(Never) Too Much Jazz
Jazz-summer picks up Monday the 13th with Hizzoner's Gracie Mansion barbeque blessing the 10-day JVC Jazz Festival?New York (George Wein's Festival Productions is taking over the town's name concert halls, park stages and participating clubs). If invited, go.
My personal conflict is Tuesday, June 14; I produce the Jazz Journalists Association's ninth annual Jazz Awards, a gala benefit supper at B.B. King's on 42nd St., and so will miss Art Ensemble of Chicago survivor Joseph Jarman's Buddhist invocation set to open the six-night Vision Festival. I do plan to make the following WARM-with Godfather bassist Reggie Workman, free-not-of-funk drummer Pheeroan akLaff and saxophone collossi Sam Rivers and Roscoe Mitchell-at the Orensanz Foundation's faux-restored Lower East Side synagogue.
(No a.c. in there, btw. If it's hot, dress light.)
To make this music is, in itself, to sweat-visionaries are intense. VF has four hardcore sets a night and weekend matinees, all hailing improvisation's true believers.
Potential highs: "restored-to-life" bassist Henry Grimes' quartet with roaring saxistas Marshall (Sun Ra) Allen and Andrew (local hero) Lamb, and the Chicago-based, groove-centric drummer Hamid Drake; also, don't miss the mini Chicago Fest in honor of deep tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson (also my hometown's Most Valuable Bar Owner) with Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) acolytes including Jarman, reedsman Douglas Ewart, drummer Thurman Barker and Anderson's New Orleans counterpart Kidd Jordan.
Friday June 17: Rarely heard trumpeter Bill Dixon; Boston-crunch guitarist Joe Morris trios with VF champion bassist William Parker and, again, Drake-whom you'll want to hear more of, anyway. Drums are key in jazz, no mistake. Saturday afternoon, June 18: Drummer/electrosperimenter Guillermo E. Brown's Cut-Up Quintet; that night, scorching German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann tears it up with Brooklyn drummer Nashied Waits.
Other times, other possibles: dancer-choreographer Vision Festival producer-director Patricia Nicholson, pianist Matt Shipp, trumpeters Roy Cambell, Dennis Gonzalez and Eddie Gale; flutist-composer Nicole Mitchell; uncategoric Leroy Jenkins; downtown poet Steve Dalachinsky. At $25 per night, $125 for an all-shows pass, the Vision fest is affordable like church, with comparable spiritual uplift.
JVC JF-NY is, comparably, secular. It presents jazz now's high art, historic reverence, Spanish tinge and arguably pop-ish outreach, in mostly glamorous settings. It starts formally June 14 with an all-star trumpeters' tribute to the late, long-lived traditionalist Doc Cheatham (Rose Hall, Jazz@Lincoln Center, naturally); then offers an all-star bassists' extravaganza celebrating the late, fuziak electric bassist Jaco Pastorius (June 22 at the Beacon Theater), and a once-in-lifetime guitarists-beyond-borders wild-style party-with Pat Martino, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jose Feliciano, Frampton, Pizzarelli and more-for the long-lived player, innovator and witness to 20th Century American music, Les Paul, turning 90 (June 19 at Carnegie Hall).
This fest is also piano rich: On June 15 at Rose Theater, esteemed Geri Allen, Kenny Barron, Uri Caine and Randy Weston expand on unforgettable Ellington, Evans, Hancock, Monk. On June 16 at Rose, Chick Corea leads a Latinate quintet and, at the Studio Museum of Harlem, Joanne Brackeen has a trio. On June 17 the ebullient Michel Camilo plays in solo, duo, trio and quartet settings at Rose, while in Prospect Park-and for free!-Ethan Iverson fronts the Bad Plus. On June 21 at the Kaye Playhouse (Hunter College), Bill Charlap, Dick Hyman, Marian McPartland, Dr. Billy Taylor and producer Wein himself tickle ivories in salute to singer-pianist Barbara Carroll. At Carnegie Hall on June 22, Keith Jarrett leads his ethereal trio; June 24 there's icon Dave Brubeck's Quartet; on June 25, piano-man Harry Connick Jr. (at Zankel Hall, with tenor saxophonist Branford Marsalis).
What else? Well, there's tenor saxophonist/bass clarinetist David Murray, now a Parisian, with the Gwo-Ka Masters, Guadeloupean male singers, at the Jazz Standard June 17 to 19 (there's a fest-related ticket deal). Maria Schneider's Orchestra, beloved for creamy writing and mesmerizing soloists, performs for free outdoors at the World Financial Center Plaza at 7, June 21. Acid clarinetist Don Byron is at the Village Vanguard all week-try June 20, when he's with saxophonist Joe Lovano, or on weekend nights June 24 and 25 with pianist Jason Moran and infamously underrated drummer Billy Hart.
Ticket prices swing widely for JVC fest events. Call your shots to save your $. The Carnegie Hall pairing June 17 of Wayne Shorter's Quartet and Dave Holland's Quintet offers two critics' favorites for one price. Shorter is inconsistent but brilliant; Holland's music is consistent and complex, accessible on its surface, unfolding refreshing depths. Mike Mainieri, the Martin Scorsese of vibists, has reconvened the virtuosic and high-tech Steps Ahead with saxophonist Michael Brecker (June 19 at Carnegie Hall). Cameroonian electric bassist singer-songwriter-percussionist Richard Bona is in both sets, with other bottom-trawlers lauding Pastorius' achievements past his calamities.
This is too much music. Nobody says do it all. Just enjoy something.