-hearted
spirit that makes it feel most suited
to become a larger ensemble piece. A
second memorable refrain anchors
“O.T.R.,” which may refer to Cin-
cinnati’s historically rich Over-the-
Rhine neighborhood.
The closing pair of standards seem
chosen for lyrics that are of course
never sung. Allen barely leans into the
“I ain’t got nobody” lament of “Just
a Gigolo,” and waits until the end to
address the melody of “These Foolish
Things,” which helps mentally com-
plete its signature lyric, “remind me
of you.” No matter. Faith in creative
expression is Queen City’s abiding
theme, and in Allen’s solo mural it’s
readily apparent. BRITT ROBSON
YANIV TAUBENHOUSE
Roads (Moments in Trio Volume Three)
Fresh Sound New Talent
Like so many mu-
sicians from Israel
who have emigrated
to the United States
in recent years,
Yaniv Taubenhouse
sounds schooled.
He is sophisticated in his manage-
ment of melodic structures and chord
changes and, especially, meters. His
formalism and discipline reflect his
classical training. His concept of
the piano trio format is thoroughly
contemporary, as he provides primary
roles for his bassist (Rick Rosato) and
drummer (Jerad Lippi).
Yet Taubenhouse is, above all, a
seductive pianist. He pursues lav-
ish beauty unashamedly. For him,
technical elements serve emotional,
spiritual, and atmospheric purposes.
The opening track, “Blue Forest,” is
a three-note node of melody taken
through myriad variations in small
steps, with gently cycling chords
JA Z ZT I M E S.C O M 55
 REVIEWS
Yaniv Taubenhouse: Remember
Editor’s Pick his name. His present is intrigu-
ing. His future could be more so.
JAMES FRANCIES THOMAS CONRAD
Purest Form
Blue Note DAMON LOCKS/BLACK
MONUMENT ENSEMBLE
With his 2018 debut Flight, pianist James Francies signaled a fresh, con- NOW
temporary, and potentially world-shaking vision for the next generation International Anthem
of jazz. Follow-up Purest Form finds that vision in bloom. Much will
likely be made of his use of electronic textures and effects, and of organic NOW is the sound
drums (by way of Jeremy Dutton, who forms the album’s core trio along of liberation, both
with bassist Burniss Travis) to play EDM-type beats. The real excitement, as an idea and
though, lies in Francies’ ear for displacement. as a conscious
By displacement, I mean that he has a knack for putting spaces and har- and purposeful
monic and rhythmic turns in unexpected places. It’s by turns obvious—as act. Work on the
on “Levitate” or “Where We Stand,” where both melody and groove are album—the second
built around glitchy, accent-shifting beats—and subtle, as with the odd by Chicago-based electronic musician
chords that end-stop Bilal’s vocal lines in “Eyes Wide Shut,” or vinyl-re- and artist Damon Locks with his
cord static that becomes a regular, but off beat, percussion layer on “713.” Black Monument Ensemble—began
It can all be disorienting, the more so because of Francies’ often blinding in earnest in the sweltering heat of
speed. When vibraphonist Joel Ross joins in (“My Favorite Things,” late August, in the wake of a summer
“Where We Stand”), the music can evoke Frank Zappa’s Synclavier period: of protest, heartbreak, racial injustice,
the stuff he thought too fast and complex for humans to play. Yet with re- and the pandemic. That environment
peat listens, disruptive rhythms like those on “Transfiguration” ultimately directed Locks, who works primarily
feel organic, even satisfying when set against Immanuel Wilkins’ alto solo. in the Ensemble as a creator of sam-
Those jarring details secured, more superficial shifts—e.g., into string ple-driven sound collages, leading to
quartet arrangements (“Stratus,” “Still Here”)—are easily absorbed. the sheer physical brawn and philo-
Let none of these subversions sophical reach of these six tracks.
distract from the fundamental talent The brawn comes from the beats
Francies deploys. His ultra-fast and loops Locks builds in each track,
runs can sometimes sound like each of which draws on a kind of
cheap glissandi; in fact they contain ritualistic construction. Listen to how
deep, knowledgeable packets of the beat peaks around the two-minute
jazz language mindful of Hancock, mark of “The People vs the Rest of
Kirkland, and Glasper. Behind the Us,” how the furious record scratches
self-conscious electronic distor- mix with the throbbing bass to create
tions of “Melting” is one of the most a personal Universal Zulu Nation
haunting compositions in recent block party in your ears. The pace
memory. Francies is so good, he quickens on “Keep Your Mind Free,”
has to mask just how good he is. an almost frantic ode to mental clari-
“So good, he has to mask just how good
MICHAEL J. WEST he is”: James Francies ty that conjures imagery of a neo-noir
chase right out of Blade Runner. In
this context, the refrain “keep your
beneath that are gradually overtak- with Cole Porter on “You’d Be So Nice to mind free” rings like a commandment
en by Rosato’s bass. The core motif Come Home To,” starting and stop- down the ages, an echoing warning
sounds like a recurring aspiration, an ping, reharmonizing, sending Rosato about the forces that seek to police
outreach toward hope. “Blue Forest” scurrying through it, appending his own the body and mind, from ancient
becomes a ritual, elegiac and hypnotic. epilogue. Monk’s “Boo Boo’s Birthday,” to future.
