Jesse van Ruller, Frans van der Hoeven and Martijn Vink," Blame It On My Youth"

Does anyone play Jazz at this tempo anymore?

Dutch guitarist Jesse van Ruller will be our featured guest on JazzProfiles on 9/18/2012.

Until then, we hope you will enjoy this video of Jesse along with bassist Frans van der Hoeven and drummer Martijn Vink that was recorded at the North Sea Jazz Festival in 2002.

The tune is Blame It On My Youth, speaking of which ....

Where does the time go?

Dave Brubeck - “Ode to a Cowboy”

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

It is amazing to consider the fact that pianist-composer-arranger, Dave Brubeck, spent over 60 years on the road until his retirement from what his wife Iola Brubeck referenced in a message to the Jazz writer and blogger Doug Ramsey as - “The Gigs.”

Can you imagine - sixty years on the road?

I was reflecting on this incredible achievement with a pianist friend recently and his initial reaction was – “Just think about all those cruddy pianos he had to play on before he became famous.” Derelict pianos were a fact-of-life in most Jazz joints for many years.

One of Dave’s earliest albums for Columbia Records was Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A. [CL 984]. It was recorded in 1956 and 1957 when Dave’s quartet had been traveling regularly for about 5 years.

One can only wonder at what such a diary of musical impressions might sound like if another 55-years of traveling was added to it!

At the time of its issuance, Dave wrote the following introductory paragraphs for the albums liner notes:

“A music notebook is as important to the traveling musician, as a sketch pad is to the artist. When lulled by the sounds of travel, the drone of the plane, the rumble of the bus, the clack of the rails, or even the hiss of the radiator in a strange hotel room, themes suddenly spring into consciousness. If a sketchbook is handy, the elusive idea is captured to be developed, arranged or changed. "Jazz Impressions" is a group of compositions created in just such a manner, from notebook scribblings made while on tour. It was recorded on three different dates, in three different cities (New York, Hollywood, and Oakland) as our itinerary permitted.

As many popular songs have been transformed by jazz into almost different tunes — different in emotional content, rhythmic conception, and melodic development — so these sketches by the Quartet vary according to the mood of the group and the individual interpretations of the soloist. The themes themselves, which are but the skeletal framework for improvisation, occasionally use musical devices which are typical of certain regions in the United States.

Although these pieces have their moments of humor, at no time do we attempt to satirize the indigenous music which served as inspiration for these impressions. Much of the folk music of America has become integrated into jazz, and conversely jazz has affected folk music itself, so that today we find endless cross-influences.”

The opening track on the  Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A. LP is entitled Ode to a Cowboy.

The following anecdote about Dave’s formative years prior to becoming a professional musician may have had something to do with the manner in which this Jazz impression was formed.

“Dave was a working cowboy by the rime he was thirteen. "My dad," he said, "was a cattleman and a top rodeo roper, maybe the top in California some years. He was the Salinas Rodeo and Livermore champion in roping. He wanted a son that would follow him. I was the youngest of the sons, so I was his last chance.

"My dad covered the western states, buying cattle for a big company called the Moffet Meat Company," Dave said. "And like myself, he was always on the road. He wanted to settle down. So the company gave him a 45,000-acre ranch to manage, if you can imagine how large that is. In some places it was twenty-five miles across. He moved there and took me and my mother when I was twelve.

The ranch was in Ione about 115 miles east of San Francisco in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada’s.” [Gene Lees, The Man on the Buffalo Nickel, in Cats of Any Color: Jazz Black and White, p. 43].

Also in his notes to the album, Dave wrote:

“Ode to a Cowboy is an example of group creation, after the theme has been presented and the idea discussed. Paul Desmond's alto becomes the plaintive voice of a singing cowboy, and Norman Bates' bass, his guitar accompaniment. The tango rhythm was Norman's invention, his contribution to the developed composition. Joe Morello's sensitive drumming suggests the presence of the cowboy's sole companion. A typical cowboy chord progression is intrinsic in the melody.”

The tune has always been one of my favorites; maybe someone will one day write a tune entitled Ode to a Jazz Musician and dedicate it to Dave?

The Fred Hersch Trio, “Alive at The Vanguard”

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The trio "specializes in high lyricism and high danger."

