[Dixielandjazz] New York City - The Jazz Capitol of the World

[Stephen G Barbone]

It seems New York City is still the Jazz Capital of the world. Lots  
going on, mostly modern jazz,
however, see the concert the Times recommends at the end of the  
article. If you are in the area
and not afraid, or too tired to go out and seek live OKOM, that  
concert and venue are a must.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

On the Horns of Abundance: Jazz Festivals Resound

NY TIMES - By Ben Ratliff - June 11, 2010


An extraordinary amount of jazz hits New York over the next two weeks:  
four festivals, about 150 sets, and much of it extracurricular to the  
usual riches at the clubs. It’s a time of marathons and breadth and  
goes in heavy for the new: not just youth, but also new aesthetic  
combinations, new attitudes toward repertory, new influences and  
paradigms, new clubs and theaters. Unlike some past jazz festival  
seasons, with more brand-polishing and sentimental favorites, this one  
— in the aggregate — can really show you where both the music and the  
culture of jazz in New York have gotten to.

The news releases plonked into e-mailboxes throughout the spring.  
First to announce a schedule was the old-school jazz promoter George  
Wein. After the exit of JVC as his regular sponsor, he returns this  
year with the first annual CareFusion Jazz Festival, named after the  
medical technology company that is writing its checks. It’s a mixture:  
typical JVC-esque big-hall bookings (Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett,  
João Gilberto); carefully chosen smaller shows with some of the best  
younger bandleaders, including Ambrose Akinmusire and Darcy James  
Argue; and a few gigs for early and swing-era jazz fans.

Next, the 15th Vision Festival, an event planned and run community- 
style, with minimum sponsorship and maximum input from musicians, by  
Patricia Parker; it’s built around the lineage of free improvisation  
and jazz’s nonmainstream. This year’s festival is half again as big as  
last year’s. It contains an evening devoted to the Chicago pianist  
Muhal Richard Abrams and his circle and gigs by the local scene’s  
veterans, including the saxophonists Charles Gayle and David S. Ware,  
as well as the improvising singer Fay Victor, the scholarly and  
freewheeling Chicago-based quintet People, Places & Things and the  
rock band Akron/Family. The shows spread through the Lower East Side:  
clubs, cultural centers, even the playground of the Campos Plaza  
housing development on East 13th Street.

Then came news of the first Undead Jazzfest, two nights of hear-a- 
thons in clubs on a stretch of Bleecker and Sullivan Streets, this  
Saturday and Sunday. It occupies, roughly, the middle path between  
Vision Festival and CareFusion: heavy on neither free improvisation  
nor the mainstream-jazz continuum.

It’s the sound of the adventurous present, including the drummer and  
composer John Hollenbeck, the saxophonist Steve Coleman, and Fight the  
Big Bull, a roustabout little big band from Richmond, Va. It’s  
produced by Brice Rosenbloom and Adam Schatz, who are doing much to  
expand, diversify and generally excite the New York jazz audience  
through their annual Winter Jazzfest.

Finally, No. 4: “Tri-Centric Modeling,” a startling mini-festival of  
the arch-conceputalist Anthony Braxton’s music, with some of the more  
imposing musicians who have played in his circle over the last 30 years.

Here are shows recommended by the jazz writers of The New York Times.

Edited by Barbone, leaving out concerts by Herbie Hancock, Wayne  
Shorter, Joe Lovano Anthony Braxton, McCoy Tyner and  similar leading  
modernists. I would think folks near Queens County in NYC would want  
to go to the Armstrong House/Museum to see some OKOM



AN EVENING IN LOUIS ARMSTRONG’S GARDEN (June 19) Truth in advertising:  
This concert, part of CareFusion, unfolds at the actual former home of  
Louis Armstrong, now a functioning museum. The talent includes an  
Armstrong torchbearer (the tuba player David Ostwald) and a few  
inheritors (like the trumpeter Randy Sandke and the guitarist Howard  
Alden), among others. Louis Armstrong House Museum, Corona, Queens.  
(Chinen)