The third track, “Prayer,” has a similar in a fitting tribute to its composer, has Much of Locks’ vision here and on
aura of incantation. new hits in all the “wrong” places. his first album with the BME, 2019’s
Taubenhouse can cast a spell like Roads closes with the title track and Where Future Unfolds, suggests a
Abdullah Ibrahim, but his energy is a return to the domain of intellectual deep study of the Art Ensemble of
edgier. “Rush Hour Traffic” (a New York romanticism where the album began. Chicago and its members’ quest for
song) and “Sailing Over the Horizon” It’s a rapt ceremony based on a simple more meaningful musical expres-
SHERVIN LAINEZ

vividly portray forceful movement. He is theme closely related to “Blue Forest” sion. But where much of that first
also a bold free thinker as an interpreter and “Prayer,” but further along in album was made in a sort of J Dil-
of standards. He plays fast and loose the journey. la-meets-Lester Bowie mode, Locks

56 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
widens the scope here to allow a
greater narrative vision, and NOW’s
bookend tracks exemplify this.
On “Now (Forever Momentary
Space),” built from a hypnotic weave
of drum patterns (and a small siren),
the six-piece vocal ensemble and
clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid invoke
a mindset of ref lection and healing.
By the album’s end on “The Body Is
Electric,” the drums have reconfig-
ured into a formation closer to Congo
Square or a West African drum
circle, Dawid’s clarinet screeches
and scorches with holy fire, and the
vocalists lead a ring shout that cele-
brates all the vibrancy of human life.
JACKSON SINNENBERG
NIK BÄRTSCH
Entendre
ECM
Nik Bärtsch
studied piano and
percussion from
an early age, and it
shows in his music.
There’s an ele-
gance to his groups
like Ronin or Mobile, and there’s a
percussive logic to the compositions,
which he calls “Moduls” and con-
siders to be templates. Phrases are
repeated and layers build complexly
toward structures that owe equally to
Steve Reich and Musicians and Max
Roach’s M’Boom. “I was looking for a
meditative, percussive music that has
pulse in it,” Bärtsch says in the pro-
motional video that his label posted
to accompany the release of his latest
recording. Much as it makes compel-
ling, intense music when performed
in ensembles, that style translates well
into a solo piano setting too, the focus
on Entendre.
The new album takes an already
austere approach and strips it to its
essence. That is immediately evident
in “Modul 58_12.” A terse left-hand
figure leads the tune, raising tension
until the tempo accelerates, and the
dramatic effect builds. It’s maintained
by additional short, repeated figures
with each hand, until it resolves into
a spare finish with woodsy percus-
sion. “Modul 55” begins with a zing,
presumably from a strum of the piano
innards, but in contrast to the urgen-
cy of the opening piece, it’s tranquil,
with concise rhythms gently rising
and receding. These performances
set the tone for a 53-minute program
of mesmerizing music. In technique,
it continually feels new, but the
results are excitingly familiar. Like
Anna Webber or Tyshawn Sorey, Nik Watson-Jones has recorded her own lyrics
Bärtsch has one foot in the classical on other albums, but “Choices” is her first
realm, but like the work of those two project featuring almost all original material.
stellar musicians, Entendre is not a For Watson-Jones, nothing is more
balancing act but a sumptuous blend. important than the people in her life. She is a
natural storyteller, and the stories she tell
MARTIN JOHNSON
grow from her life experiences.
GARAGE A TROIS A versitile, deeply soulful emotional
Calm Down Cologne and sublimly swinging singer and
Royal Potato Family insightful songwriter and musical
storyteller...”
In the 22 years since JWVibe
the original Garage
Available On
A Trois trio—saxo-
Apple Music - Spotify
phonist/keyboardist
Amazon Music
Skerik, guitarist
Charlie Hunter, and joanwatsonjones.com
drummer Stanton
Moore—released its debut Mysteryfunk,
its members have continued successful
solo careers, with the New Orleans-born
Moore also leading the heralded
Complete catalog: www.steeplechase.dk
Crescent City funk vehicle Galactic.
But when the trio played a three-night
NEW RELEASES
CD - DOWNLOAD - STREAMING
stand at the Nectar Lounge in Skerik’s
hometown of Seattle in 2019, with Pearl
Jam guitarist Stone Gossard’s Studio
Litho right across the street, synchro-
nicity intervened. The musicians carried
their gear over, set up and recorded for
a few hours before the tour stop’s final
performance, and Calm Down Cologne
is the result. SCCD 31912
Largely an improvised series of jams
recorded live in the studio, the disc gets
off to a James Brown-inspired start with
“No Zone,” and listeners get expectedly
unexpected contributions from each of
the three musical freethinkers. Skerik al-
ternates between tenor sax and a swirl of
analog keyboards including an electric
piano, modal synthesizer, and the always
acidic-sounding Mellotron. Hunter’s
dexterity on customized guitars is, as
always, a marvel as he simultaneously
SCCD 31913
frets and plucks bass notes with his
thumbs and melodies with his fingers.
