[Dixielandjazz] Music Teachers - was IAJE & TJEN

[Steve Barbone]

Below from San Diego Newspaper, courtesy of Norman Vickers. No wonder they
don't teach OKOM in schools. It is invisible to the jazz audience in the US.
Note especially the top 10 jazz albums, and top 10 jazz concerts of 2006.
Where the hell is OKOM? In East Jabip I guess. Even the music that made it
to the top ten concerts, Mayfield's N.O. Jazz Orchestra and Dirty Dozen are
not thought of as OKOM by most on the DJML.

Note also Ransey Lewis's comment: ³Jazz people are passive people. They
don't spread the word. We don't go to non-jazz people, and say 'Have you
heard this?' We need to help ourselves". . .

Amen Ramsey. Damn right "we" are more to blame than the teachers, that OKOM
is no more than a pimple on the butt of music today.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone



In jazz world, 'a major paradigm shift'

By George Varga UNION-TRIBUNE MUSIC CRITIC

January 21, 2007 

NEW YORK ­ ³Let's get small² was the name of a popular Steve Martin comedy
routine in the late 1970s, but it's also an apt description of how the jazz
community reacted to the sometimes dramatic changes in the music industry
over the past year.

Accordingly, the benefits of thinking small echoed throughout the 34th
annual International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) conference. It was
held Jan. 10-13 at the Hilton New York and Sheraton New York and included a
strong San Diego contingent among its approximately 8,000 attendees from 45
countries. 

Favorite jazz albums of 2006

1. Ornette Coleman, ³Sound Grammar² (Sound Grammar)

2. Keith Jarrett, ³The Carnegie Hall Concert² (ECM)

3. Andrew Hill, ³Time Lines² (Blue Note)

4. Sonny Rollins, ³Sonny, Please² (Doxy)

5. Brian Lynch/Eddie Palmieri ³Simpatcio² (ArtistShare)

6. Branford Marsalis, ³Bragtown² (Marsalis Music)

7. Trio Beyond, ³Saudades² (ECM)

8. Pete Malinverni, ³Joyful² (ArtistShare)

9. Esperanza Spalding, ³Junjo² (Ayva)

10. Kenny Garrett, ³Beyond the Wall² (Nonesuch)
 

With more major record labels cutting back, consolidating or eliminating
their jazz divisions, the necessity of thinking small is greater than ever.

That reality was reinforced by last month's near-implosion of Verve Records,
one of the oldest, largest and once most respected jazz labels in the
country. The home to such top jazz artists as Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock
and Diana Krall, Verve will now be operated under the Universal Music
Enterprises umbrella.

Verve's downsizing came the same month that the Tower Records chain, which
offered the country's most comprehensive selection of jazz albums, closed
its doors forever. 

While these developments are a major blow for pop music, which is reeling in
this age of digital music and legal (and illegal) file-sharing and
downloading, jazz as a niche music has been hit even harder.

³It's a major paradigm shift,² said Bill McFarlin, IAJE's executive
director. 

³It may not be as huge as the shift from silent movies to talkies, but it's
a major turning point. What you're seeing is the result of a shift in the
way music is produced and consumed, and in the way people pay for it. One
thing IAJE is trying to do is create a dialogue about where we're going. The
survival of the recording industry will be very important for jazz.²

Such adversity is nothing new for jazz, a music that has long been embraced
around the world but is still striving for more respect and recognition here
in the land of its birth. To help achieve that goal, the National Endowment
for the Arts this year will dramatically boost the size of its ³NEA Jazz in
the Schools² program. By the end of 2007, it will be available to 8 million
high school students, up from 4 million last year.

³I think jazz has been so under-recognized and under appreciated in its home
country, but it is alive and healthy,² said Dana Gioia, the NEA's
music-savvy chairman.

Favorite jazz concerts of 2006

1. Wayne Shorter Quartet, Aug. 18, Stephen & Mary Birch North Park Theatre

2. Clark Terry, Charles McPherson, Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham & The Sweet
Baby Blues Band, Sept. 10, KSDS Jazz 88 Festival, Ocean Beach

3. Holly Hofmann/Mike Wofford Quartet, April 5, Copley Auditorium

4. Guinga, Dec. 2, Athenaeum Jazz at the Studio

5. Houston Person, Atsuko Hashimoto and Jeff Hamilton, Sept. 6, Copley
Auditorium 

6. Christian Scott, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Sept. 23, Festival Del Mar

7. Claudia Villela & Kenny Werner, June 15, La Jolla Athenaeum

8. John Scofield, April 17, Athenaeum jazz at the Neurosciences Institute

9. Irvin Mayfield & The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, April 7, Spreckels
Theatre 

10. Steve Smith Jazz Legacy, Oct. 4, UCSD Mandeville Auditorium
 

Gioia was at IAJE for the 25th anniversary of the endowment's Jazz Masters
awards, which this year honor seven veteran artists, including
pianist-composer Toshiko Akiyoshi and saxophonists Frank Wess and Phil
Woods. 

