One change of note for New In Music, I am limiting the list to no more than the ten best releases of any given week. 

Here’s my top pick for New In Music: November 15^th:

TOP PICK: CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL: LAND OF WINTER – DONNACHA DENNEHY – Nonesuch Records

The late actor John Hurt once told me that the best time to visit Ireland would be in May or late September. I hadn’t thought of his recommendation in quite some time until I heard this arresting new album from composer Dennehy.

Land of Winter is a 12-part composition with each part reflecting a month of the year. The composition begins in December and ends in November.  The first video is from July (the eighth section.) You can watch it HERE.

I wasn’t familiar with Dennehy’s music prior to hearing Land of Winter. I was, however, familiar with Alarm Will Sound and Alan Pierson who perform on this recording. They are masters of performing new music.

You don’t often hear of tone poems anymore, but Land of Winter is, to me, a contemporary tone poem. One that makes me want to book my trip to Ireland regardless of what month I go. I hope you’ll book time to hear this record!

Here is the rest of New in Music: November 15^th:

CLASSICAL MEETS JAZZ:  BEETHOVEN BLUES – JON BATISTE – Verve Records / Interscope

This is the first of two releases this week that has one feet in the classical realm and the other in jazz/blues. Pianist/composer Jon Batiste brings his unique musical expression to the works of Beethoven.

These are all solo piano variations on Beethoven’s music including such popular works as Für Elise (ask any piano student which composition that is), Ode to Joy (from the 9^th Symphony); Moonlight Sonata, the 5^th Symphony and my personal favorite of this collection, Waldstein Wobble which takes the Piano Sonata No. 21 as its inspiration.

It isn’t uncommon for musicians to re-imagine classical works. Amongst my favorites is the way pianist Marcus Roberts put a new spin on George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue on his Portrait in Blue album.

Batiste is a fine musician and a smart composer. This is a thoroughly enjoyable album that will be a safe space for people who are afraid of classical music. The hope is once they are engaged with Beethoven Blues they might listen to some of the originals. Which may be Batiste’s goal in the first place.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL:  PLAYFAIR SONATAS – ETHAN IVERSON – Ulricht Audiovisual

This is second of two new releases that blurs the lines between classical music and jazz. Iverson, long known primarily as a jazz musician (and one of the most intelligent jazz musicians), composed works within the sonata form.

There’s a violin sonata , a marima sonata, a sonata for clarinet, one for trombone, another for alto saxophone and yet another for trumpet. Almost all are instruments strongly associated with jazz.

To further his playing around with genres, Iverson (who plays piano on this recording), called on classical musicians to join him: Miranda Cuckson on violin; Tim Leopold on trumpet; Mike Lormand on trombone; Carol McGonnell on clarinet; Makoto Nakura on marimba and Taimur Sullivan on saxophone.

The album cover makes you think this will be a playful album. And I suppose on some levels it is. But it’s also a solidly written, produced and performed addition to the contemporary classical music canon – one filled with plenty of references to legendary jazz musicians which you can hear throughout. And if you can’t, he’s written notes to explain each piece and its inspiration.

Playfair Sonatas is an album I will return to over and over again.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL: NGWENYAMA: FLOW – TAKÁCS QUARTET – Hyperion Records

In the opening 30 seconds of Flow, I was questioning whether or not I would be able to go with the flow of Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s music. But go with it I did and I couldn’t be happier.

This is an incredible composition performed brilliantly by Takács Quartet. This is a short recording. It’s just under 22 minutes. But I strongly recommend listening to it with no distractions. Just put on the music and let it wash all over you. I guarantee you’ll be surprised by how compelling and beautiful it is.

You can watch Takács Quartet perform the third movement from Flow HERE.

JAZZ:  CHASING SHADOWS – ZACC HARRIS – Shifting Paradigm Records

Guitarist Harris is one of the most revered jazz musicians in Minnesota. But the rest of the world caught up with him upon the release of his album, Small Wonders. 

This tight album of eight original tracks finds Harris joined by Chris Bates on bass; Pete James Johnson on drums; Bryan Nichols on piano and Brandon Wozniak on tenor saxophone.

The absolute stand-out tracks for me on this album are Worlds Apart which truly showcases all four musicians and the last track, This Day, a beautiful ballad.

JAZZ:  CITY LIGHTS: THE OSCAR PETERSON QUARTET – LIVE IN MUNICH, 1994 – OSCAR PETERSON QUARTET – Mack Avenue Records

Who doesn’t like a comeback story? This album is documentation of pianist/composer Oscar Peterson’s comeback after a stroke the previous year which left him unable to use his left hand.

Like any hero of a comeback story, his persistence and countless hours of physical therapy allowed Peterson to return to live performance. This 78-minute recording was his second concert after his recovery.

The album opens with There Will Never Be Another Year in a performance that is lively  – to say the least. No sign of weakness here. Amongst the remaining 8 tracks are five original Peterson compositions.

Peterson is joined by Martin Drew on drums; Lorne Lofsky on guitar and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass (who composed Samba Petite which appears on the album as a solo for him.)

I love the theme to Rocky, but I’ll take Peterson’s redemption as much more inspiring.

MODERN OPERA:  THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE – KATE SOPER – New Focus Recordings

Composer Soper sums up her opera best when she said that it “is a good receptable for the messy complexity of the human condition in general.” This is a work that grabs you by the throat with all the trials and tribulations that being alive offers.

Joining Soper, who sings the role of “Shame,” are Ty Bouque, Phillip Bullock, Ariadne Greif, Anna Schubert, Devony Smith and Lucas Steele. The Wet Ink Ensemble (of which Soper is a member) also performs.

Certainly, this is not going to be a recording for those who aren’t willing to go there. Soper asks that audiences go there from the outset of most of her works. This first video, Meet Shame, is no exception.

But those who do will understand why Soper is one of the most daring composers working today and why she receives accolades and commissions on a regular basis. 

MUSICAL ADJACENT:  AMERICAN RAILROAD – SILKROAD ENSEMBLE with RHIANNON GIDDENS – Nonesuch Records               

This isn’t a musical. But it is a song cycle performed as a sung-through work by the Silkroad Ensemble. One that tells a specific story about the building of railroads in America and the people who did that work – people history doesn’t remember.

It’s a deeply powerful work that, I believe, is more successful than many a musical. You can watch them perform Mahk Jchi HERE.

Contributing to American Railroad are newly commissioned songs by Suzanne Kite, Wu Man and Cécile McLorin Salvant. The rest of the recording came from various members of Silkroad Ensemble and Giddens.

Hearing this recording makes me regret not having seen the show when I had the chance. Simply put, this is not just great music, it’s important work.

That’s all for New In Music This Week: November 15^th.

Enjoy your weekend!

Enjoy the music!

Main Photo: Album art for Ethan Iverson’s Playfair Sonatas (Courtesy Ulrich’s AudioVisual)

The post New In Music: November 15th appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Composer George Gershwin did not know he was expected to write a new work for a concert that Paul Whiteman called An Experiment in Modern Music until his brother Ira read about it in the paper several weeks earlier. Gershwin went to work and the end result was Rhapsody in Blue.

That concert took place at 3:00 PM on February 12, 1924 at Aeolian Concert Hall which stood just east of 6th Avenue in Manhattan. (Go to this link to hear a 1924 recording with Gershwin at the piano with Paul Whiteman and his orchestra).

Since that jazz band version (arranged by Ferde Grofé) there has been the fully-orchestrated concert version (the standard version heard played by symphonies around the world) and multiple re-workings of Rhapsody in Blue by artists ranging from Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington to Chick Corea, Marcus Roberts (on his album Portraits in Blue) and a new re-imaginging that was released recently by pianist Lara Downes with composer/percussionist Edmar Colón.