And Moore, who adds cowbell accents
that would impress Christopher Walken
US distribution:
www.statesidemusic.com
email: info@statesidemusic.com
 REVIEWS
on the brief title jaunt, could inject funk
Editor’s Pick
into a polka.
The drummer percolates and bomb-
LOUIS ARMSTRONG drops during the 10-minute centerpiece
The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia and RCA Victor “In-A-Pro-Pro,” inspiring mind-alter-
Studio Sessions 1946-1966 ing comping and solos by Skerik and
Mosaic Hunter. A surging number called “The
Epic” features Seattle-based singer
It seems loony through the long lens of Christa Wells adding the album’s only
2021, but by the mid-1940s many people overdub: a ghost vocal mimicking the
considered Louis Armstrong passé. The sax and keyboard figures. With only
man who shaped the course of jazz and five tracks encompassing 36 minutes,
revolutionized trumpet playing had, in Calm Down Cologne finally calms down
the eyes of his critics, stopped innovat- on the decelerated closer “Numinous,”
ing, given in to commercial trends, and which channels the original jazz/funk
resorted to clowning. True, he would of Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock’s
never again reach the heights of the Headhunters. BILL MEREDITH
Hot Five and Hot Seven, but that’s like
saying Shakespeare went downhill after LINA ALLEMANO FOUR
Hamlet. And let’s be honest: No one has “What’s wrong with that?”: (L to R)
Vegetables
outdone Armstrong’s 1920s work. But Carmen McRae, Dave Brubeck, and BLOOP
a quarter-century after those historic Louis Armstrong recording The Real Proof
sessions, he was playing and singing as Ambassadors in 1961 Lumo
well as anyone else, while bringing jazz
to the masses by making it accessible and fun, and what’s wrong with that? Before the pandem-
Mosaic’s seven-disc box dispels the notion that Pops was a has-been and puts to ic, Lina Allemano
shame much of what’s on the radio today. The set gathers his 78s and 45s over 20 spent as much time
years for Columbia and RCA, plus the three albums he recorded for Columbia in in Berlin as in her
that period: two classics, one commercial flop. There are lots of outtakes, alternate homebase of Toron-
takes, rehearsals, false starts and studio chatter, expertly curated to avoid duplica- to. Both locales have
tion and present only what illuminates the creative process. It’s fascinating to hear been productive for
Armstrong and His All Stars work out the kinks of “Mack the Knife” and try it at the trumpeter, with
different speeds. The versions include a pretty terrible workout with actress/singer a number of bands
Lotte Lenya, who has no sense of swing and drags the song down—but that’s why in each city. Last
it’s included here, for posterity and to demonstrate what goes into revisions. year she released
Everybody’s familiar with the two classic LPs here, Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. two vastly different
Handy and Satch Plays Fats. The third, 1961’s The Real Ambassadors, is a curiosity discs, one with her
typically associated with Dave Brubeck, because he and his wife Iola wrote all the German power trio
songs. A collaboration among Armstrong, the Brubecks, Carmen McRae, and Ohrenschmaus, the other an adventur-
Lambert, Hendricks & Ross that was supposed to be a musical dealing with rac- ous solo trumpet album. The double-re-
ism, music criticism, and jazz itself, it sold barely any copies and sounds awkward lease streak continues with the return of
60 years later. The musicianship and singing are superb, especially the vocalese her longstanding quartet and a collabo-
trio’s rapid-fire delivery on “Cultural Exchange” and “Blow Satchmo,” and the ration that draws heavily on live sound
melodies are catchy, but the lyrics are corny, which ruins the whole thing. processing. Both reveal the complexity
The singles, which take up the first two discs, are the pièces de résistance and of a musician whose prolific output is
JACK BRADLEY/COURTESY OF THE LOUIS ARMSTRONG HOUSE MUSEUM

the real reason to invest $119 in this set, particularly if you already own the W.C. long overdue for more attention.
Handy and Fats Waller records. Armstrong gives us bold, brassy solos, like the Vegetables features Allemano in the
one on “Sugar” and his blistering break on “Mack the Knife,” and soulful vocals, company of alto saxophonist Brodie
like that on “Blues for Yesterday.” He teams with Duke Ellington, who introduces West, bassist Andrew Downing, and
and comps on “Long Long Journey,” and reunites with Hot Five trombonist Kid drummer Nick Fraser. A comparison
Ory on a few numbers from the 1947 movie New Orleans, including a powerhouse could be made to Ornette Coleman’s
“Mahogany Hall Stomp.” We hear, for the first time, the master take of “’Taint early quartet, but Allemano’s writing has
What You Do” (the one we’re all familiar with is cobbled from two takes), and we more rhythmic and melodic contours,
get an instance of pure silliness: “Music to Shave By,” a novelty medley featuring similar in some ways to more playful
Armstrong, Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby, and the Hi-Lo’s that was released as works by AACM composers. Frequently,
a cardboard record in a 1959 issue of Look magazine. Every melody on these two the lines between free introductions
discs will stick in your brain for days. STEVE GREENLEE and themes get blurred, and the quartet
doesn’t always feel the need to restate the

58 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
head at the close of a track.
