Month: January 2015

Opening theme: Art Ensemble of Chicago, Nice Guys: Nice Guys

Roland Kirk: I’ve Got Your Number: “Rahsaan” The Complete Mercury Recordings of Roland Kirk

Charles Mingus: Eccusiastics: Passions of a Man

Roland Kirk: Rip, Rig and Panic (title tune)

Roland Kirk: A Quote from Clifford Brown: I Talk With the Spritis

Roland Kirk: A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square: “Rahsaan” The Complete Mercury Recordings of Roland Kirk

Jean Sibelius/Minnesota Orchestra/Osmo Vânska: Symphony No. 4: Sibelius Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4

Lee Konitz: Blues for Bird: Charlie Parker Memorial Concert

Uri Caine: Raindrop Prelude: Callithump

Barry Guy/Marilyn Crispell/Paul Lytton: Ithaca (title tune)

Ra-Kalam Bob Moses/David Liebman: Prayer Song (From the Great Hall): Music from a Parallel Dimension

Matana Roberts: Was the Sacred Day: Coin Coin Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile

Out theme: Uri Caine: Two Blue Eyes: The Drummer Boy

Without a doubt, the carnivalesque aspects of Roland Kirk’s presentation—playing two or three horns simultaneously, singing through his flute while sometimes accompanying himself on nose flute, punctuating the end of a solo with his siren, and not incidentally his blindness—had a lot to do with his popularity when he hit the scene in the 1960s, but he wouldn’t have lasted if he hadn’t been such a great and fearless example of a jazz musician who dared all limits down and could blow the bell off any of his horns even when he played them one at a time. I used to see him at the Five Spot when he rotated long gigs with Charles Mingus and Sonny Rollins in his pre-Rahsaan days, before he changed his wildly original but still fairly straight jazz idiom into something more theatrical still, and I found programming about 45 minutes of this music on this week’s Updoc—Friday at 8PM and noon next Tuesday, Five Spot time—a bout of pure listening pleasure. The pace changes with Sibelius’ 4^th Symphony. I’ve been programming the wintry music of Allan Petterson lately, and it seemed time to head for the season’s frozen heart, this time in Osmo Vänskä’s re-recording of it with the Minnesota Orchestra: having done it definitively, once, with the Lahti Orch, he tried to give it something extra this time, and he succeeded. I know the piece well, and seem to be hearing passages that had never crossed my ears before. Updoc chases it with the stunning Lee Konitz Blues for Bird I couldn’t get hold of last week, and chases that with music from Uri Caine, Marilyn Crispell in virtuoso thunder-mode, free improv from Dave Liebman and Bob Moses, and goes to church for a minute with a pentecostal Matana Roberts. The first time I played drums in front of an audience was opposite Roland Kirk’s quartet on a Monday ‘talent night’ at the Village Vanguard, and I remember the noise getting a lot more joyful when he joined us at the end. The tune was Well, You Needn’t, but I was oh so glad we did.

This week Howling examines a record companies bad business plan, ponders on the Norwegian mafia and has to rely on a talking horse! So there you go… the usual rubbish mixed with an hour of the finest blues ‘n roots on the net.

 J.W.Warren – “another bad investment”

Opening theme: Art Ensemble of Chicago, The Ninth Room, Tutankhamun

Dizzy Gillespie: The Cup Bearers; Something Old, Something New

Charlie Haden/Kenny Barron: Body and Soul; Night and the City

Freddie Hubbard: Take it to the Ozone; Super Blue

Kenny Barron/Dave Holland: In Your Arms; The Art of Conversation

Kenny Barron: One Finger Snap; Wanton Spirit

Charlie Haden Quartet West/Shirley Horn: Lonely Town; The Art of the Song

Allan Pettersson/Nörkopping Symphony Orchestra/Leif Segerstam; Symphony No. 8

Dewey Redman/Cecil Taylor/Elvin Jones: Nine; Momentum Space

Elvin Jones: Anthropology; Dear John C.

The New Elvin Jones Trio: Village Greene: Puttin’ it Together

Out theme: Louis Hayes: Village Greene: Return of the Jazz Communicators

Opening theme: Art Ensemble of Chicago – Nice Guys (title tune)

Duke Elllington – Toot Suite – Ellington Jazz Party

Allan Pettersson/Nörkopping Symphony Orchestra/Leif Segerstam – Symphony no. 7 (title tune)

John Coltrane – Sun Ship (multiple takes) – Sun Ship

Claude Debussy/Cleveland Orchestra/Pierre Boulez/Franklin Cohen – Clarinet Rhapsodie – La Mer

Bobby Lapointe – La Framboise – Tirez sur le Pianiste

Duke Ellington – A Tone Parallel to Harlem – Ellington Uptown

Out theme: Charlie Haden – Wayfaring Stranger – The Art of the Song

Time flies when you’re having fun. At the party after the great Charlie Haden memorial concert I found myself telling Lee Konitz about the unaccompanied alto solo he’d played at a star-studded Charlie Parker memorial comcert—Gillespie, Stitt, JJ, a tragic Bud Powell very near the end—at Carnegie Hall in 1965. It was the knockout piece that night and I remembered it well enough to sort of sing the opening. Konitz didn’t recall it, but was struck that I was telling him about a solo he’d played fifty years ago, and that is pretty strange. I wish I had a copy I could play on the show; it was on an LP once. Anyone out there have one? Kenny Barron played at the Haden concert too, and I remembered first hearing him in 1963 with Dizzy Gillespie’s classic band of the period, not yet 20 years old and right up there with Dizzy and James Moody. I was underage at Birdland myself and have got a digital copy of some of that, which leads off this week’s show—Friday at 8PM and noon next Tuesday, Carnegie Hall Tardis time—and a long Kenny Barron set. He is something like the Tommy Flanagan de nos jours, invincibly brilliant no matter the setting, a paragon of invention and a summitry of taste. That decants us into Allan Petterson’s 8^th Symphony, following last week’s 7^th: another obsessive troll through layers of light and dark, accompanied by the sound of a distant hammer. Elvin Jones to the rescue with his skyful of thunder and blaze, a wealth of invention overstorming Cecil Taylor, a trio, and a bebopping quartet. Check out Kenny Barron, though, back in ’63, taking his solo after Gillespie and Moody, showing off his incredible chops without seeming to, unassumingly brilliant and sly. Some things never get old, only better, and Kenny Barron is one of them for sure.

This week Dick’s surrounded  by academics, collectors, raucous ladies and a good ‘ol grandpa! All this means theres a party on the porch with an hour of the finest blues ‘n roots on the net.

Bettye Lavette ” A slow starter”