It's International Jazz Day

Happy and all that for UNESCO's International Jazz Day, but since I either listen to, think or write (sometimes even dream) about jazz every single day, my celebration will consist of a quiet thought about all the men and women who have spent their lives pursuing beauty in this music, especially those who went against the grain, be it personal problems, illness, financial straits, prison or just the lack of an understanding audience.

As an illustration, I leave you with a live recording in a New York club by a great, happy guitar virtuoso who left us too soon possibly because he worked himself to death, accompanied by an unsung hero of the piano, a true master of swing and the blues who also left way too soon because he lived the life he had to live, despite his epilepsy.

For all those musicians, regardless of gender, skin pigmentation or nationality, "I Remember You" indeed.

Kit Downes & Tom Challenger: Wedding Music live at Royal Festival Hall

The Royal Festival Hall is hosting an organ season to celebrate the culmination of the three-year long refurbishment works to bring back its organ to life, with its 7,866 pipes laid along the span of the stage.

The organ at Royal Festival Hall, refurbished (© Nick Rochowski)

Jazzaldia 2013: days 2-5

(This is a digest of the more detailed account of the 48º Heineken Jazzaldia, the annual summer jazz festival in Donostia/San Sebastián, Spain, which can be found in Spanish, here. You can read about day 1 in English here.)

As vilified as it may be, the European summer jazz festival circuit must surely come as a blessing for many, musicians and fans alike. Besides the opportunities to work for the former, and to enjoy quality live music for the latter, it's a good chance to meet up with old friends who become part of the landscape for a few days a year.

One of those chance meetings: John Zorn and Lee Konitz
(© Fernando Ortiz de Urbina)

Jazzaldia 2013: day 1

© Fernando Ortiz de Urbina

The succession of free gigs around the Kursaal auditorium make the first day of Jazzaldia a whole different business from the rest of it. For some, it's joyful and a communal experience. For others, it's the mob.

We're all old enough too keep banging on about stylistic considerations and ask ourselves what do we really want from music. At best, it should make us dance and jump, reflect and scream, laugh and cry... while it tears our hearts out like Indiana Jones' and replaces them tenderly, as many times as it wishes.

Jazz, music, art in general, at their best, seem to stem from this dialogue:

—What if we do...?
—Why not?!

© Fernando Ortiz de Urbina

What if we put together a band with two drum kits, a vibraphone, assorted percussion, electric bass, two electric guitars with their respective effects, a horn section (trumpet, alto, tenor and bari saxes), a theremin, voices... and, actually, whatever else we may think of. We could also add some dancers. And a painter working during the gig. And a big video screen in the background. How about a giant jellyfish-shaped balloon? Make it fly over the stage. And over the audience too.

What if this orchestra plays music with plenty of vamps. Like the Mission Impossible theme. Music for dancing. Lots of it. And binary rhythms, like Sabre Dance. And in three. And in four, that's perentory. And in five, like Dave Brubeck could never imagine. And some of that jazz that goes from Mingus through Bill Barron's ensembles to Mostly Other People Do The Killing. And rock guitars. And some nice chord sequences. And monster unisons. And polkas. And some ska...

All of the above exists and has a name: SHIBUSASHIRAZU ORCHESTRA, which unlucky Cinderellas missed on the 24th. That, and the chance to see the whole of Zurriola beach jumping and dancing at 2 a.m. On a Thursday.

Shibusashirazu Orchestra
© Fernando Ortiz de Urbina

Earlier that evening...

ROBERT GLASPER: quartet. Funk is like a good dessert. It can save anything. Take a good bassist (Derrick Hodge) and a good drummer (Mark Colenburg), and you'll be able to play anything on them. Vocoder is not such a versatile resource as some seem to think. One of the best moments happened with Casey Benjamin on alto sax and without Glasper. Ponder that.

Rock interlude: Alchemy

Alchemy is a live album by Dire Straits, possibly the band that made the most money in the crazy Eighties, when British pop/rock seemed to embrace thatcherism and conquered a sizeable chunk of worldwide record sales. Actually, the Straits' next tour would be a gruelling one year away from home, so designed, apparently, for tax purposes.

Sinatra live in 1961

I've just come across some footage of a Frank Sinatra concert in Sydney (Australia) from 1961. That was a time when Sinatra was at the top of his game, the end of his glorious years with Capitol, before his problems with the Kennedys, before the Rat Pack, years before "Strangers in the Night".

Peter Brötzmann and... Lionel Hampton

German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann (b. 1941), one of those guys who could make you a straight soprano sax by blowing on a curved one, is one of the stalwarts of European free improvisation. He came up at the end of the 1960s and, while he might be expected to have drawn inspiration for similarly-minded American players, this is what he says about the his seminal, groundbreaking, even violent Machine Gun (1968) and his unlikely model.

"I wanted to sound like four tenor saxophonists, that's the sound that I wanted... I got the idea from the Lionel Hampton band, the big band he had, with four really heavy saxophonists in the front line and they played unison. That's the sound I've been trying to get, that's what I was attempting with Machine Gun and that's what I'm still chasing"

Peter Brötzmann, interviewed in the November issue of Wire magazine.

Brötzmann will be, with his Chicago Tentet at London's Cafe Oto on November 9-10, as part of the London Jazz Festival.