The trumpet and alto, panned to sepa-
rate speakers, interact with one another,
easily slipping from unison into delayed
echoes of each other’s lines. Even when
they seem to joust, with one adding
gruff comments behind the other’s solo,
this elevates the performance rather
than making it sound cluttered. Alle-
mano is especially skilled at going from
bright blasts to dirty growls in tracks
like “Beans.” At times, West’s lithe upper
register could be mistaken for a soprano,
and he displays a technique that creates
some frenzy without resorting to full-
blown shrieks. Downing and Fraser
liven up the often angular portions of
the writing, straddling bowed passages
and powerful fills, respectively.
BLOOP feels a bit like a solo project,
but Mike Smith receives equal billing for
electronically processing the trumpeter’s
performance as it happens, alternately
extending and distorting sounds so they
take on a greater dimension. Such an
approach could cause a performer to get
lost in the variety of technical tricks, but
Allemano never gives in to indulgence.
For every set of guttural shrieks that she
emits in “Recanting” or “The Summon-
ing,” there’s a delicate ballad like “Oracle
of Chanterelle,” full of rich long tones
that echo back at her. At times like this,
Proof recalls similar works by Wadada
Leo Smith, where simple, direct lines are
heavy with lyricism and emotion, and
Smith’s processes make her sound like a
brass choir. Elsewhere, he creates a sonic
hall of mirrors, taking her whistles and
mouthpiece squirts and turning them
into an eerie mélange that wouldn’t be
out of place in some sci-fi soundtrack
(“The Nestlings (Metamorphosis)”). This
and a few other tracks might be unset-
tling, but it’s intriguing to hear where
the duo ultimately takes the sound.
MIKE SHANLEY
ALEX SIPIAGIN
Upstream
Posi-Tone
After nearly 20
albums as a leader,
Alex Sipiagin takes
what might be
called a no-concept
approach for his
Posi-Tone debut. Backed by a stur-
dy rhythm section of reliable label
regulars, the Russian-born trumpeter
and flugelhorn player, a longtime New
Yorker, simply applies his prodigious
chops and well-honed instincts to a
set of artfully contoured, often urgent
pieces mostly penned by members of
the quartet. But there’s nothing simple
about the results: Thanks to his prow-
ess as an arranger and his ability to
elicit inspired work from collaborators,
Sipiagin makes mini-odysseys of these
eight originals plus Wayne Shorter’s
“Miyako.”
The closing title track, the longest
and maybe most ambitious tune here,
is a case in point. Art Hirahara’s
unaccompanied color-shifting electric
piano chording makes way for a twisty,
repeated theme, inspired by a tradi-
tional Russian folk song, before the
trumpeter and pianist take flight on
brash solos, urged on by the jet-fuel
propulsion of drummer Rudy Royston
and Boris Kozlov, on bass guitar. The
tune doesn’t conclude so much as burn
itself out, sliding into a brief chill zone
in the wake of all that high-intensity
forward motion.
“Call” opens the album with a dif-
ferent type of musical drama, Sipiagin’s
octave-doubled horn pushing hard
against pulsing rhythms before the four
switch to a swing groove that shuttles
from tight to elastic to breaking apart.
“SipaTham” has similar attributes,
while the pretty, relatively relaxed
“Rain” allows more space to savor
Sipiagin’s dark, resonant flugel tone
and Kozlov’s prowess on upright. The
group’s version of “Miyako” brings out
the piece’s beauty and mystery and of-
fers yet another affirmation of the lead-
er’s status as a trumpeter whose playing
UPCOMING
is—yet again—thoroughly engaging GUESTS
and surprising. PHILIP BOOTH
MANDY BARNETT
RALPH PETERSON GLENN CLOSE
Raise Up Off Me
Onyx
JEFF GOLDBLUM
ALONZO BODDEN
The death of drum- JASON MARSALES
mer Ralph Peterson
Jr. on March 1
On NPR and your
robbed jazz of one
of its most inventive favorite podcast
and prolific—and platform or at
jazzinspired.com
 REVIEWS
fills and creative use of ornamen-
Editor’s Pick tal hand percussion that give the
number its rich f lavor. Among the
RAHSAAN BARBER covers—which come from sources as
Mosaic diverse as Patrice Rushen and James
Jazz Music City Williams—it’s Bud Powell’s timeless
“Bouncing with Bud” that raises
Pragmatic thinking is naturally at loggerheads with ambition when it eyebrows the highest. Peterson takes
comes to releasing a double album. Given our singles-driven streaming the title’s “bouncing” literally—he
culture, the decline of physical sales, a pandemic-era dearth of touring prances, gallops, and skips all over
(and its attendant marketing value), and generally stunted attention spans, the kit, delighting mischievously in
it’s certainly not the sensible move. But that’s not to say it’s the wrong the Curtises’ rock-steady rhythmic
course of action. Sometimes there’s actually something very right about variations. On another original,
bucking the trends, following your gut and going big, as saxophonist Rah- “Fantasia Brazil,” Peterson and crew
saan Barber ably demonstrates with Mosaic. eschew bossa-nova conventions in
Teaming up with the close-knit rhythm section of pianist Matt Endahl, favor of forward thrust, incorporating
bassist Jack Aylor and drummer Derrek Phillips, and sharing the front line an all-too-short solo by the drummer
with a pair of alternating guests—twin brother Roland on trombone (and that’ll leave a listener breathless.
