The Lead Sheet: Top 5 Jazz Stories This Week
The Lead Sheet: Top 5 Jazz Stories This Week
Oct 27
Eric Lewis, as ELEW, performs during a Blue Man Group’s 20th anniversary after celebration in 2011.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images i
Eric Lewis, as ELEW, performs during a Blue Man Group’s 20th anniversary after celebration in 2011.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images
An announcement: The end-of-the-week recap, before “Around The Jazz Internet” or “The Friday Link Dump,” has a new name. Musicians will know that a “lead sheet” is a symphonic blueprint with chord changes, a anxiety beam for when we don’t know a balance by heart. Here’s what we ought to review from this week:
- The Adventures Of ELEW: Eric Lewis, a virtuosic former pianist for Wynton Marsalis and a Jazz during Lincoln Center Orchestra, has now rebranded himself as ELEW, a pianist whose covers of classical and complicated stone pull from a jazz tradition. He calls it “rockjazz”; he stands though a piano bench, wears physique armor, plays events for “the worlds of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, a Obama Campaign, Nascar and High Fashion.” As we competence imagine, this hasn’t accurately been to a ambience of many within a jazz community. So because a transformation? Prompted by associate pianist Ethan Iverson, Lewis sets a record true in this large missive, an inside-baseball story of attention machinations that proves fascinating. Bonus: Iverson responded a subsequent day with some-more thoughts on a matter. [Do The Math: Five Questions For Eric Lewis]
- RIP Jazz: One frustrating thing about “[blank] is dead” proclamations is that their aspiration is customarily half-supported by something imitative logic. That’s a box behind “The End of Jazz,” by The Atlantic‘s Benjamin Schwarz. In reviewing Ted Gioia’s collection The Jazz Standards, Schwarz takes an astonishing spin in a final graf, dogmatic “there is no reason to trust that jazz can be a living, elaborating art form decades after a vital source” — here he means a supposed Great American Songbook — “has dusty up.” There’s a stream row somewhere in here: Say, if jazz’s mainstream doesn’t have a renouned customary repertoire that ceaselessly develops together to it, afterwards it will be hard-pressed to find contemporary resonance. But there’s a outrageous disproportion between that and dogmatic a “end” of jazz evolution, in stupidity of a innumerable formal, sonic and repertory directions that improvising musicians followed after a chronological impulse of a Songbook finished — say, 1960. we theory we could call some of those directions not jazz, if we were in a semantic mood, though if jazz is over, prolonged live a overhanging things that took a place and mostly bear a name. [The Atlantic: The End Of Jazz]
- Blowing In From Chicago Pt. 1: This year a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation recognizes a pianist and composer Muhal Richard Abrams with a Living Legacy Award. So in allege of that, they invited associate pianist and composer Vijay Iyer to speak one of his heroes. They speak about training by imitation, listening to audiences and a early AACM ideals. What comes by clearly is how individualism is a executive principle to his worldview, and how a AACM was set adult to support particular pursuits initial and foremost. You can hear a scarcely 20-minute interview, and past award-winner interviews, online. [Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Jazz: Interviews]
- Blowing In From Chicago Pt. 2: Here’s a form of a immature Chicago-based saxophonist named Caroline Davis who is commencement to make waves on a scene, from Chicago Reader jazz kick author Peter Margasak. What interests me here is that her story is an normal one — not that her talent is average, though a trail of mixed universities, part-timing it for a prolonged time, and delayed formation into an heterogeneous low-pitched village seems standard for a march these days. At 31, Davis roughly seems like a late bloomer among jazz musicians, a many distinguished of whom are identified early and promoted by a quick lane to exposure. So how do we grow into a career if you’re not one of a name few prodigies? Here’s one look. [Chicago Reader: Caroline Davis, a saxophonist 20 years in a making]
- More David S. Ware: The pianist Matthew Shipp left us a good e-mail final week reflecting on his time with saxophonist David S. Ware, a 16-year reign in one of makeshift music’s some-more distinguished bands. Since then, he’s been bustling perplexing to request his time with Ware in full, penning pieces for a series of publications, including NewMusicBox, a ASCAP blog and The Daily Beast. One takeaway I’m left with: Even after all this thoughtfulness Shipp still can’t put his finger on a puzzling peculiarity that so apparently set Ware apart, even within a village of “free jazz.”
More Links
- Ron Carter does a brief speak with a Denver Westword about a changing purpose of a jazz drum and more.
- Phil Schaap, walking encyclopedia, puts a stream mercantile conditions for jazz musicians into chronological perspective. Also, here’s Schaap on music preparation these days.
- New Wayne Shorter album entrance in February. Includes new compositions, live party performances from 2011.
- New era supergroup (Christian Scott, Ben Williams, Gerald Clayton, others) to recover a covers record.
- Jesse Fischer, piano and keyboard player, talks about his new recover with a Revivalist. He’s also a producer/engineer, and has a far-reaching sonic palette on Retro Future. Here’s a JazzTimes interview too.
- You too can learn to be a jazz blogger.
- Miles Davis does a Japanese wine commercial, from a ’80s.
- The Jazz Session spoke with saxophonist Hailey Niswanger and trombonist Natalie Cressman.
- The Checkout sat down with pianist David Virelles and drummer/beatmaker Karriem Riggins, and hosted guitarist Ed Cherry in a studio.
Elsewhere At NPR Music
- Jeff Ballard’s band, Fairgrounds, is personification subsequent week during a Village Vanguard. We promote on Wednesday, Halloween night.
- Hear unreleased Charles Mingus live recordings as a First Listen this week.
- JazzSet facilities Lewis Nash and Kurt Elling from Newport 2012.
- Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz facilities Willie Nelson.
- Pianist George Cables has a front reviewed onFresh Air.
