[Dixielandjazz] Re: Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 6, Issue 23

[Stephen Barbone]

> Charlie Hull <charlie at easysounds.com> wrote
>
> The New York Times (registered trade mark) today has an item listing
> featured music in a jazz festival to be held the last two weeks in June.
> The following is the closest it gets to OKOM:
>
> "BIX LIVES ON: A BEIDERBECKE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION" (JVC festival event.)
> Here's a concert that shines all kinds of light on old music associated with
> the great cornetist and composer Bix Beiderbecke: it presents his music
> straight, dices it up and rearranges it, and in some cases expands it. Among
> the new ideas will be a few Bix pieces arranged for three cornets (played by
> Jon-Erik Kellso, Randy Reinhart and Randy Sandke) and several arrangements
> of his solo-piano pieces for large ensemble. And with Howard Alden, Wycliffe
> Gordon and Ken Peplowski. Kaye Playhouse, 8 p.m. Admission: $40.
> Charlie (waiting for the call from the Times' lawyers) Hull

No problem about the lawyer, Charlie, the Times is kind enough to put it into "printer format" for those who wish to
copy it.

The Festival is the JVC Festival (used to be the Newport Jazz Festival) and lately has been all modern jazz. Big time
modern players from Charlie Hayden to Ornette Coleman, Wayne Shorter, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Chick Corea, Cedar Walton,
Dave Brubeck and others. Bless them for the Bix.

Also there at the Iridium will be two of my heroes, Buddy DeFranco and Tony Scott. For a full week, sharing the stage
with different clarinetists each night. The redoubtable Kenny Davern will guest and carry the torch for OKOM during
that week. Among the three of them, there is sure to be one we all like. And for us reedmen, even if we don't like
Scott or DeFranco, I think we admire their creativity and virtuosity. The are Giants in Jazz and on the instrument.

The Bix Bash should be interesting. Jon Erik Kellso, Randy Reinhart and Randy Sandke are among the best cornet/trumpet
players of OKOM in the world. Alden a great guitarist, Peplowski a great reedman, and Wycliff Gordon plays one hell of
a lot of trombone and/or tuba. I believe folks like Dan Levinson and Vince Giordano are also a part of this, and maybe
even Tom Roberts. Note also that this concert is $40 a pop for 2 hours.

Seeing that price, one might ask, "Are we giving the music away at OKOM Festivals? And if so, why do so few people
come to most of them? (Not all, but most)

Part of the answer may be in the preamble to the venue listings in this NY Time article. Festival producers on the
list may find the rationale interesting. It is by the Times music critic most of us seem to hate, Ben Ratliff. who is,
by the way,  a very knowledgeable guy, about jazz . See below:


THE last two weeks of June in New York — JVC Jazz Festival time — answer at least two questions: Which musicians are
making tours of the festival circuit? And what constitutes a general-audience show in jazz?

What the festival doesn't answer, because it can't, is the question of what is the full scope of jazz in 2003.

No matter who its underwriters are, a jazz festival needs generalist jazz enthusiasts — thousands and thousands of
them — to fill large halls. And the people who think first about buying tickets to a festival show, as opposed to
diving into the regular hurly-burly of year-round jazz in New York clubs, are by and large the generalists.

So here's some reading between the lines of the JVC schedule to determine what the generalists might think this year:

Ornette Coleman and Wayne Shorter are now considered old favorites. Mr. Coleman was the terror of jazz-town when he
came to New York in 1959 and confounded everyone by playing — would you believe? — sections of music that had no
determined key. And Mr. Shorter is playing his most aggressive and fragmented acoustic material with a hungry new
band.

Afro-Cuban music is obviously and inextricably linked to jazz and jazz audiences.

The experimental side of jazz has finally entered a healthy working relationship with the bebop-and-beyond mainstream
tradition.

Great singers, especially those whose sensibilities straddled a few different kinds of music, are a safe bet for a
promoter even after they're dead.

All this may be obvious, but this festival tends to deal in the obvious. A nonobvious measure it has taken for the
second year running, however, is simultaneous, smart bookings at the Village Vanguard and Birdland: the modern sounds
are at the Vanguard, and the more traditional side of jazz at Birdland. For the Vanguard series JVC has finally copied
an idea used at the Montreal Jazz Festival since 1989: booking a single important musician for several nights in the
same room and featuring him in entirely different contexts each night.

It's a simple enough idea and absolutely worthwhile for several reasons. One is that it's a true representation of a
working life in jazz: most bandleaders need to keep several bands going to survive and to keep an audience interested.
Another is that the series builds momentum and excitement in a town that's seen it all.

And because the focus of the Vanguard series (June 24 to 29) is the drummer Paul Motian, a septuagenarian whose life's
work — from his role in Bill Evans's famous trio of the early 1960's to his own Electric Bebop group of the 1990's —
has always been alive to contemporary directions of serious
jazz, you're getting the possibility of learning a huge amount about jazz in a few days.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone