[Dixielandjazz] Jazz moves onward

[Stephen G Barbone]

Those who subscribe to the "Jazz Inside" magazine  know that jazz is  
indeed alive and well in the New York City Metropolitan. There are   
jazz club, and other jazz event listings on a monthly basis, so  
numerous, it boggles the mind.

But like anything else, jazz moves on. Check out the below article  
about the winter jazzfest in NYC this weekend.

Note the paragraph about trumpeter Nicholas Payton. His album, Bright  
Mississippi with Alain Toussaint is worth a listen. "Bright  
Mississippi" is a tune by Thelonious Monk based on the chords of Sweet  
Georgia Brown, but don't let that scare you. Monk was a stride based  
pianist and you can play Bright Mississippi as Dixieland

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband



January 8, 2010 - NY Times - By Nate Chinen

At Ground Level, Taking Jazz’s Pulse


A lot of people at the Winter Jazzfest this weekend will be ticking  
off names on a mental checklist, or filing them away for later. This  
two-day festival, now in its sixth year, is expressly made for them:  
the prowlers and perusers, many seeking talent for hire. But tickets  
are also available to the public, at $25 a night or $30 for both,  
which gives the Winter Jazzfest another, more fascinating purpose. It  
is for the moment the only real mainstream jazz festival in New York,  
and its lineup amounts to a temperature reading of the scene at ground  
level, where it’s most vibrant and volatile.

What then does the festival’s roster say about jazz at the start of  
this new decade? Mostly that the aesthetic center of the music has  
broadened and loosened, yielding to many different strategies of  
rhythm, harmony and texture. A dozen years ago it might have made  
sense to call this a cross-genre approach, but that very notion now  
feels quaint.

“When you look at the history of jazz,” the pianist Vijay Iyer said  
recently, “everybody who made significant contributions to that music  
never really saw it as a kind of music.” Mr. Iyer, who played the  
inaugural Winter Jazzfest, is back again with his superb trio, whose  
“Historicity” (ACT) was the consensus pick among critics for best jazz  
album of 2009. “Historicity” imposes no hierarchies where style is  
concerned, absorbing protocols from myriad sources. A similar openness  
illuminates the music of Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, an  
ultramodern big band, and the Claudia Quintet, an improvising chamber  
group, and, really, most of the others here, from Lionel Loueke, a  
guitarist from Benin, to the Northern California-raised violinist  
Jenny Scheinman. Hybridism is the new norm.

What about swing? There’s still staunch representation in the form of  
the soul-jazz organist Dr. Lonnie Smith, who will perform at 9:30 p.m.  
on Saturday at Sullivan Hall, and in a handful of bright inheritors,  
like the boppish alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, who holds down roughly  
the same time slot on Friday at Zinc Bar. But that feeling will also  
proliferate in sets by the Matt Wilson Quartet, the William Parker  
Quartet and the J. D. Allen Trio, excellent bands working freely  
within what everyone can recognize, broadly, as the jazz tradition.  
And there’s no disputing the jazz credentials of the effervescent  
young vocalists Gretchen Parlato and Sachal Vasandani, musical  
omnivores who appear in back-to-back slots (7:30 and 8:30) on Saturday  
night at Sullivan Hall.

So the old argument has proved false: open borders don’t necessarily  
spell calamity for the music’s foundations. Consider the trumpeter  
Nicholas Payton, who appears on at 9:20 p.m. Friday at Le Poisson  
Rouge with a group he unwisely calls SeXXXtet. His major appearances  
on record last year were on a traditional New Orleans jazz project  
(Allen Toussaint’s “Bright Mississippi”) and a hard-bop repertory band  
(the Blue Note 7’s “Mosaic”). However explicitly funky his intentions  
with the new group, he has roots.

You’ll find many more roots, tangled and gnarled, among this year’s  
festivities, spread out across five Greenwich Village clubs (up from  
three last year). The itinerary below is a flexible guide: pick and  
choose from these options, or create your own from a full schedule at  
winterjazzfest.com. And bring a notepad, if you’re feeling ambitious.  
You’ll probably want to book some of these artists on a calendar of  
your own. (A list of club addresses appears below.)

The Clubs

All the action takes place within a two-block radius of Greenwich  
Village, chiefly on Bleecker Street between Thompson and Sullivan  
Streets. Schedule at winterjazzfest.com.

BITTER END, 147 Bleecker Street, (212) 673-7030.

KENNY’S CASTAWAYS, 157 Bleecker Street, (212) 979-9762.

LE POISSON ROUGE, 158 Bleecker Street, (212) 505-3474.

SULLIVAN HALL, 214 Sullivan Street, (212) 477-2782.

ZINC BAR, 82 West Third Street, (212) 477-8337.