conch shell) and Nathan Warner on trumpet—Barber delivers a slate of Jazzmeia Horn’s otherworldly contri-
originals that, when taken together, form the most complete picture of his butions to Peterson’s own “Tears I Can
artistry to date. Switching between alto, tenor, and baritone horns, he han- Not Hide” and John Hicks’ “Naima’s
dles himself with aplomb while moving all over the map. Opener “Quaran- Love Song” tease a future both would
tine Queens” deals in straight-time soul within a plaintive frame. “The Pink have been wise to pursue further, but
Piranha” seduces with sly sentiments. An endearing “Koala” offers tranquil sadly never can. JEFF TAMARKIN
beauty. And the intense “Panic Point” plays on extreme passion and fear.
Barber shows tremendous WRD
range during these travels—blow- The Hit
ing robustly in “The Mountains Color Red
and the Clouds,” dropping into ROBERT WALTER
church for a “Sunrise Service,” Spirit of ’70
driving hard down the center Royal Potato Family
lane on “Swang That Thang,”
standing tall to deliver a tearful WRD is a jazz-
and moving lament in “Breonna funk super trio:
Taylor (How Many More?)”— organist Robert
and his tremendous heart and Walter from the
solid instincts serve as common Greyboy Allstars,
denominators that cradle all guitarist Eddie
of this music. At 95 minutes, Roberts from the
the program may run long, but New Mastersounds,
Rahsaan Barber and his band and drummer
never wear out their welcome. “Tremendous heart and solid instincts”: Adam Deitch from
Rahsaan Barber
DAN BILAWSKY Lettuce. The Hit is
exactly what you’d
expect from such
purely musical—practitioners. Peter- everything that made him one of the funky luminaries:
son’s highly developed sense of swing most in-demand sticksmen of his high-octane soul jazz rooted in the
brought a luster, and a playful edge, to time: sophistication, force, refine- Jimmy Smith tradition. This is unpre-
the hundreds of recordings on which ment, daring and—naturally—an tentious, stripped-down music with
he served as sideman, and to his own impeccable sense of timing. the bare minimum of studio produc-
as leader. Raise Up Off Me is his 26th Five of the 13 tracks packed into tion polish. And it’s superb.
of those, and will unfortunately be his Raise Up Off Me bear Peterson’s com- The music has the immediacy of
last. Recorded in December 2020— positional credit, among them the a live show, made in the moment
with brothers Zaccai Curtis (piano) title cut, which opens the program. with no worries about multiple takes
GIOVANNI RODRIGUEZ

and Luques Curtis (bass), plus guests A free-f loating, open-ended improv, or perfection. In a fairer universe,
Jazzmeia Horn (vocals) and Eguie the piece ostensibly showcases Zaccai opener “Judy” would be the album’s
Castrillo (percussion), the album Curtis’ piano, but from the top it’s Pe- leadoff single, a union of organ and
does Peterson’s legacy justice. It’s got terson’s vigorous, ever-unpredictable guitar filling the role of frontline

60 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
horns over a fusillade of crackling THREE-LAYER CAKE all creative cylinders. Otherworldly
drums. There’s a lot of variation here. Stove Top noodling, cosmic Americana, damaged
“Sleep Depraved” is Curtis May- RareNoise funk, throbbing dub-tinged jazziness,
field-style ’70s soul, “Corner Pocket” and full-blast rockers alike are pieced to-
has a James Brown vibe, “Pump Up From the trailblaz- gether with stunning cohesion. As Watt
the Valium” feels like early Meters, ing San Pedro, Cal- holds down the rhythmic foundation
and “Bobby’s Boogaloo” sounds like it ifornia-based trios with meaty, big and bouncy grooves and
could be Lou Donaldson’s boogaloo. the Minutemen and abrasive plucking, Pride and Seabrook
But these guys have their own sound, fIREHOSE to the have free rein to go wild.
and it’s a blend of their own bands. reunited Iggy and Pride’s strengths go way beyond his
Roberts’ classy yet unfussy style the Stooges, bassist bionic prowess on drums, and here he
(he never shreds or wails) carries Mike Watt has made indelible marks on probes deeper into his experiments with
through, and his chunk-a-chunk the underground rock landscape over 40 marimba, glockenspiel, bells, and organ.