— The New Yorker

The title of this piece refers to the double CD that Palmetto Records [PM 2159] will release on September 11, 2012 which pianist Fred Hersch and his trio – John Hebert on bass and Eric Harland on drums – recorded at this legendary NYC club from February 7^th-12^th, 2012.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles have been devoted fans of Fred’s work, both in trio and solo piano forms, for many years.

In a detailed press release, Ann Braithwaite, of Braitwaite & Katz, the firm handling the public and media relations for the new recording, had this to say about Fred, his career and the new Alive at The Vanguard CD.

"A new piano trio recording by five-time Grammy nominee Fred Hersch offers the rare opportunity to recalibrate expectations about the most fundamental of all jazz settings. Captured in the heat of creative ferment at the Village Vanguard, the sanctified venue that has long served as the pianist's second home, Hersch's trio with bassist John Hebert and drummer Eric McPherson displays all the rhythmic daring, preternatural interplay, harmonic sophistication and passionate lyricism that makes it one of the era's definitive ensembles. Slated for release by Palmetto on September 11, the double album features a diverse array of seven scintillating new Hersch originals, four American Songbook gems, and seven classic jazz tunes. Reviewing the trio the week of the recording, The New York Times' Nate Chinen referred to the group's "stronger sense of itself."

"This may be my best trio playing on record, in terms of range, sound, being in the moment, and the way we play together," says Hersch, 56. "Not that I disown any of my former albums, but considering where I was three to four years ago, this is very strong, focused playing. And sonically I think it really captures the Vanguard. It sounds different than a studio album, and it should sound different, so you feel like you're there."

Hersch introduced his latest trio on his acclaimed 2010 Palmetto debut Whirl, a session that arrived with the freighted backstory of his miraculous recovery from a two-month coma so deep that his doctors feared he'd never regain consciousness (he turned the near-death experience into the wildly imaginative chamber jazz production "My Coma Dreams," a collaboration with librettist Herschel Garfein). Hersch had spent much of the last decade performing with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nasheet Waits, a stellar trio that gently transitioned into his current combo. Hebert and McPherson had served in pianist Andrew Hill's last rhythm section and they already had a built-in history.

I've always loved John's playing." Hersch says. "Like Drew, I was attracted to him by his sound. He's from Baton Rouge, and his playing has a looseness that's great for me. He's also done his homework in the tradition. He can really play a ballad and he knows where the substitute chords are."

The album's revelation may be McPherson, though he's hardly a new face on the scene. A standout since he joined Jackie McLean's band as a teenager in the early 1990s, he spent 15 years with the alto legend. That, along with his work accompanying heavyweights like Hill, Pharaoh Sanders and Greg Osby, established McPherson as a forceful and resourceful post-bop player versed in the polyrhythmic vocabularies of Elvin Jones and Jack DeJohnette. But in Hersch's trio he comfortably embraces a less-is-more trap set aesthetic, with masterly dynamic control, quiet intensity and consistently thoughtful textural shadings. When it's time to flex his muscles, like the rollicking Charlie Parker blues "Segment" or his cascading solo on "Opener," which Hersch composed as a feature for McPherson, he plays with the requisite punch.

"Eric is incredible at what we call the transition game, going from brushes to sticks and other implements," Hersch says. "I'm not sure how many people realize that. He's kind of a sleeper. He knows the tradition in and out. He came up as a sideman with some great musicians and he is quite a magician himself."

Much of the time Alive at the Vanguard feels like a series of revelations. Hersch's touch has never sounded more vital or responsive, and the trio seems to breathe together, whether whispering the introduction to Jule Styne's "I Fall In Love Too Easily" or hurtling through the playful steeplechase of Hersch's "Jackalope." The album opens with Hersch's mysterious "Havana," a tune that floats on a McPherson groove that lightly references clave without being predictable.

Part of what makes Alive so rewarding is the way Hersch's music is an ongoing conversation with a pantheon of jazz masters. In a loving tribute to the late drummer Paul Motian, a musician inextricably linked to the Vanguard for five decades, Hersch's melancholy ballad "Tristesse" employs a distinctively Motianian harmonic strategy. "He writes deceptively simple tunes, with two voices outlining the harmony, but not in rhythm. It's something that Paul really knew how to do, that he sort of invented. I've played some of his music over the years," Hersch says, noting that he covered Motian's "Blue Midnight" on Whirl.