I recently spoke with Roberts, Downes and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin, whose 1974 recording of Rhapsody in Blue is one of the first recordings I owned. We discussed their first memories of hearing the piece; its longevity and appeal and also a recent article written by Ethan Iverson for the New York Times.

You can read Iverson’s full story here, but he says, in part, “If Rhapsody in Blue is a masterpiece, it might be the worst masterpiece. The promise of a true fusion on the concert stage basically starts and ends with it. A hundred years later, most popular Black music is separate from the world of formal composition, while most American concert musicians can’t relate to a score with a folkloric attitude, let alone swing.”

What follows are excerpts that have been edited for length and clarity. You can see all three of my interviews on our YouTube channel.

DOWNES: I have this fuzzy memory of hearing the bit you would imagine used for figure skating in the Olympics. That’s one of my earliest memories I can pinpoint.

SLATKIN: Actually it’s so long ago, I don’t think I remember, but I suspect that like everybody else, the first thing was the clarinet at the beginning more than the piano part. It was a sound that we really hadn’t heard before.

ROBERTS: I was a child, probably 12 years old, maybe 13. The funny thing is I remember hearing the piece, but when I first heard it, I didn’t know that’s what it was called. I think I heard it on the radio, maybe in the middle of it or something and I was really attracted to it. It was soulful. I could tell it had something in it that I could identify with. And of course, years later, I figured out that it was indeed Rhapsody in Blue.

SLATKIN: I hung out with a lot of jazz musicians, but I didn’t know so much about big band jazz. So this idea that whether it appeared in a symphonic form or in a band version didn’t really strike me as anything other than something very unusual that I wasn’t used to. 

ROBERTS: Now that I’m grown up and I’ve been out here playing a long time, I don’t know if I was thinking this way as a kid, but I think it was the fact that the themes were relatable to me, meaning they seemed to come right out of my cultural experience.

DOWNES: What was happening in American music and all of the things that were coming together and all the things that were changing so fast. Understanding what was happening in Black music at that time in the early part of the 20th century and this hybrid language that was developing.

SLATKIN: In order to understand that, we have to go back to that first performance and understand why it was so important. This concert is organized by Paul Whiteman – An Experiment in Modern Music. We didn’t really have American music for the concert hall. Yes, there were composers in America, and yes, many of them were born in the States. But the sound of the music itself reflected a more European tradition.

We’re not talking about an original American music. We’re talking about borrowed music from church, from patriotic songs, from folk music. We didn’t have anything we could call our own. That’s coming up via the emerging popular music scene, probably starting with ragtime. The vernacular music of the time tended to be shorter pieces 3 or 4 minutes long. Now, all of a sudden, a large scale work 15 16 minutes was appearing. This audience, which included some of the most distinguished musicians in New York at the time, was stunned by what they heard. 

ROBERTS: He’s using American themes. He’s using themes that clearly come out of the African American experience. And as Dvorak said, that’s really the cultural identity of the country. That’s where the themes should primarily come from. Not exclusively, but that’s the richest soil that we have.

DOWNES: [When] we look at the core tradition of classical music, what we’re looking at is [often] this interchange between structured music and the vernacular. The folk music that gets absorbed into the music of Brahms and Liszt to Dvorak and everybody. So I think it’s a continuation of a tradition. I also like to look at this as omnidirectional. Gershwin is leaning back, he’s looking forward. He’s got all these things kind of pushing and pulling at him. And what he comes up with is very emblematic of its time.

SLATKIN: It’s an immediate sensation. All of a sudden composers in this country said, we have the room to grow within our own culture, within our own sound world. And from that point on, composers now began to gravitate from one world into the other.

ROBERTS: So I think that it’s ripe for improvisation because the rhythms are clear. You can hear the blues element in the melodies. When I did Portraits of Blue back in 1996, a lot of critics were not too happy about it at the time. Of course, there’s the Ellington version of it. Nobody really did it, though, with the real intention of improvising on it and bringing it literally into the jazz environment with the specific agenda of improvising on it and recreating it. Me doing that has made it clear that not only can you do it, but you should do it, and there should be many versions of it where people can do what they want with it.

SLATKIN: Even Gershwin himself added little things in different performances. I think one of the reasons that this works as an improvisatory piece, even though everything is written out by Gershwin, is because it’s essentially a number of cadenzas where the orchestra is not playing.

DOWNES: I always experience it as a dialog. I really do. I have a close relationship with the solo piano version of the piece. I play that a lot, too. So what that means is that when I play the Grofé version with an orchestra, I have to remember what not to play. But I feel very intimately involved with those orchestra bits because I need to play them myself. I’m not sure that I have an objective view of the structure, but that is something that we wanted to expand and embrace was the improvisational nature and opportunity.

ROBERTS: In the original score, it basically says something to the equivalent of wait for George to nod or something or watch George. So he was he was probably improvising on it himself when he premiered it at Aeolian Hall in 1924.

DOWNES: I think that the further that we’ve gotten from 1924, as we always do, we have started more and more setting that thing in stone, which it wasn’t originally. When you talk about Ellington and Strayhorn, they’re not that far out from the 20s. Grofé did the version in 24 and then the version with orchestra from 1942. I feel like these 100 year anniversaries, it’s important not to put things in a museum when they get to be 100 years old.

I think it’s an interesting thing that we don’t do in the world of classical music very much. There’s some of it, but we don’t tend to re-arrange, reconsider, review, re-imagine. It’s really funny for me when I work with musicians from other traditions and they’re like, you do what? You play the same notes the same way over and over again? 

ROBERTS: And I think that’s what ultimately made me want to do something different with it. The goal for me is to present the piano based on all of the music that I’ve heard in my life up till now. What is it that I understand and put it in that context.

SLATKIN: I think it’s not even fair to call this work a piece of cultural appropriation, because it doesn’t reflect what the Black musicians of the times were doing. They were going in a whole different direction. And yes, that music would pave the way for innovators such as Ellington and so many others.

DOWNES: There have been all along massive problems of inequity in the music world that were institutional. There have been a lot of closed doors and a lack of access. I don’t think that fits with the musicians themselves. I think that sits with institutional structures. I think that what musicians have always done well is listening. And I think that we listen to each other and we learn from each other and whatever is happening in our air around us, we absorb. We can’t help it unless we want to keep our heads under a rock.

ROBERTS: It’s been a struggle. There’s no secret there. There’s obviously been a lot of struggle with minorities in this country. Not just in terms of opportunities in music, but with a bunch of stuff. The fact is, had he not written it, I think there still would have been struggle. So I like to look at it more from the standpoint that he did it. It has opened up, frankly, eventually opportunities for people to still do whatever it was that they were going to do.

DOWNES: I’m so fascinated with that time in the 1920s, in the 30s. Things were changing so fast. People were encountering each other for the first time and everything was new. Jazz was new, and it was a very different thing than it is now. Just even to look at Gershwin’s very short lifetime, his 24-25 years before he wrote Rhapsody in Blue, all the things that are so quickly moving through but accumulating: the Yiddish theater and vaudeville and the beginnings of the Great American Songbook. It’s all coming together. 

SLATKIN: Gershwin didn’t intend that when he wrote it. It wasn’t I’m going to write something and therefore nobody else can go this direction ever again. Gershwin was in his own groove. He came from Tin Pan Alley. Those are people who went from door to door just pitching tunes to publishers. Most music was sold in sheet music fashion for people to play at home. Within the Black culture that was probably not the case. This was passed on more through different means. Ragtime, as practiced, say, in New Orleans or other places, was mostly an improvisatory field. It wasn’t really written out yet. 