attack makes “Chum City” (featur- years. He’s also been ensconced in the That multi-instrumental dynamic,
ing guest saxophonist Nick Gerlach) jazz world, having played with guitar juxtaposed with Seabrook’s banjo shred-
seem like it’s off a New Mastersounds visionaries Nels Cline and, more recent- ding, leads to standouts such as “Be-
setlist. Deitch’s wild drumming ly, Mike Baggetta. Now he furthers his atified, Bedraggled and Bombed” and
combines with Walter’s thick slabs outsider-jazz cred in Three-Layer Cake, “Tiller.” Seabrook dials down his typical
of organ grease to build up a big, fat a cooperative trio he shares with a pair chaotic riffage, popping off epic licks
sound on “Meditation.” of New York veterans: guitarist/banjoist informed by both Eddie Van Halen and
The release of The Hit coincides Brandon Seabrook and drummer Mike Watt’s beloved Minutemen bandmate,
with a reissue of Walter’s first solo Pride. Their debut stands as a comput- the late great D. Boon. “Big Burner” fea-
album, Spirit of ’70, on vinyl. Calling er-based miracle of sorts; the entire tures arguably the most straightforward,
it a solo album is misleading. The recording was cut, pasted, spliced, and arena-rock-ready licks Seabrook’s ever
musicians are the Greyboy Allstars diced through file-sharing, without unleashed, while on “Luminous Range
in 1996—saxophonist Karl Denson, the three ever being in the same room – Anxious Valve,” he channels the
guitarist Elgin Park/Michael An- together due to the pandemic lockdown. jazz-inspired punk-funk of the Minute-
drews (amplified through a record Stove Top shows a band firing on men. When these three musicians find
player), bassist Chris Stillwell, and
drummer Zak Najor—plus saxo-
phonist Gary Bartz, who’s front and
center. It’s clear, however, that Walter
is driving this homage to the heyday
of funk, whether he’s on organ or
electric piano.
That’s true even when Bartz is so-
loing. Walter’s electric piano provides
the tasteful underpinnings of “Palila-
lia” while the alto man blows. Bartz
turns in a red-hot break on “Volcanic
Acne,” a tune that sounds like it has
a tricky time signature but is actually
4/4 with overlapping rhythmic ideas.
Walter mixes up his keys to keep the
sound fresh; his Hammond B-3 on
“Corry’s Snail and Snug Death” is
outrageously infectious, his Wurlitzer
on “Kick to the Head, Burrito on
the Floor” recalls the dexterity and
soul of Ray Charles, and his Fender
Rhodes on a cover of “Little Miss
Lover” reveals the funk heart of Jimi
Hendrix’s song. The closing take
on Mose Davis’ “Jan Jan,” with its
double-horned punctuation, ends up
being oddly prescient—Roberts’ New
Mastersounds often put that one in
their set. STEVE GREENLEE
 REVIEWS
themselves in the same place at the same
time once again, the possibilities will be
endless. BRAD COHAN
CODE QUARTET
Genealogy
Justin Time
The CODE foursome
never find anything
missing in “chord-
less” music; nor do
they launch those
wild, deep-cosmos
explorations of
many sans-piano free-jazz bands. They
treat lack of harmony as matter-of-fact
opportunity, for evocation, a safe creative
zone from which to summon spirits. The
space between layers and respect for the
middle serves them well (except for bass-
ist Adrian Vedady sometimes not coming
through clearly), as do impish irregular-
ities in composition. Christine Jensen’s
alto might take a passage alone, or it
might run counterpoint to Lex French’s
trumpet; then these lines become cables
in improv, underpinning the whole.
They all write except drummer Jim
Doxas (who mixed the album), and they
all take care around that core, never
ripping, tearing, jostling, or impugning
each other’s web strands. Such politeness
never falls stiff, though. They keep faith
in musical democracy and spirituality:
the notion that any one partner can take
in the whole, feelers out, wait, then speak
when something to say arrives.
Doxas feeds the home fires, knowing
exactly what to hit and how gently. The
horns can stab and punch but more often
roll out legato, manifesting the stream
uniting their four stones. And most
impressive of all, they make that seem a
natural state. Can’t be that easy. But they
make it seem, something that couldn’t be
any other way. ANDREW HAMLIN
BILL KWAN
No Ordinary Love: The Music of Sade
Ikeda
Bill Kwan flew
through medical
school at USC, hung
out a shingle as a
dermatologist, then
decided in middle
62 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
age to go for broke, for his love of singing.
This odd trajectory’s probably why he
sounds so agreeably odd. It took me a few
turns through No Ordinary Love before
I expected him not to phrase like Sade,
when phrasing like her is of course quite
beside the point.
Kwan—backed by ringers like trum-
peter Alex Sipiagin, keyboardist Kevin
Hays, and guitarist/bassist Tony Scherr—
doesn’t show much range or punch, but
he’s mastered a supple and measured,
never stiff, mic intimacy. “This love is far
and wide,” he declaims in “Flower of the
Universe,” and you forget Sade, forget the
magnificent absurdity of a universal flow-
er, since he’s got “far and wide” down to a
specific “you” and “you” alone; anything
can sprout from fecund simplicity. Heavy
concepts collapse, gently, into the person-
able—even a far-flung “King of Sorrow,”
with its protagonist “crying everyone’s
tears” and paying “for all my future sins.”