Hersch tips his hat to Wayne Shorter with the enigmatic "Rising, Falling," a harmonically intricate piece that seems to hover in mid air. He celebrates the imposing influence of Sonny Rollins with a fiercely swinging version "Softly As In A Morning Sunrise," a piece the tenor titan immortalized on his classic 1957 album Live at the Village Vanguard, and closes the first disc with an unusually slow rendition of the Rollins standard "Doxy," reveling in the tune's crags and crevices. He summons the spirit of another saxophone immortal with "Sartorial," a snazzy piece inspired by Ornette Coleman's singular fashion sensibility. "Lady Gaga has nothing on Ornette clotheswise," Hersch says. "I went over to his apartment and played with him, and he's always decked out. This piece reminded me of him."

Ornette's most haunting ballad opens the first of the album's three medleys that brilliantly link unlikely tunes, a Hersch trademark. He introduced his re-harmonized version of "Lonely Woman" paired with Miles Davis' ethereal "Nardis" on his fascinating 1998 tribute to Bill Evans Evanessence. The atmosphere gets thick with intrigue when he combines two minor key classics, Russ Freeman's "The Wind" and Alec Wilder's "Moon and Sand" (a piece he interpreted on his 1984 debut on Concord Records, Horizons). And Hersch closes the album with an exquisite, extended investigation of "The Song Is You," which segues into the middle of Monk's echoing "Played Twice," which is essentially played once. It's a sly and unexpected sign-off after an evening of thrilling surprises.

In many ways Hersch's ascendance to jazz's top ranks is a wonder, given his relatively late discovery of the music. Born and raised in Cincinnati, he studied music theory and composition while growing up and sang in high school theater productions. It wasn't until he was attending Grinnell College in Iowa that he turned on to jazz when he started listening to John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Miles Davis and Chick Corea. But the jazz bug really bit him when he went home for the holidays and happened into a Cincinnati jazz spot. He ended up dropping out of school and earned his stripes on the bandstand, with veteran musicians serving as his professors. After honing his chops for 18 months, he enrolled at New England Conservatory, earned an undergraduate degree and made the move to New York City in 1977.

Hersch quickly gained recognition as a superlative accompanist, performing and recording with masters such as Stan Getz, Joe Henderson, Billy Harper, Lee Konitz, and Art Farmer. Since releasing his first album under his own name, he's recorded in an array of settings, including a series of captivating solo recitals, duos with vocalists Janis Siegel and Norma Winstone, and ambitious recent projects, like his chamber jazz setting for Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," documented on his 2005 Palmetto album of the same name. As an educator, Hersch has shepherded some of the finest young pianists in jazz through his teaching at NEC and the New School. A leading force in galvanizing the jazz community in the fights against HIV/AIDS, he produced 1994's all-star album Last Night When We Were Young for Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS.

If there's one thread running through Hersch's career it's the trio. From his first session with Marc Johnson and Joey Baron, he's pushed at the limits of lyricism and temporal fluidity with similarly searching improvisers. It's telling that his trio-mates have included versatile musicians such as Michael Formanek and Tom Rainey. With Alive at the Vanguard, Hersch has once again set a daunting standard that he's already scheming to surpass.

"When trio is right it's very strong, but also very fragile," Hersch says. "If it's right it's transcendent, and if anything is off, the whole thing crumbles. John and Eric are both incredibly alert. I don't feel like there's any ego. We're all trying to serve the music as it unfolds."

And here are Fred’s comments and thoughts about some of the music on the recording.

“Alive at the Vanguard is my third recording at the legendary club known as "the Carnegie Hall of jazz clubs", in existence for more than 75 years. The special acoustics, the intimacy, the ambiance and the ghosts of the great artists who graced the stage here - all this contributes to the quality of the music created at the Vanguard night after night, year after year.

I love this trio - both John and Eric give themselves so completely to the music through their wonderful approaches to their instruments, their wisdom and their true creativity. This is our second CD, preceded by 2010's Whirl. In the intervening two years we have had many opportunities to play together - including some lengthy tours - and the band's collective sound has grown enormously. I feel that these discs really capture what this trio is about in all ways.