ROBERTS: It’s not just George Gershwin. It’s not like it’s George Gershwin’s fault that he did that right. I just think the main thing that we have to focus one in this country is let’s see if we can get away from doing stuff like that. Let’s really use all of our efforts, all of our collective power, to include people and give them opportunity to succeed regardless of race, creed or gender.

SLATKIN: It’s not felt as a work that’s exclusive to one audience. Timeless works are that way for a reason, because they go over these boundaries. Rhapsody in Blue was different for its time. Could Ellington and others have appeared and done this kind of work earlier if Gershwin hadn’t done it? Maybe. But probably not. And anyway, if they wanted to go that direction, they would have done it regardless of what Gershwin did.

DOWNES: I do think that there’s a reason that things last. The piece has proven itself 100 years later and I would just love to see it continue to grow. Because I do think that was Gershwin’s intention. This musical kaleidoscope that speaks to me of endless possibility and shifts.

SLATKIN: Gershwin was all about moving forward with music. Leonard Bernstein talked about how he really was not happy that so many people knew him from West Side Story. Gershwin, I think, would have said, I’m thrilled that the Rhapsody has reached this kind of audience. And I’m pleased that my other works have also done this. He’s always the classic example, along with Mozart and Schubert, of saying what would have happened if he’d lived longer? Let’s just take what we’ve got, because what we’ve got is not bad.

ROBERTS: The attitude I have is that it’s a living work. It’s a living document. I feel like that simply is one of these pieces that’s alive every time we play it. I hope that it’ll be around for another 100 years. And I hope that there’ll be other music that America will fall in love with, that we can continue to have similar ways to collaborate jazz and classical music. 

To see my Rhapsody in Blue interview with Lara Downes and to hear more about her new album, please go here.

To see my Rhapsody in Blue interview with Marcus Roberts and to hear some exciting news about upcoming albums, please go here.

To see my Rhapsody in Blue interview with Leonard Slatkin, please go here.

Main Photo: George Gershwin (Courtesy the Billy Rose Collection/New York Public Library Archives)

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One of the most highly-acclaimed jazz albums of last year was The Glass Hours. 10 songs written and performed by bassist/composer Linda May Han Oh. Each song is imbued with the thinking Oh has been doing for a number of years about the world in which we live.

Some of her album’s compositions date back to 2018. It was a time when there was a different occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there was a different mentality in the country and it was before Oh became a mother. These are just a few of the things that were on her mind at the time and are just some of the issues that find their way into her very thoughtful compositions.

Oh is on tour with her band playing much of the music from The Glass Hours. I had the privilege of seeing her perform last night at The Townhouse in Venice, CA. The openness with which they played this music allowed for a sense of urgency that was palpable. Oh has four more shows in California before the end of the month. She will then join Vijay Iyer for four nights of shows at the Village Vanguard before continuing on her own tour on the East Coast. (You can find her itinerary here.)

Last week, before she started this tour, I spoke with Oh about the album, the ideas that inspired her album and her hopes for the future. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To watch the full interview with Oh (and dozens of other interviews with artists), please go to our YouTube channel.

The Glass Hours was released last year. That means it was probably recorded in 2022 and some of the compositions pre-date those sessions. How has your relationship to these compositions evolved since then?

Most of these pieces were composed, or at least the first incarnation of them, were composed around about 2018 or so. We first performed that music at the end of 2019 at the Jazz Gallery here in New York City. This was at a time where we were nearing the end of the Trump presidency. There was a bit of uncertainty of what was going to happen next politically and I was just questioning a lot of things, a lot of our values, a lot of the systems within which we live.

I was really thinking about what how we value time and what we choose to do with it. Initially some of the songs were formed as a result of questions that I was asking myself about what I was doing in my life and as an artist.

What were some of those questions you were asking yourself?

Just in terms of how we deal with warfare and violence between countries. Assessing my amount of privilege to that. I can work here with music in a space where many people before me have fought on my behalf for my freedoms. How we can regulate women’s bodies in one way in order to preserve life, but then not provide adequate regulations when it comes to gun control and protecting our kids in schools, and also within the health care system as well. All these things culminated in these songs. Although these conversations started in 2018, they evolved a lot throughout the years. The pandemic hit in 2020 and it was a difficult time for all of us. It shifted some of these positions for me personally. A lot of them evolved, went many different directions, and then I added some other songs. The imperative is about grit and resilience which I think we all had to think about during this time. 

Was the composing of these pieces an opportunity for you to try to come to answer answers for yourself or to pose the questions so that listeners can take in, and use, your music as a way of thinking about these things?

I would say the latter, because I think a lot of these issues are so complex that it is really hard to find a definitive answer to how to solve these problems. I use music for a lot of different things. I want to bring something beautiful into the world. I also wanted to use it to question things. I also wanted to use to use it in a way that can make an impact in some way, make a shift in someone’s consciousness when they hear it.

If I’m sort of confused or wondering about something, music is really helpful for me in order to just at least digest it. I’m not necessarily looking for answers, but this is my expression of how I’m feeling, what I’m questioning.

What you’re questioning on The Glass Hours are some of the basic ideas that we have been contemplating for decades. Do you think that we will ever get to a place where these questions don’t have to be asked? Can your music play a part in getting us to that point? 

I feel like these questions are always somewhat going to be asked. There’s just so much of history repeating. You might hear some of those themes in Antiquity and Jus Ad Bellum (two songs on The Glass Hours). I think a lot about morality and, now with a child, it’s actually how we teach morality and how certain themes and stories that we teach kids – whether it be through books or movies – sometimes they aren’t clear cut. I’m always questioning how I am to do better and how I can contribute.

What does live performance give you in terms of opening up your compositions or perhaps the way you hear and perform them? Not just the way you do, but also your colleagues who are on the stage with you?

Nothing beats live music, you know? The music that we create is always so different each night to night. We may maintain some of the same messages and some of the framework of these compositions. But ultimately, so much of what we do is improvised and special to that specific moment. I’m lucky to play with musicians who are very experienced in improvisation ready for anything to happen. 

It seems to me like a lot of the questions that you’re bringing up in your music could be solved by what you and your band mates have to do every night, which is just listen. Whether anybody gets the message behind the music or not, can’t the fundamentals of live performance of music actually serve as a foundation for solving a lot of our problems?

I work with a lot of students of varying ages and I always say that everybody should learn how to improvise, learn how to play in an ensemble because there’s so much to be said about problem solving, working together, empathy, listening, that really carries through into everyday life. Whether or not some of these students choose to pursue music as a career, you’ve got these skills that you can use anywhere.

How important do you think it is for people listening to understand the point of what you’re getting to with each individual composition or is it enough that they enjoy the music?

At the end of the day, everyone’s going to perceive this music in their own individual way. If I can invite the listener to be in the moment and embrace the here and now by listening, that’s my number one goal. Everyone’s coming from such a different place and headspace and people listen for very different reasons. I hope that people can see some of the emotion, the message behind the songs.

On January 9th, the Grammys website posted a story about alternative jazz and included The Glass Hours as an example of alternative jazz. What does that or any other label mean to you as it relates to either your music or how other music is categorized?

I don’t think too much about labels when it comes to actually making the music, but I do see how it’s necessary for writers, for people in the industry to categorize or to promote certain things; publicize what this music sounds like. It kind of is what it is. I know a lot of people have fought very hard to get this new category into the Grammys, which is amazing. I’m proud of a lot of people who are rallying for more space for improvised music that isn’t mainstream, that isn’t pop music. I’m all for giving more space and more recognition to some of these musicians.

The jazz world is famous for collaborations and I think that’s what makes it all one of the most interesting genres of music that there is. You’ve had the privilege of working with Vijay Iyer, Ethan Iverson, Billy Childs, Terri Lyne Carrington and Tyshawn Sorey. How have artists like that inspired you and informed who you are as a musician today?