But at least two of this year's Jazz Masters, Woods and pianist Ramsey
Lewis, are frustrated with the state of the music to which they have devoted
their lives. 

³Jazz is an all-encompassing art form that changed the planet. But without
being able to regularly tour in Europe and Japan, I wouldn't have been able
to keep my band together for the past 30 years,² said Woods, who with San
Diego sax great James Moody will receive the Grammy Awards' President's
Merit Award Feb. 6 in Los Angeles.

Lewis, conversely, has a sizable audience in this country. The veteran
pianist is heard and seen by millions each week as the host of the PBS TV
series ³Legends of Jazz² and the ³Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis² radio
show (which airs in 175 cities nationally). ³Jazz people are passive
people,² he charged. ³They don't spread the word. We don't go to non-jazz
people, and say 'Have you heard this?' We need to help ourselves,

His high profile notwithstanding, Lewis pointed his finger directly at
musicians and the American jazz audience.

 because Madison Avenue sees us, they watch us, and they watch all these
students gather at IAJE. And then they watch us go back into the world and
just talk to each other.

³So we have to ask: What can we do to further the music? We musicians talk
the talk, but how many of us walk the walk?²

For a younger generation of jazz artists and entrepreneurs, one increasingly
popular solution is to do it themselves.

³We're boning up on digital distribution,² said Donna Nichols, who with
pop-jazz flutist Bradley Leighton co-owns and operates Pacific Coast Jazz, a
4-year-old record label based in San Diego. ³The big goal is to keep our
presence known after losing our presence at Tower and other retail outlets.²

Trumpeter Dave Douglas and saxophonists Branford Marsalis and Sonny Rollins
are among the prominent musicians who once recorded for major labels but
left to launch their own independent record companies. Others, including
former San Diego trumpeter Brian Lynch, have opted to record for
ArtistShare, a jazz-friendly label whose albums are available only online,
not at any retail outlets.

Like a growing number of jazz artists, Lynch also uses his Web site to
market his music directly to fans.

³Making money is not my direct goal,² said Lynch, a member of Woods' band
and a current Grammy Award nominee for ³Simpatico,² his superb ArtistShare
album with Latin-jazz great Eddie Palmieri.

³But you can make more money per unit by going directly to the consumer
online, which is the same as selling your CDs at gigs.²

Lynch was one of several former or current San Diegans who performed at this
year's IAJE. Others include pianist (and SDSU jazz professor) Rick Helzer
and sax legend Moody, whose Jan. 12 performance with the Dizzy Gillespie
All-Star Big Band included a crowd-pleasing vocal duet with Italian singer
Roberta Gambarini on the Gillespie favorite ³Blue 'n' Boogie.²

Moody was also featured at a Jan. 10 ceremony at Jazz at Lincoln Center in
Manhattan, where he joined Nancy Wilson and other luminaries for the
unveiling of a commemorative stamp honoring jazz vocal icon Ella Fitzgerald,
with whom he toured extensively in 1946.

³I would like to congratulate the U.S. Postal Service for being hip enough
to issue an Ella Fitzgerald stamp,² Moody told the capacity audience, which
included former New York Mayor David Dinkins and big-band leader Gerald
Wilson. Significantly, Moody was the only speaker whose salute to Fitzgerald
also touched on the segregation and rampant racism of the era in which he
and she achieved stardom.

For other IAJE attendees, the conference offered valuable insight about what
it takes to achieve a career in jazz, if not fame.

³This is great,² said guitarist Nathan Jarrell, a senior in SDSU's jazz
studies department. ³It's not often you get so many incredible players all
in one place at one time.²

San Diego vocalist Tokeli was even more effusive.

³For a first-timer at IAJE, I ate it up,² she said. ³I sang, I listened, I
networked. And I kept listening and listening ­ and learning. It was
wonderful and inspiring and it will take me another week to soak it all up.²