A few words about some of the tunes.

Havana came to me out of nowhere; I can't say exactly why I called it Havana, but the rhythm and romance of it seemed to put the romance of that city in my mind. I dedicated Tristesseio the late drummer Paul Motian. I had the privilege of playing a week with him at the Vanguard in January of 2010 with bassist Drew Gress and it was unforgettable. For bebop trivia buffs, Segment is the only Charlie Parker composition in a minor key.

I recorded this arrangement of Lonely Woman/Nardis on my Evanessence album in the 1990’s – moving Ornette’s tune up to E minor made the connection for me.

Dream Of Monk is from my 2010 multi-media Jazz theater piece My Coma Dreams. In this dream, Monk and I are in separate cages in a room; a man bursts into the room, gives us music paper and pencils and says, “Whoever can finish a tune first will be released!" I scribble like mad, finish my tune and I look over at Monk who is just in his cage, sweetly smiling. True to the dream, I wrote the tune in about 20 minutes.

Softly and Doxy are in my mind forever associated with Sonny Rollins one of my all-time jazz heroes. He plays Softly on the first album recorded at the Vanguard in trio with Wilbur Ware and Elvin Jones - one of my favorite jazz records.

Opener was written as a drum feature for Eric McPherson and he totally earns the dedication. Jackalope is a mythical creature( half jackrabbit and half-antelope).

Ornette Coleman is one of the snazziest dressers in the jazz world and Sartorial is my tribute to his elegance in this regard. Many jazz musicians play The Song Is You in an up-tempo approach, but when you slow it down you can really hear one of the greatest bridges in American Popular Song. And these days, the trio plays a Monk tune in just about every set and Played Twice is a lesser-known but fun and challenging tune for improvisation.”

Fred has his own website on which you can locate order information for Alive at the Vanguard and Fred’s many other recordings as well as checkout his extensive tour schedule through the end of 2013.

The worldwide editorial staff at JazzProfiles with the aid of the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD and the production facilities at StudioCerra developed the following video tribute to Fred which includes a track from Alive at The Vanguard on which the Fred performs a solo version of Russ Freeman’s lovely The Wind and segues it into a trio version of Alec Wilder’s Moon and Sand.

Big Band Blues – The Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

There’s nothing more exciting than a big band playing The Blues, especially one on which they can stretch out on at the beginning of a concert.

To hear “what I’m talkin’ ‘bout,” checkout the following 10:31 minute audio-only track that features Holland’s Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw playing director Henk Meutgeert’s The Blues.

Henk’s arrangement has got it all: a driving opening chorus which gives way to solos by pianist Peter Betts and a tenor battle by Simon Rigter and Sjoerd Dijkhuizen; an alto sax solo by Marco Kegel; an interlude between solos formed by a unison trumpet chorus; a Jesse van Ruller guitar solo; a Ruud Bruels trumpet solo; Ilja Reijngoud soloing on trombone followed by Jan van Duikeren on trumpet; a “shout-me-out chorus” that begins at 9:25 minutes and a thrilling ending with drums breaks by Martijn Vink and trumpets screaming in the higher register.

And this is just the beginning of a 2 hour concert that took place at The Bimhuis in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on November 14, 2007!

The beer commercial guys were right: “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

Van Ruller, Roelofs, Van der Feen Performing "Circles"

The Chambertones are a trio without drums whose name says it all. It explores chamber music, and is both melodic and modest. All three musicians are seasoned veterans on the international jazz circuit and are all bandleaders and composers in their own right.

The trio’s music is sensitive, warm and provides a great deal of room for each of the three instruments to explore their individual sounds at great length. Their music is all about exploring the full range of the sound of wood. Original tunes and musical motifs are rendered in subtly interwoven tapestries of sound.

Their recently released album The Ninth Planet is available as both an audio CD and an Mp3 download.

“With fantastic compositions they swirl around one other in a self created world that feels like a warm blanket. – Daily national newspaper de Volkskrant  “A superb trio of distinct and adventurous personalities who hopefully have entered into an intense, and long-lasting relation.” - Trouw.