If we just start with Tyshawn Corey. I mean, he is just a force of nature. As a bass player I just feel so lucky to be able to play with so many incredible drummers. Tyshawn is not only an incredible drummer, you can riff with him on Max Roach and all the masters. I can also show him some of my percussion scores, and I showed him my solo piano piece, and immediately he’s telling me all the scores to check out. I’m super inspired by some of these musicians that have dedicated their lives to this art form.

You have another collaboration with Vijay Iyer on his upcoming album, Compassion (due February 2nd), which finds you once again working with Tyshawn.

[Vijay is] just a classic example of somebody who’s extremely well-versed in many different worlds and super inspiring. Someone like Terri Lyne Carrington*. She’s just a visionary and not only one of my favorite drummers, but as a composer, producer, a band leader. I’ve seen her in many leadership contexts where she really cares.

There are a lot of people in these positions of power, positions of leadership that, may or may not, do it for their own egoistic purposes. Terri Lyne is just one of those people that really cares about the people that she is trying to work with and making things better and making things more equitable.

I interviewed Vijay in 2019 and I asked him about a quote that he gave to NPR in an interview two years prior where he said, “The reason we’re on this planet as individuals is to express and reflect the moment we’re in now.” I followed up by asking him are the moments getting easier. Knowing that you also believe you’re here to express and reflect the moment we’re in now, as a composer, a musician and mother, do you feel like we’re headed in the right direction?

I definitely feel some uncertainty and uneasiness. I’m constantly reminded of incredible people day to day. I try and make sure that I acknowledge them in my life in terms of people who who want to strive for better. It’s hard to say is it getting easier. The state of the world with things like climate change and those issues, which I feel we should be doing a lot more. There are still positive things happening in the world in terms of advancements in technology to solve certain problems. It’s important to acknowledge those things.

This particular time is a very tumultuous time. I try and keep us up to date with the news as I can, at the same time knowing that a lot of the news that we hear can be very heartbreaking. Positive news is always a really good thing and I think it is good to welcome that. Easier? I don’t know. I feel very privileged in my particular life to be doing what I’m doing. I just hope for better. I have faith that we can do better. 

To watch the full interview with Linda May Han Oh, please go here.

Terri Lyne Carrington will be performing at CAP UCLA’s Royce Hall on Saturday, January 27th. For tickets and more information, please go here.

All photos of Linda May Han Oh (©Robyn Twomey/Courtesy Fully Altered Media)

The post Linda May Han Oh Has Faith We Can Do Better appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

JAZZ:  A NEW BEAT – Ulysses Owens Jr. and Generation Y – Cellar Music Group

There’s very little that inspires me as much as music and the performing arts. But when someone can combine those and be a teacher, that’s truly inspiring. Such is the story of drummer and bandleader Owens.

A New Beat finds Owens performing with the young musicians he’s taught and discovered over the past four years. They include pianist Luther Allison; composer/trumpeter Benny Benack III; pianist Tyler Bullock; saxophonist Sarah Hanahan; trumpeter Anthony Hervey; bassist Philip Norris; singer/arranger Milton Suggs; bassist Ryoma Takanaga and saxophonist Erena Terakubo. 

Hervey is the only I knew prior to this recording. His album, Words From My Horn from last year was terrific and was produced by Owens.

This album will give you renewed faith in the future of jazz. It also happens to be a damn good album. 

Here are my other favorite recordings that are New In Music This Week: January 19^th:

CLASSICAL MUSIC:  SONGS OF FATE – Gidon Kremer – ECM Records

What a treat this album is to explore Baltic composers who don’t often find their works recorded. In fact, many of these compositions are having their first-ever recording.

This is also a timely release as violinist Kremer explores his Jewish roots with the pieces selected for Songs of Fate.

The composers whose music is performed here are Jēkabs Jančevskis, Giedrius Kuprevičius, Raminta Šerkšnytė and the Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg.

Joining Kremer on this beautiful and haunting album are violoncellist Magdalena Ceple, soprano Vida Miknevičiūtė, vibraphonist Andrei Pushkarev and Kremerata Baltica (a chamber orchestra founded by Gidon Kremere in 1997).

CLASSICAL MUSIC: KODÁLY – Miriam K. Smith – Azica Records

Perhaps my favorite string instrument to hear solo is the cello. 17-year-old Smith has chosen Zoltán Kodály’s challenging Sonata for Solo Cello in B minor, Op. 8 as her latest release. It’s a 33-minute sonata that was composed in 1915.

This is an impressive recording for so young a musician. It’s also an incredible composition that, should you not be familiar with it, you should do yourself a favor and listen to this recording.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL:  PARANORMAL MUSICALITY – JB Dunckel – Warner Classics

If JB Dunckel’s name sounds familiar, then perhaps you are a fan of the French duo Air. Here Dunckel is on his own with just his piano. His 18 original compositions offer nearly an hour of music.

Press materials indicate that Dunckel essentially improvised these pieces between 2019 and 2022, but they have been a part of him going back before Air’s success.

If you’re looking for a contemporary album of easy-going solo piano music, this album is for you. For fans of Air this will be, for you, at least a curiosity.

JAZZ: LIVE AT DIZZY’S CLUB: THE MUSIC OF ELVIN & McCOY – Gerald Cannon – Woodneck Records

Certainly you know that Elvin is Jones and McCoy is Tyner. Jones was a jazz drummer who is best known for being a member of John Coltrane’s early 1960s quartet. Tyner was a jazz pianist and composer who also performed as part of the same quartet with Coltrane.

What binds these gentlemen on this recording is bassist Cannon who worked with Tyner for 14 years and Jones for nine years.

This terrific live recording took place in June of 2022 and features Eddie Henderson on trumpet; alto saxophonist Sherman Irby; pianist Dave Kikosi, tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano; trombonist Steve Turre and drummer Lenny White.

The high point for me on the album is Cannon’s composition Three Elders which is dedicated to Jones, Tyner and pianist Larry Willis who was a member of Roy Hargrove’s band in which Cannon was also a member. It’s a beautiful work. 

The rest of the compositions are either by Jones or Tyner.

JAZZ:  TECHNICALLY ACCEPTABLE – Ethan Iverson – Blue Note Records

I’ve long been a fan of composer and pianist Ethan Iverson. He’s clearly an amazing talent and also one of the smartest people working in jazz. This diverse album features a mix of Iverson originals and two stunning covers: Killing Me Softly With His Song and ‘Round Midnight. The latter piece is performed with just piano and theremin (Rob Schwimmer).

What stood out to me was the first ever recording of Iverson’s Piano Sonata – a traditional 3-movement work that defies easy categorization, but is an utterly compelling composition.

For those of you in or going to New York, he’ll be at the Village Vanguard next week from January 23^rd – January 28^th.

JAZZ:  THE HIDDEN WORLD OF PILOO – Ada Rovatti – Piloo Records

I wasn’t familiar with saxophonist/composer Rovatti before listening to her new album which features 10 original tracks. Just when you think you have a beat on her style, a track comes along to upend your expectations. That is what makes this album compelling.

There are songs that deal with social justice issues, one that refers to a former president running again for office (an aptly-named The Naked King) and a song inspired by her teenager daughter’s first forays into make-up. See what I mean about upending expectations?

Rovatti is joined on this album by Randy Brecker (her husband) on trumpet and flugelhorn; Café Da Silva on percussion; Tim Dudek on drums; Claus Fischer on bass and Simon Oslender on organ.

Rovatti also has four vocalists on the album: Fay Classen, Kurt Elling, Niki Haris and Alma Naidu.

