[Dixielandjazz] Here's a Twist on 1920s jazz.

[Stephen Barbone]

For those who focus on form rather than content and/or don't like
drivel, or Ben Ratliff's style, please delete.

This band has been gigging steadily since the time of the PBS TV Burns
Jazz Show using material from the 20s and 30s. It is not quite OKOM as
we know it, but still an interesting twist on how to present older music
to newer fans. I like the reference to Roswell Rudd because basically in
the 50s, Rudd was an excellent NYC Dixieland player with whom I had the
pleasure to gig. Like Steve Lacy's, his jazz career path accelerated
into the more modern forms.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

January 7, 2003  New York Times

>From the 20's, With a Twist

By BEN RATLIFF

      Steven Bernstein, a trumpeter and a rogue historian of jazz,
believes that jazz should be closely associated with fun and also with
shock. He will use whatever means he has at his disposal: if he can't
provoke fun and shock through music itself, he will do it through choice
of
material.

With his quartet, Sex Mob, Mr. Bernstein has become famous around Tonic
and the Knitting Factory for playing sets including covers of Duke
Ellington, Nirvana, John Barry and even Wynton Marsalis. But his newer
group, Millennial Territory Orchestra, which has gigged steadily through
the last two years, focuses more tightly on jazz of the 1920's and 30's.
Not all of its repertory, as the name would suggest, comes from the
"territory" bands that worked in circumscribed areas of the Southwest
and Midwest. It includes Harlem and Chicago bands as well. And — hey,
rubrics are made to be broken — a little Beatles and Stevie Wonder, too.

At the Millennial Territory Orchestra's late set at the Jazz Standard on
Sunday night — the last set of a three-day run — Mr. Bernstein
demonstrated his form of anti- pedantic history. He opened the set with
cacophony over regular rhythm, gradually bringing more and more
musicians into line with hand gestures, and then the band slipped into
the Chocolate Dandies' slow blues "Paducah" from 1928; compared to the
density of the opening squall, this was elegant, airy music.

The nine-piece band — including the charismatic soloists Doug Wamble (on
guitar) and Charlie Burnham (on violin) — represents a learned tribute
to the early jazz arrangers Mr. Bernstein loves. But its aesthetic
message is from a much later period. The band's loose time feel and
slightly ragged intonation, as it worked hectic, free interplay into the
weave of the older, precise arrangements, felt like a 1960's idea:
finally, it's as much a tribute to the sound of mid-60's records by
Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd.

At one point the band started up a slow, Count Basie-ish number with Mr.
Wamble playing slide guitar; when he started to sing with an
impressive blues-shouter's voice, it was suddenly recognizable as Stevie
Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered." It was a long, discursive version.
As had been the case for the last three days, the set was being taped. A
nightclub recording seems to be the best way to capture the rowdy,
kinetic spirit of the band.