“Jezebel” takes the intimacy down
to a near-whisper, from which even the
most delicate of builds resounds as if it
were bouncing off a Giza pyramid. He
beckons from a corner and you sit down,
while he confesses, softly, not to sins,
which are wants burdened with shames,
but to wants and needs mostly humanly
confused; desires, regrets, a few thoughts
on how to build from the rubble. There’s
his secret. You open, and he comes in.
ANDREW HAMLIN
WILLIAM PARKER
Painters Winter
Mayan Space Station
AUM Fidelity
Bassist/composer/re-
naissance man Wil-
liam Parker is having
a landmark 2021.
Earlier this year,
a 10-disc set, The
Migration of Silence
Into and Out of the
Tone World Volumes
1-10, was released al-
most in tandem with
the book Universal
Tonality, a critical
history by Cisco Bradley (see review
on next page). This brought a torrent of
richly deserved attention to Parker, a
stalwart figure on the NYC jazz scene
since the ’70s. If there was one complaint
that emerged from the lovefest, it was that
Parker didn’t play much bass on the box
set. Instead, he played an array of other
instruments that he has mastered, and on
some discs he simply presented ensem-
bles performing music he composed,
without playing anything at all.
Mayan Space Station and Painters
Winter rectify that quibble voluminous-
ly. Parker’s magnificent bass playing is
the rock-solid foundation for most of
these recordings. Even when he turns
his attention to the wistful sounds of the
trombonium or the keening lilt of the
shakuhachi, the musical cornerstone
of his upright is present in spirit. Both
recordings offer stellar trios: Space Station
features the bassist with drummer Gerald
Cleaver and guitarist Ava Mendoza
while Painters showcases a group with
multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter and
drummer Chad Taylor. Both recordings
sizzle but via different approaches.
Mayan Space Station is a classic pow-
er-trio recording, with Mendoza raining
fire over elastic and intensely propulsive
rhythms by Parker and Cleaver. The
music invites adjectives like “spicy,” es-
pecially since the opening track is called
“Tabasco,” and Mendoza seems to be
invoking Sonny Sharrock or Pete Cosey.
But this is not a solo showcase; the trio
moves in tandem like three action heroes
hurtling through a treacherous space
with determination and confidence.
Painters Winter is calmer but far from
serene. The band moves fluidly and assur-
edly through elegantly austere music. The
vibe is reminiscent of early Art Ensemble
of Chicago, with more explicit rhythms.
This is highlighted on “Happiness,” a
track led by Parker’s big elastic basslines
and Taylor’s savvy accents. Carter cuts an
introspective path through these rhythms
until Parker switches to bow, and both
of his bandmates pick up the tempo
and mood.
The diverse sounds and approaches on
these two releases further display that the
tendency toward dichotomies in jazz—in/
out, mainstream/avant-garde, uptown/
downtown—mostly serves to limit great
music rather than define it. And these
recordings also remind us that Parker is
far from finished making great music; he
may not even be at his career midpoint.
MARTIN JOHNSON

BOOKS
CISCO BRADLEY
Universal Tonality: The Life and Music of
William Parker
Duke University Press
The phrase “force of
nature” could easily
describe William
Parker, both for his
fierce approach to
the upright bass and
for the staggering
number of musical
projects in which
he’s participated
throughout a five-decade career. A com-
prehensive discography of recordings as
a leader, collaborator, and sideman takes
up 11 pages and includes several massive
box sets. And that only encompasses per-
formances which have been released.
Universal Tonality: The Life and Music
of William Parker presents Parker as a
person who doesn’t merely enjoy playing
but considers music as “the lifeblood of
the human struggle for dignity, compas-
sion, sustenance and liberation.” With
sources that include Parker himself,
poetry and excerpts from his journals,
and insights from friends and peers,
Cisco Bradley explains how the artist has
maintained his focus. In the process, he
discusses free/avant-garde jazz percep-
tively, helping to clear away hyperbole
and misunderstanding.
Born in 1952 and growing up in New
York’s South Bronx, Parker ignored
disparaging messages that he heard
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at school about the futures of young significant bands to emerge in the ’90s
Black men and became determined to New York jazz scene—or to the assistance
play music. When he couldn’t afford a Parker gave bassist Henry Grimes when
35-cent subway fare, Parker headed to the latter reemerged after decades away
the East Village on foot just to play with from music.
kindred spirits, his bass strapped to his In a way, though, even these oversights
back. He learned rudimentary music are positive, as they indicate the very
theory at the free Jazzmobile program, real challenge of showing how much
but most of his technique was self- William Parker has accomplished in a
taught, which fit right in with players in career that continues to move forward.
New York’s fertile loft scene. By the ’80s, MIKE SHANLEY
he was a fixture in the bands of pianist
Cecil Taylor. More significantly, he got
involved in community organizations,
A Compelling
issuing a manifesto that would later
become the name of his own band: In
Memoir of a
Order to Survive.