JAZZ:  CT! – Adam Schroeder & Mark Masters – Capri Records

If you’re going to pay tribute to Clark Terry, you have to go big or go home. That’s exactly what baritone saxophone player Adam Schroeder and arranger/composer/trumpeter Mark Masters have done with this 13-track album of Clark Terry’s compositions.

Joining them on this recording are Kirsten Edkins on tenor saxophone; Peter Erskine on drums; James Ford on trumpet; Dan Fornero on lead trumpet; Lemar Guillary on trombone; Aaron Janik on trumpet; Edwin Livingston on bass; Sal Lorenzo on alto saxophone; Ido Meshulan on trombone; Bob Sheppard on tenor and soprano saxophones and Francisco Torres on lead trombone.

These musicians sound like they are having a great time. I’ll be you will, too.

That’s my complete list of New In Music This Week: January 19^th.

Enjoy the music!

Enjoy your weekend!

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THIS IS THE FOURTH OF OUR BEST OF 23 REVIEW OF INTERVIEWS: If you’ve been following Cultural Attaché for even a small amount of time, you know how much I love singer Cécile McLorin Salvant. We’re happy to say we finally have an interview with this three-time Grammy Award winner (who also happens to have a nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album for her most recent release, Ghost Song)!

Those three Grammy Awards came for three albums in a row: For One to Love, Dreams and Daggers and The Window. Might it be four-in-a-row? The New York Times called it “her most revealing and rewarding album yet.” I love the album and had the privilege of seeing Salvant in back-to-back performances at the Blue Note in New York City in September. Salvant is truly a once-in-a-generation artist.

She is currently on tour across the United States. Her next show is at Royce Hall on Thursday, January 26th as part of CAP UCLA’s season. She’ll be at the Mondavi Center in Davis on January 27th; Bing Concert Hall at Stanford on January 28th; the Stewart Theatre in Raleigh, NC on February 2nd and Knight Concert Hall in Miami on February 3rd (where her special guest is the Christian Sands Trio).

For her full itinerary, please go here.

Here is my interview with Salvant which was conducted via e-mail.

During the pandemic you were reading Marcel Proust, particularly In Search of Lost Time. In the fifth volume he writes, “The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is..” Do you agree with him and how does that perspective align itself with how you choose, hear and perform music?

I love that quote!!!! Beautiful. I absolutely agree with this.

The pandemic negated the opportunity for LA audiences to see and hear Ogresse. What does the future hold for that work and will you record it or turn it into a fully produced musical/show?

We’re making it into an animated feature length film. It’s already recorded but we’re animating it now with a team in Europe. [Salvant will be performing Ogresse on February 24th and 25th at the Walker Art Center in Milwaukee.]  

Five years ago you gave an interview to ArtsDesk.com where you said, “Visual art is the most important thing to me.” At that time you weren’t sure if that passion for visual arts influenced your music adding, “probably, but not in a way that I can tell.” Has your perspective on that changed since 2018? Do works like Ogresse and/or the art that Nonesuch released with Ghost Song provide examples of some blending of your passions?

Yes! My perspective often changes though! Lately I’ve been trying to approach making music with the same playfulness I feel when I draw.

I first became aware of you when Bryan Ferry closed for you at the Hollywood Bowl in August of 2017. It’s a night I won’t ever forget. I’ve since seen you at much smaller venues. What role does a given venue play in the concerts you give?

My favorite venues to play are clubs! I like to be really close to a small packed audience. I want it to feel like I’m spilling secrets. But it’s always exhilarating and a little bit scary to be in front of a vast crowd like at the Hollywood Bowl!

Sometimes Aaron Diehl is your pianist and other times it is Sullivan Fortner. What does each pianist bring to you and your music? Are there tangible differences for you that influence the way you make music and present it live with each of them?

There are a few others I’ve been playing with over the years. Everyone adds different elements and colors to the music, they bring their tastes, their approaches even their feel to it. It’s the same with every instrument in the band. I often unknowingly pick my repertoire based on who’s playing.

In the concerts I’ve attended there seems to be a semblance of spontaneity in the set lists. What role does fluidity play in each performance? How much does an audience play a role in what you choose to sing at a given concert?

That’s another that changes based on the band. If I’m playing duo with Sullivan there’s often no setlist and it really depends on the moment. The audience plays a bit of a role if they choose to! Some audiences feel quiet, or more reserved. They play less of a role. When they participate a bit more, are reactive, they play a much bigger role to where the set will go.

Music from Broadway musicals used to top the record charts. It’s been a long time since that happened. Yet your passion for musicals is undeniable. The first song on your first album, Cécile, comes from an obscure 1930 musical, Lew Leslie’s International Revue (Exactly Like You). You seem almost childlike in your appreciation for these songs. How and when did that passion for get ignited in you and what role will that material play as you move forward throughout your career?

I’m not sure it’s a childlike quality, it’s more that I love theater and acting. I love operas too, which to me aren’t much different from musicals. I love songs that flow from a character dealing with a specific context.

Like pianist Brad Mehldau and others, you had a background in classical music but switched to jazz (though I heard you sing Baroque music at the Blue Note in NY in September). How does your classical background inform your approach to jazz?

This is a tough question to answer because I try to get away from genres. Genres like jazz and classical are too broad in my opinion. Jazz is extremely fragmented, it encompasses so much different music. Even baroque and early music have such fragmented, different styles within them. There were differences in the music based on cities! Even tuning was based on location.

I think everything I’ve studied informs what I do in some way. In conservatory, I got to learn the aria Medea sings when she goes back and forth between wanting to kill her children for vengeance and wanting to protect them. I think learning that and other songs, learning a bit about baroque dance, studying tap dance for a month in high school, learning the basics of reading figured bass on a harpsichord, all this informs my desire to find a way to approach music in a more open way, with less boundaries.

Your mother has described you as an intellectual (The New Yorker 2017). You’ve talked a lot about your instincts. How and where do your instincts meet up with your intellect and vice-versa?

I don’t identify as an intellectual! I can be a nerd for the things that I love. And I study and research and learn about the history of those things. But following my instincts is very important to me. Sometimes too much research can get in the way of that.

In an interview with Ethan Iverson you bring up a point, this was in relation to Bessie Smith, where you said, “at first I guess it sounds very the same when you don’t know how to listen.” What is the audience responsibility in listening? How much does technology and the need for videos and photos get in the way of your ability to communicate with an audience and their ability to listen? Is the fine art of listening a dying art?

It’s changing the way we communicate. We have more access than ever to all kinds of music and yet our attention span is very low. But I think people are feeling a bit over-saturated so there might be a countercurrent to that soon. I also really admire the way this younger generation coming up can find whatever they connect with, regardless of era or popularity, online. Listening will have to change whether we like it or not! But it’s always been changing. It changed already when the first compositions were notated on paper, when people began having access to records, when music videos started to gain popularity, and so on.

Nonesuch Records alluded in an email last week to a new album coming out this spring. What can you tell me about this new recording?

It will be all in French! About a half woman half snake.

If you could talk to the teenager who had a mohawk, was listening to Dave Matthews Band and Soundgarden before moving to France, what would you say to her about the artist you’ve become and the artist you want to be as you move forward in your career?

I probably wouldn’t say anything about that if I could talk to the teenager I was!!

I’d probably just stare. But I’ll say to you that I feel really lucky for everything that I’ve been able to do, and I’m very excited to keep making my arts and crafts, which is how I like to think of what I do (otherwise you get too precious about it all).

Main Photo: Cécile McLorin Salvant at the Blue Note in New York (Photo by Craig L. Byrd)

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Who are they you ask? If you recognize any of these song titles you know their work: Alfie, (They Long to Be) Close to You, Do You Know the Way to San Jose, I’ll Never Fall in Love Again, I Say a Little Prayer, Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, This Guy’s In Love with You, Walk on By, What the Wold Needs Now and The Look of Love.

