[Dixielandjazz] Where is Jazz Going?

[Steve barbone]

NOT OKOM - DELETE IF NARROWLY FOCUSED.

Otherwise, this is an interesting article on how a couple of jazz bands are
gathering in a younger, Indie-rock oriented audience.

Cheers,
Steve 


The Cross-Pollinators: Jazz Meets Indie-rock

By NATE CHINEN -  November 30, 2005 - NY Times

When the saxophonist James Carter takes the stage at the Iridium Jazz Club
tonight for a five-night run, he will be flanked by several other musicians
with ties to Jazz at Lincoln Center. But as on "Gold Sounds," a recent
album, they will reach past jazz's standard repertory to the songs of
Pavement, the influential 1990's indie-rock band.

Never mind that Mr. Carter and his colleagues had barely heard of Pavement
before making the record. The mere fact of their participation is the latest
wrinkle in an unlikely phenomenon: the flirtation of jazz musicians with the
world, or worlds, of indie-rock.

Jazz and indie-rock, if not opposites, are distinctly unrelated; what they
have most in common is a vastness that strains the terms of genre. It
doesn't take much cynicism to suspect "Gold Sounds" and its label, the
upstart Brown Brothers Recordings, of crossover designs. You would have to
go back at least a generation to find a time when jazz claimed an audience
as robust as indie-rock does today, and one as socially connected, fiercely
protective and doggedly partisan. (On second thought, partisanship is
another thing the two scenes have in common.)

Only a few jazz artists have successfully tapped into that audience. One,
the pianist Brad Mehldau, was the headliner at the Village Vanguard with his
trio last week; it's likely that a substantial portion of each full house
was familiar with his past interpretations of Radiohead, a major-label band
with indie-rock cachet. Another three-piece band, the Bad Plus, also
reliably packs the Vanguard, and its base fits an indie profile more
precisely; or at least, it includes a preponderance of 20-something white
fans who don't otherwise visit jazz clubs. Last week, Mr. Mehldau's album
"Day Is Done" (Nonesuch) was the second-ranked jazz recording on the college
radio charts, as reported by CMJ New Music Report; "Suspicious Activity?"
(Columbia), by the Bad Plus, had just slipped from third to fourth place.
(On Billboard's general-interest jazz album sales chart, neither "Day Is
Done" nor "Suspicious Activity?" ranked in the Top 10.) The new Bad Plus and
Mehldau releases haven't yet been reviewed by Pitchfork Media, the online
clearinghouse of indie-rock, but their previous albums have, and that's a
distinction few jazz artists can claim. (A Pitchfork headline from September
read: "The Bad Plus Make Jazz Cool Again With Album, Tour.")

Mr. Mehldau has never endorsed indie-rock per se; when he reaches beyond
standards and original songs, he overwhelmingly favors pop of an earlier
vintage. And although the Bad Plus has performed Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen
Spirit" and the Pixies' "Velouria," its latest album almost exclusively
focuses on original material. If it was repertory that first brought in new
listeners, something else persuaded them to stay.

In the case of the Bad Plus, that something could be many things - explosive
energies, aggressive touring, even an artfully disharmonious sense of style
- but the members of the group tend to cite old-fashioned values like
honesty and commitment. "Indie-rock audiences are zealots, hard-core," said
David King, the band's drummer, who is a veteran of more than a few
Minneapolis indie bands. "I think they recognize that there's something in
the chemistry of how we approach this stuff, where we play it with a
dedication to the actual intent of the music."

Mr. King was alluding not only to "Velouria," but also to the band's
compositions. He and the bassist Reid Anderson have crafted many of the
vaulting or brazen or yearning compositions in the Bad Plus arsenal; Mr.
Anderson's songs, especially, borrow harmonic elements from both rock and
classical music. Ethan Iverson, the group's pianist and token indie-rock
naïf, contributes pieces with a sly audacity that suits the setting. "It
ends up being about just communicating something with a lot of intensity,"
he said of the band's aesthetic, which in his case derives from avant-garde
jazz heroes like Ornette Coleman (for whom the Bad Plus opened on Saturday
night at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center).