Bradley lays out the first two sections
Remarkable
of Universal Tonality in a biographical
manner. He researches Parker’s family
back to Africa which, while perhaps a bit
tangential, connects his lineage to the Life in Music
humanity that fuels the bassist’s work. BY ROBERT J. BOGUSLAW
When the book delves into Parker’s own (MGySgt,US Marine Band, Ret)
projects in the third section, Bradley
probes deeply into lyrics, inspirations,
and personnel. While informative, and
a good point of entry for anyone just
discovering Parker’s oeuvre, the list of
names, recordings, and tour dates feels
like too much detail, especially when
other topics are given short shrift.
Surprisingly, only a passing refer-
ence is given to the Vision Festival, the
longstanding annual set of performances
created by Parker’s wife, dancer Patricia Join former White House pianist
Bob Boguslaw on a journey as
Nicholson Parker, in which her husband
he transitions from the life of a
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 CODA
Charlie Christian at
the Waldorf-Astoria,
New York, 1939
Flux-a-Ning
CHARLIE CHRISTIAN’s (and jazz’s) ultimate official bootleg
BY COLIN FLEMING
S ometimes I like to imagine I’m a
workaday jazz musician from a very
specific point in time. It’s May 1941 in
New York City. I’m dragging and it’s get-
ting late, but I head on over to Minton’s
Playhouse, where some cats are going to
jam into the morning. I park myself out
of the way, listen to the nascent forms
of bebop taking hold, but it’s only when
a 24-year-old guitarist starts doing his
thing that I shed all vestiges of the sopo-
rific and come alive.
That guitarist, of course, is Charlie
Christian, who will (and it feels like a
miracle in reverse) be dead in less than
a year. His body of work—his legacy—is
built over the years 1939-1941. Doesn’t
seem like a lot, until, that is, you start
listening to that protean sound, which
seems to have no beginning and no end.
Christian’s dalliance with fame began
in 1939, when he latched on with the
Benny Goodman Orchestra following
an audition for John Hammond. My gut
feeling is Goodman—who heard your
64 JAZZTIMES J U L Y/ A U G U S T 2 0 2 1
sound and didn’t see your color at a time
when most white bandleaders took the
path of least resistance, a.k.a. segrega-
tion—heard Christian play guitar and
had one thought: Their loss, my gain.
Goodman was initially unimpressed
when he heard Hammond’s recording,
though, and was only won over after
challenging the guitarist to extemporize
on “Rose Room” at an L.A. gig. This
establishes a thematic pattern: You’ll
never go wrong with a Charlie Christian
studio recording, but his legacy is made
in spontaneous moments. Thus we come
to Minton’s, and what may be—though
it’s garnered many official releases over
the years—jazz’s greatest bootleg.
Bebop had a strange cycle of develop-
ment, due in part to the World War II
recording ban. Charlie Parker and Dizzy
Gillespie are seen as its chief drumbeaters
(albeit on their respective horns), but
listening to the Minton’s recordings of
Charlie Christian, you’re given real pause
on the primary source front, because
if anyone was charging harder at the
leading edge of bop than this particular
fellow, I haven’t heard it. A Columbia
student named Jerry Newman is the quiet
hero of a quintessential document, for
he’s the guy who figured it’d be a good
idea to record Christian and his mates
cutting loose when most of the East Coast
was long asleep.
An urban legend persisted that the
group included Gillespie and Thelonious
Monk, but that’s long been dispelled. Still,
Kenny Clarke mans the drum kit (with
Joe Guy on trumpet and Kenny Kersey
on piano), and Klook was a big Christian
backer, going so far as to say that it was
the guitarist who wrote “Epistrophy” and
“Rhythm-a-Ning,” not Monk.
Whether Christian did or didn’t
scarcely changes the value of this sublime
piece of eavesdropped genius. If you’re
not familiar with the tape, what you’ll no-
tice upon an initial listen—what you can’t
help but notice—is the tone of his guitar.
It’s a blend of seeming extremes, within
a package of maximum flex, fluidity, and
fit. There’s a somatic quality to that tone,
and an annunciatory one. But the sheen
and viscosity are even more notable, as if
honey has been drizzled over the inside of
an abalone shell.
On “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” Christian’s
notes are dancing points of light. They
snake in a forward surge, but for all the
speed—and it’s formidable—there’s a
highly wrought, mathematical design
element. Christian blasts off but also stays
grounded, building an edifice that makes
us think we can all but enter into his
vestibule of sound and ride an elevator to
the loftiest of penthouses.
This is the sound of someone moving
the goalposts of history, an elision that
just had to be made, or else the world
wouldn’t evolve quite as well as it could.
What you might even say is that the elec-
tric guitar has no other moment in its ex-
istence where we can feel it being moved
forward as a concept, a totem, a power, an
art defined by its ability to be in flux, to a
greater degree than it is right here.
Minton’s was to bop as the Galapagos
Islands were to Darwinism: a tucked-
away ecosystem with much to teach the
world about the ones surrounding it. That
makes Christian one rare bird. JT
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