The last song was written for the 1967 film Casino Royale. It earned Bacharach and David an Academy Award nomination. They didn’t win, but just three years later they did win the Oscar for Best Song for Raindrops which was featured in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Mark Morris, the innovative choreographer known as much for his outrageous statements as for his work, has created a new dance work centered around the work of these two legends. The Look of Love will have its world premiere this week at the BroadStage in Santa Monica (October 20th – 23rd). From there the show will travel to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (October 26th-29th) and Gogue Performing Arts Center at Auburn University in Alabama (November 8th) before the end of the year. The show will resume performances next year in multiple venues.

Last week I spoke via Zoom with the never self-censored Morris about this music, the work (and he was still working on it a week before its premiere) and if any of his work or his career has turned out the way he expected. What follows are excerpts that have been edited for length and clarity.

What was Bacharach’s response when you first reached out about creating The Look of Love?

I was getting ready to ask a whole bunch of questions and then he answered them: Be sure this isn’t boring. Have you thought of doing medleys, changing some of the tempi or male or female singers or include some other changes? It was basically almost a sort of carte blanche kind of thing. He said what about this? Well thank you those were all my questions. That will be all Mr. Bacharach. So it was really great.

What would you tell people is the reason to take interest in the music of Burt Bacharach, particularly if they don’t already know it? 

In one sense, I couldn’t care less. Listen to whatever the hell you want. But also I would slip in listen to this. I’m not trying to convert people to the church of Burt Bacharach or anything because I’m not a member of that. I just love the music.

This comes up a lot because five years ago I did a piece that re-looked at and listened to music from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for a piece of an evening called Pepperland. Don’t worry fans or enemies of mine. I’m not just doing a trip down memory lane from when I was 11 years old. I don’t even remember that so it’s not that. I’m trying to turn on a whole new generation to this music of this very broad period.

This piece with Mr. Bacharach’s music, in its very purest form, is very direct and very, very moving. It’s all been written to be performed live. We’re not doing a really complicated examination of the work. It’s what a great song, let’s listen to this and have some music and dancing.

As someone who has known this material for a long time were there new discoveries that you made?

One thing that wasn’t much of a surprise is that these songs are hard to sing. [Marcy Harriell will be singing live with a band headed by Ethan Iverson] There are surprise shifts all the time. What people just hear as a sort of a modulation up toward the thrill, the payoff of the crescendo and the modulation to higher and higher until the big payoff at the end isn’t always true. Sometimes the bottom drops out or it goes another direction or goes chromatic or major and minor in the most wonderful [way]. Evident when you hear it, but surprising if you’re trying to make it up yourself. 

What influence does that have on what you create and what you ask your dancers to do?

I’m always dealing with the idea of how much text I’m going to use. Are we dancing the words or is that redundant? We hear them. Do you have to also do them? The thing with opera it’s like you’re singing it, you’re saying it. There’s supertitles, the music is saying it. How many modes of translation do we need: words, rhythm, music, the people, the dancers themselves, how they move, who they are. And of course, I decide what the choreography is, but it’s based on many things: text, rhythm, harmony, orchestration, probably barometric pressure and audiences. It affects all of it.

As Burt and I warned each other, it’s not a jukebox show. It’s not get slightly drunk and sing along. Although you’re welcome to if you do it quietly. I didn’t want it to be, first of all, a mess, you know? I didn’t want it to be a name that tune kind of thing or a grocery store. Although I admire the company called Muzak as it was and as it is. I love that. But it’s the idea that you’re led from one thing to another, not trying to make a Mamma Mia story out of things that aren’t really a story. 

You were quoted as having said “No dance has ever turned out the way I thought it would, because I trust enough that I can start something with some ideas and then it takes itself somewhere.” How does that concept apply not just to The Look of Love, but to your entire career?

I’m tempted to say ask me in ten days because I have eight services starting tomorrow where I have to finish it. That seems like a lot because I have a lot of it done. I just have to do a little bit of what do you call that plaster? A little bit of caulking on the seams of it. That’s the tricky part. I have almost all of it done. It’s just it has to snap in – the capstone has to drop in. And all of those metaphors aside, I never know what the hell’s going to happen.

I still don’t know what the very beginning and the very end of my piece are. A lot of the stuff in between I can change it. The people I work with are brilliant enough where I can say, remember that thing we did two weeks ago that started on the other leg and you weren’t in it? Let’s do that. I can do that and it’ll just take a couple of minutes for people to come up with the solution because they’re used to that. Iit’s always live music. It’s always live them. So it happens. It’s not democratic. I make up the dances, but they do it. So the sooner I can pass them on so it’s out of my hands, the more comfortable, meaning accurate and inhabited, the piece will be. So it’s not what I thought it was going to be and it won’t be what I think right now it’s going to be. But I have a hunch and that’s going to be working soon. As more of us collect in the room, the more it’s going to finish itself. 

It’s been 42 years since you formed your own company. How much does what that company look like today mirror what you imagined it might have been in 1980 when you formed it?

Let’s see. Every model of person is different, but there are new models every year of people. I don’t know how that keeps happening, but they differ not just because they’re of different relations, but also times change. People change. I’m still very close friends…You know in the COVID period I spent more time on the phone – or whatever we call the phone – with my ancient friends. My earliest dancers are all in their sixties and seventies. They were mostly the women in my company from way back. We talk more than we have in years, these wonderful women and men too. That was wasn’t even memory lane. It was like, can you believe what’s going on? Of course my dancers are a third my age now, so that changes everything.

I didn’t visualize a company in my mind. When I started the company I was just making up dances. I didn’t know what that dance was going to look like in 1984 or whenever until I made it up. That’s still true. We do pieces in my repertory that are actively in repertory, pieces that are 40 years old still. Occasionally I like them and if I don’t like them, we won’t do them. I’ll make up a new one. 

To see the full itinerary of Mark Morris Dance Group, please go here.

Main Photo: Mark Morris (Courtesy BroadStage)

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“Gone are the days of releasing a record with a particular band and go right on the road with the same band for months at a time, plugging that music, plugging that album, playing that music, right? I look at every tour, every gig, every musical situation I have on my calendar and I just think what would make this as enjoyable an experience as possible for the band, for me and for for the audience. What can I do to make this what it needs to be?” So says pianist/composer Gerald Clayton when discussing how to approach the upcoming release of his new album, Bells on Sand.

Before Clayton’s album is released by Blue Notes Records on April 1st, he has a few concerts lined up. On February 17th he’ll be performing at The Soraya in Northridge. On February 25th Clayton will be at the Starlight Patio and Lounge with Domo Branch in Portland. After Bells on Sand comes out he’ll be at the Johnson Theatre in Durham, New Hampshire. Clayton is also part of three all-star concerts celebrating Nat “King” Cole with the Nashville Symphony.

Clayton is an immensely talented artist who gives considerable thought to who he is artistically and the traditions from which his career was possible. We spoke last week via Zoom to talk about Bells on Sand, those artists who inspire him and whether or not he is an old soul. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

You said that Oscar Peterson’s Night Train was the first jazz album that really got its hooks into you. Peterson once said, “I don’t believe that a lot of the things that I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.” What are the challenges you face as a composer and a musician cutting through all the music that is available now and at the same time creating something that may last as long as a Coleman Hawkins record or a Brahms concerto?

That’s a really beautiful sentiment and fascinating to think about. One of the parts of the premise of that question is that I consider all of the music around me to cut through in the first place. Maybe the way to go about arts and making music is to to drown out all the other noise and really set your sights on that bull’s eye, on that North Star. Just serve the art, serve the music as best as you can, as honestly as you can, as diligently and thoughtfully and thoroughly as possible, and let the rest take care of itself. I think that’s generally the equation that been the modus operandi for me since I was a kid.