Lionel Hampton: "Flying Home" (1967)

Peter Brötzmann: "Machine Gun" (1968)

On your marks, get set...

It's (not at all) funny how time seems to speed up when we change the hour on the last weekend of October. Suddenly it's mid-November and the London Jazz Festival is again upon us. Around 280 events — most of them gigs, but also masterclasses, talks, etc. — in 10 days, with some of the most exciting music in the world available in town, unabated by cuts in public spending or general financial gloom.

Even a cursory look at the programme will reveal an impressive array of names, some of them regulars at this kind of international festivals. To give you twenty random names, Ornette Coleman, Henry Threadgill, Charles Gayle, Ray Gelato, Stefano Bollani (featuring Martial Solal!), Hermeto Pascoal, Richard Galliano (featuring Dave Douglas), Michel Portal, Roy Haynes (with Peter King), McCoy Tyner (featuring Chris Potter), Stan Tracey, Soweto Kinch, the Brubecks, Martin Taylor, Steve Swallow, Joey Calderazzo, David Sanborn, Kenny Wheeler, Archie Shepp & Joachim Kühn...

Going back to the current situation, though, and especially for curious listeners, there are quite a few *** free *** events that are worth noting, like the gigs by the likes of Duck Baker, Gwylim Simcock, Martin Speake (featuring John Hollenbeck), locals F-IRE Collective, or (is this a LJF first?) the one-hour CD exchange. And there's also the HMTTY ("Hear Me Talkin' To Ya") series of live interviews for BBC broadcast.

So, if by any change you're around town, do have a look and let the sound of surprise surprise you. I'll be tweeting on it, and also reviewing a very small part of it, in Spanish, for Cuadernos de Jazz.

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Weekend viewing: Harold Land-Bobby Hutcherson

Harold Land-Bobby Hutcherson Quintet, with Land on tenor, Hutcherson on vibes, Stanley Cowell on piano, Reggie Johnson on bass, and Joe Chambers on drums. This footage is from their 1969 European tour.

First, in Antibes, on July 25th, they play "Herzog", a modal tune by Bobby Hutcherson, from his Blue Note album Total Eclipse. Warning: the video ends abruptly cutting the ending.

Next, from their concert in Molde (Norway) in 1969, possibly July too, they first do "Theme from Blow-Up" (Herbie Hancock's composition for Antonioni's film), and then Sonny Rollins' "Oleo".

Have a good weekend.

Benny Goodman's Carnegie Hall concert... in Croydon

Tomorrow at 20:00 Fairfield Halls in Croydon will host Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. Live. A group of musicians, led by Richard Pite and Pete Long taking Gene Krupa's and Benny Goodman's roles on drums and clarinet, will play the legendary concert.

Although I've never seen this show, I've been to an homage to Benny Goodman's Quartet (and its members) also by Pite and Long, and it was excellent. Of the two, Pite is the most compelling, with his vintage drum set and his unique commitment to old-style drumming. This is more important than it may seem: as Pite demonstrated with Guy Barker and Big Band Britannia, at Barbican in 2009, historically accurate drumming is half the flavour of a repertory band.

In these days, there's never a bad chance to see a big band live, especially if, for historical accuracy, they play acoustic.

More info on the event, here.

The most complete source of information about the original concert, and an entertaining read too, is Jon Hancock's book, an astonishing 200, A4-sized, pages devoted to the event.

The whole programme of the night can be listened to in Spotify.

PS: Some footage from the original gig...

Random thoughts on Cedar Walton

(After two sets at Ronnie Scott's)

Cedar Walton is a good jazz composer. He plays composer piano, well-structured solos, everything in its place. He's elegant, tasteful, bluesy and ballsy, all at the same time.

He's in the tradition that comes from a certain set of values, a certain self-restraint, a solid musical foundation and plenty of church-going.

Not to be missed, if possible.

PS: David Williams on bass is truly great, but Willie Jones III is so inexplicably hot and cool at the same time that he almost makes me sick.

Ray Gelato in 2011

Last Saturday, the musical offerings in London were as rich and diverse as usual, in almost any genre you might think of. Nevertheless, Ray Gelato and his Giants were at the 100 Club, an occasion that, at least in principle, it's not to be missed. The club itself was started by the great Victor Feldman's father (the composer of "Seven Steps to Heaven" was present as an 8-year old drummer) in right smack in the middle of WWII, and its history is so rich (see this and this) that it's almost obscene. Nowadays, it lacks the solemnity of other clubs, but still keeps an aura that seems to rub off on whoever takes the stage.

PS: João Gilberto at 80 - 2011 tour

© AFP

Thanks to a reader's question, I've checked the news on Gilberto's birthday, and according to Globo.com he's doing a mini tour of 5 to 8 shows in Brazil between August 29th and November 30th. So far five cities have been confirmed: São Paulo (Sep 3, HSBC Brasil), Rio (Sep 10, Rio Vivo), and dates are to be announced for Salvador, Porto Alegre, and Brasília.

The tour is called 80 anos – Uma vida bossa nova and there are plans for two DVDs to be recorded.

Glad to hear that he's well enough to tour at 80.

Good luck if you're trying to get a ticket, and let us know how it went.