I think it’s natural that we all sort of aspire to leave something behind, to be so lucky as to to make music that is great and magical and wonderful enough that it even deserves to live on after we’re long gone. I think part of the allure of that is this very human desire to have your ego remain you’re gone. But to experience music and experience art that is that pure and worthy of that is really what excites me and is something that I’m inspired to try to get to. Just to even record something on the level of those artists you mentioned would be incredible.

At the same time I was first listening to Bells on Sand I was listening to Joel Ross’ new album, The Parable of the Poet and Ethan Iverson‘s new album Every Note Is True. One thing that struck me about all three albums was that there was a sense of calm that I heard in the music that I don’t think I’d been hearing in the last few years. They’re all coming out around the same time and reflect more of a coming to peace with one’s self or one’s world. Is that something that you wanted to express in this album, particularly after all that we’ve gone through as a society recently?

I think you’re probably onto something. I think there’s an affect from this wildly new time that we’re living in that is maybe hard to fully comprehend at this moment. Maybe it takes another couple of years to look back and see that all of the music coming out at this time all had this in common. Maybe it’s that sort of calm sensibility or what have you. It could also be just individual paths and journeys of all three of us. For me this record is also a reflection of where I am in comparison to the previous records I put out and feeling that it was time to include something that’s a little bit more intimate in my body of work.

This is an intimate record. What the title and narrative of the project is trying to get after is to play music without anything else. Just have a song and that sort of catharsis, that therapeutic relationship with you and the sound and how that’s just a thing that happens in a moment. And then you go on to the next moment. And if you come back to the same song it’s a new moment and the sands have shifted. To point that all back to the sensibility of calmness and and meditation feels very relevant.

If we were to take Boogablues, which opens your first album, Two-Shade, and then take Water’s Edge, which opens Bells on Sand and use them as goalposts at opposite ends of the field, what does that say to you about the journey that you’ve taken and who you are today versus who you were then?

There are different ways to to take people on a musical journey and I think that’s something I’ve had the privilege of exploring over these past 15-20 years of doing this. To see what it feels like to open the concert with a dance like Boogablues, then what comes after that? How does it feel to actually start not with the jovial sort of bouncy attitude feeling of Boogblues, but start with a little bit more of a pensive or intellectual or cerebral [composition]? Going there first and then taking them to the blues as sort of a release from that tension to end a set big or to end a set on a ballad. I like the variety of things and I definitely don’t have one way of doing things. That’s what always turns me on about art and music. I suppose it says that maybe it would be strange to start your first record, your first statement to the world on a ballad, you know? But now that I’ve got plenty of baggage that I take along with me to this next record, I think I feel the freedom to go there and to start on this energy.

Looking back on Ben Ratliff‘s New York Times review of the first night of your first stand at the Village Vanguard in 2010 he said, “Perhaps because he inherited* so much aesthetic knowledge, Mr. Clayton seems from a different era.” Do you feel like your are from a different era or are an old soul?

I think there’s something about being a 1984 baby that maybe our generational purpose is one of connecting past to future. That we are the last of that soulful generation that remembers being social before the internet. So yeah, there are values and lessons from the before times that are really near and dear to my heart that I think are actually really important. 

I think there are plenty of other people my age and younger who feel that as well and want to be about carrying that torch forward. But there are plenty who don’t have that connection and are still amazing, creative, beautiful artists that I love to work with. So maybe compared to some of those cats I am maybe a different kind of old soul. But really I think it’s just the same as anybody else, just trying to play what what feels right and be honest about the things you think are beautiful.

Legendary drummer Billy Higgins once said. “Because the stuff that they feed kids now, they’ll have a bunch of idiots in the next millennium as far as art and culture is concerned.” I think he’s been more than proven wrong twenty-one plus years into this century. But what would you say to him if you had a chance to respond to that comment?

I won’t really say anything. I listen and I take note and I say, I hear you Maestro. I’m really lucky to to work with Charles Lloyd who had that very deep connection with Billy Higgins. He talks about Billy a lot. Hearing him talk about life and music, the things that are and the things that aren’t, I love that. Just soaking that up and really ruminating on it and and making sense of it for yourself. I think that’s one of the gifts of this music is that community and the voice of the elders. I think part of the responsibility of my generation, and really probably anybody’s generation, is to take those lessons that those elders have to say and make sense of them for yourself and bring them forward and try to do do them justice and consider them as you move forward.

Without getting too cynical there’s a lot about this time we live in that feels a bit like smoke and mirrors. That the focus has maybe shifted. It’s not necessarily about the quality, maybe it’s more about the quantity. Without being too judgmental or critical a lot of this stuff is not that great. So I guess what happens as a result of that might be speaking to what Maestro Higgins was talking about. You create a whole audience of viewers and listeners that don’t have that same bar of expectation of what something could be or should be or needs to be for it to be considered good. I hear him on that. I also agree with you that there is something about this about music and about art that is much bigger than the dialects of the language. It is human creativity and this actual need for people to express their joys and their sorrows in a creative way. That never dies.

*Gerald Clayton is the son of jazz musician/composer John Clayton and nephew of the late jazz musician Jeff Clayton.

Photo: Gerald Clayton (Photo by Ogata/Courtesy Blue Note Records)

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We all have unique ways – we hope – of celebrating our birthdays. For jazz musician and composer Ethan Iverson he celebrated his 49th birthday on Friday the best way possible for all of us: he released a new album entitled Every Note Is True on Blue Note Records. The album finds Iverson joined by bass player Larry Grenadier and legendary drummer Jack DeJohnette.

Iverson may be best known for the avant-garde jazz trio The Bad Plus. He recorded 14 albums with the trio before moving on. My personal favorite amongst their recordings is 2014’s The Rite of Spring. It is absolutely Stravinsky’s music, but performed in a way that is completely its own. (Which you’ll see is a theme for Iverson.)

Every Note Is True features nine original compositions by Iverson and a cover of DeJohnette’s Blue (which was the drummer’s idea during the recording sessions.)

In late January I spoke with Iverson about the album, his prolific writing and interviews that can and should be read on his blog Do the M@th and whether jazz music will ever achieve a level of greatness beyond what legendary artists such as John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins accomplished. What follows are excerpts from my conversation with Iverson that have been edited for length and clarity.

I want to start with one of your interviews with the late Terry Teachout. He concluded his comments by saying, “I think I’ll just keep on doing what I do and waiting to see what happens next. I’ve always been open to surprise.” How much does that describe your own process and how does every note as true reflect the surprise you find in your own work? 

I do think it’s important to surprise yourself when you’re a composer or a piano player. Some people have careers in the arts where they really stay on a very specific track. But I’ve been lucky enough to have a more wayward experience going from thing to thing in a way. But I will say that I always feel like it make sense to me; there’s a thread there that I follow since I really started playing the piano for real. I have been aware of following a thread from the outside. It may look like it’s a mess. I don’t know, like all the different things I’ve done or who knows, but for me it’s all been logical. I guess I would also say that I hope to be keep on being surprised in the future.

How much does Every Note Is True serve as a document of your experience and emotions during these last two years and how is that reflected in the opening track, The More It Changes, which features cellphone recorded performances of the vocals by friends and family?

Everybody’s got to use what’s happening in real time. And I would say jazz improvisers are particularly suited to doing that. You’ve always got to be in the present day. When the pandemic hit, like most of my peers, the first question is when do we start working at the grocery store? It really felt like the end of everything and, of course, we’re not out of it yet. So it was hard not to see all my friends in that sort of thing. As you recall at the beginning everything was quite strict. I thought let’s just do a nod to this current moment and have a socially-distanced choir and try to bring people together through music. Even if it’s just for a short song that lasts a minute and change.

One track in particular hit me very emotionally was Had I But Known. Could tell me a little bit about that track and what it is that you wish you had known?

I really love Paul Bley and his two composers, Carla Bley and Annette Peacock. It is a little bit of my nod to that tradition. With Carla in particular as a composer, I think she’s an influence on some of the ways I think. She embraces a whole world of possibility from the very simple to the very complex. The title, there might be specific things about it that I don’t feel like sharing in an interview, but it’s not truly an original title. It’s from genre fiction.

That’s the most dissonant track on the record. But it has still a clarity, I think, a through line of pure harmony that makes it effective. It’s completely written out. I don’t improvise and I like to do something a little different, that I’m pretty sure is fairly different. Usually if it’s a trio record and the pianist takes a solo number, it’s sort of an improvised rhapsodic fantasy, you know? But this is I just read it down from my score.

On January 18th, you tweeted something that I thought was really interesting. You said “There’s nothing new, just fresh ways of combining things.” Do you genuinely believe there’s nothing new?

You could ask me about any jazz musician, for example, and I could tell you the references. But the older I get, the more I believe that is really the case, you know? All humans are essentially the same. What percentage of what’s really different between you and me? Just a small percentage. We’re all inspired by whatever we’re inspired by. You don’t wake up and have a new idea. Now there are people who are more innovative than others, but I think it’s because they’ve combined elements that had never been combined before.

I read your your essays and interviews which I think are essential reading for people just to get an understanding of the past and the present within music. What do you think the dialog you have with your audience vis-a-vis these essays and through your music will do for getting us into the future and understanding in the future where we’ve come from and what impact that will have on other musicians? 

Specifically about jazz, you know, there was room for me because the critical discourse never was too informed by the way the musicians actually thought about it. And sometimes when I’m teaching a master class I talk about Beethoven. I talk about Coltrane. For me they’re equal.

But Beethoven’s been dead for so long and the best and the brightest minds have been working on his reception history for years. They’re still working on it. We’ve sort of got Beethoven sorted now. Coltrane died in 1967 and we’re still pretty new in the reception history. Within the last maybe 15 years something has gotten better as people with real talent are actually taking on the reception history of our greatest American musicians. So I see whatever I’m doing in print is part of that – just trying to sort out something because there’s nothing better than 20th century jazz that’s top table. You know, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, all of that stuff that was unbelievably great. All the piano players: Art Tatum, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Teddy Wilson, Ahmad Jamal, Hank Jones. I get chills thinking about these musicians. They were so great and people sort of knew they were great. Now they’re all gone and we kind of know that was it.

That was like Beethoven and Mozart. That was an incredible moment of human creativity. So whatever I’m doing in the jazz sense there with that is just trying to get more of the musician’s perspective. When I interview Ron Carter or Keith Jarrett as a musician, maybe I get some insight from them that, you know, sometimes stuff that I think it’s pretty obvious. But then later on someone will say, I just didn’t know they thought about it that way. So that’s what I believe my role is in trying to move the ball forward and just understanding how great jazz was.

We had multiple great periods of classical music well past Beethoven. Do you think we will have multiple great periods of jazz past all those artists you just mentioned?

I don’t think it’s going to be better than John Coltrane, frankly. Sonny Rollins, you know. I made a little album for Tom Harrell. There’s nothing like that in terms of playing jazz trumpet. He’s sort an old genius of true school, shall we say. I don’t think my generation, we’re not going to quite get to what that is. So what we have to do is figure out things to add to it, to make something a little different. My belief as I turn 50 and older is formal composition will become more and more the way I try to put things together. Nothing new, exactly, but fresh ways of combining old things.

Photo: Ethan Iverson (Photo by Keith Major/Courtesy Blue Note Records)

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In 2017, Mark Morris was commissioned by the City of Liverpool to come up with a work to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the classic Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. That work, Pepperland, is being performed three times this weekend at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa.

This is a full-evening work that not only incorporates arrangements of songs from that landmark album, but also includes new music by Ethan Iverson. The new music allows Morris to work within more traditional dance structures and to flesh out The Beatles’ recording which in and of itself runs less than 40 minutes.

Mark Morris formed the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980. Of this particular work, Morris says in an article on the Segerstrom Center’s website that Sgt. Pepper, “was abundant with new musical ideas; a new kind of studio-born performance; a never-before-heard confluence of music world conventions; a witty, sad, surprising, and moving musical trip. In a fully-staged, newly re-approached music and dance show, we accept[ed} the challenge of presenting a contemporary reading of this great artifact.”

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How did you come up with this concept?
This started with a dream of mine in the mid-1980s. I was basing this on Franz Liszt, who in his time was making opera transcriptions. People like Earl Wild made all those wonderful piano arrangements of Gershwin; Art Tatum was doing Cole Porter and Gershwin—there are composers who have embedded themselves into the musical culture and make an impact over generations. This is one of the reasons I felt it was time to do this for Sondheim.

How did you find composers for this project?
I wanted people who felt like they had a connection to Sondheim’s work or who were influenced by and felt strongly about it. Some know the canon of his work much better than others. When I worked with producer Rachel Colbert, we cast the net to other genres. It was going to start with 15 to 20 pieces, and it went up to 36. With Sondheim’s support and his ideas, it just kept expanding. It’s a project that has dictated its own path. Whether it was financial or artistic, each shift always proved a positive direction. It was a real lesson in trusting the process of creating art.

How were songs selected for inclusion?
I had a wish list, and I had run that by Steve early on. He said most of the pieces would make good piano pieces. I gave [the composers] free choice. A couple composers were going to combine two of the songs. Finishing the Hat (from Sunday in the Park with George) was a big request. Steve Reich snatched it up very quickly. I was trying to get Reich to do Someone in a Tree (from Pacific Overtures) because Sondheim said Reich inspired his writing for Pacific Overtures. One song I love that I did not put on my list, because I didn’t think it would make for a piano piece because it’s so lyric, was The Ladies Who Lunch (from Company.) When talking to David Rakowski he looked at me and said, “Has anyone chosen Ladies?” He made this really incredible version. He gets the bitterness and sadness and pathos of the character.

Were there composers you wanted who said no?
Milton Babbit, Sondheim’s teacher, he was known for his complex music. He was going to revert back to the cabaret style he did as a young man, but he died before he could. Kevin Puts was invited first and had to turn it down because he was busy. Later he said he’d love to do it, but he won the Pulitzer and had to drop out again. John Corigliano turned it down. Pop composers like Billy Joel, Elton John, and Sting were too busy. We ended up with Duncan Sheik, and we were very happy.

Did any of the transcriptions surprise you?
Ethan Iverson’s setting of Send in the Clowns (from A Little Night Music) is very unusual. At first I didn’t quite get what he was after, but he did describe it—there was this pick up band that was trying to do this piece but were interrupted by a pianist playing Send in the Clowns. He was attributing it to jazz clubs where you hear beyond the wall while trying to practice. I thought it was a very unusual setting. Some people hated it. It’s one of those iconic songs and they want to hear it they way it was written.

What do you see as the future for projects like Liaisons with other Broadway composers?
Theater and music have always been completely intertwined. In the future, we will see the composers—maybe Lin Manuel Miranda’s work 40 years from now will warrant a chamber version of pieces from his shows. The greatest songwriting composers of the day, they will always do that. I think the idea will live on. I’m just glad we have this body of work from Sondheim to put out in the world.

Originally published at LAMag.com on October 7, 2015.

Photo of Anthony de Mare by Paolo Soriani

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