Jesse van Ruller - guitar, Joris Roelofs - clarinet and bass clarinet, Clemens van der Feen-double bass.

Stay with this one ... these guys can play. Shades of Jimmy Giuffre.

Duke Ellington and The City of Jazz

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The older I get, the more I appreciate Duke Ellington’s music.

I doubt that there is any correlation, but my growing awareness of Duke and his extraordinary legacy reminds me of the following Mark Twain observation:

“When I was fourteen, I thought my Father was the dumbest man in the world, but when I turned twenty-one, I was surprised at how much he had learned over the last, seven years!”

Believe it or not, when I was a young man surrounded by what-was-then the sounds of modern Jazz, I didn’t “get” Duke; I thought he was one of the “old guys.”

Well, it's been a lot more than seven years, but as I’ve listened to Duke's music since those early days of quick dismissal, the more in awe I’ve become of his musical accomplishments.

From every perspective – melody, harmony, rhythm and texture – Duke’s music is full of originality, creativity, and what the esteemed Jazz author Whitney Balliett once termed as Jazz’s essential ingredient: The Sound of Surprise.

Lately, my admiration for Duke has taken on a different form – his writings about Jazz. Not surprisingly, his style of writing is infused with the same sense of flair, humor and urbanity that one finds in his music.

Here’s a sample from Music is My Mistress [New York: DaCapo Press, 1973].

© -  Duke Ellington/DaCapo Press, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The City of Jazz is a place in which certain people live. Some are on their way out, while many others are on their way in. Some are rushing to get there, but others appear reluctant and are cautious in their approach. Still others claim they are afraid, and hesitate to expose themselves in this place where they feel so strange, this strange place where the most solid citizens are so hip, or slick, or cool. These hesitant ones fear they will feel like country folk in the metropolis, or like people on the Chinatown bus tour. They wonder if they will be taken for suckers or squares.

My experience on my many visits to and from the city (I do one-nighters, you know) has convinced me that its people are all very nice human beings. There are those who work for the city (the players), those who work at the city (the analysts), and those who just enjoy it (these are my people). The citizens of all three groups are more concerned with what they like than what they dislike. All of them, too, assume that they know one another. For instance, when they meet for the first time they embrace warmly like old college chums.

In the city's public square, you find statues of heroes. Some are of those who built the walls, like Buddy Bolden and King Oliver. They appear to have been sculptured in bars, after-hours joints, and houses of ill-repute. Some are of those who fought to save the city, like Fletcher Henderson and Paul Whiteman, and they are identified with the world of ballroom palaces. Some are of those who went down swinging, like Bix Beiderbecke and Chick Webb, and who were decorated posthumously for heroic performances above and beyond the call of duty. Last, in the same concert halls where they play the masterworks, are statues of some of the great ones who long defended the walls, like Bechet, Armstrong, and Hawk.

This City of Jazz does not have any specific geographical location. It is anywhere and everywhere, wherever you can hear the sound, and it makes you do like this—you know! Europe, Asia, North and South America, the world digs this burg—Digsville, Gonesville, Swingersville, and Wailingstown. There are no city limits, no city ordinances, no policemen, no fire department, but come rain or come shine, drought or flood, I think I'll stay here in this scene, with these cats, because almost everybody seems to dig what they're talking about, or putting down. They communicate, Dad. Do you get the message ?

Villesville is the place—trelos anthropos!”

In celebration of this brief remembrance of Duke’s lasting contributions to Jazz, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has re-posted an earlier feature about The American Jazz Orchestra’s tribute to Ellington in the blog sidebar, as well as, the related video to both The Duke and The AJO which you will find below.

Rest assured that we will have a great deal more to say about The Duke in future postings.

G.A. Shearing, J.S. Bach and “Autumn Leaves”

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

During the 1980s, the late pianist-composer-bandleader, George Shearing [1919-2011] hosted and disc-jockeyed a Jazz program on WNEW-AM in New York City for 18 months.

Over the course of his two hour program each Sunday evening, Sir George [he was knighted for services to music in 2007] would often avail himself of a Baldwin-Hamilton spinet piano that was kept in the studio.

On it, he would play brief tunes and improvisations between spinning the discs.

Thanks to our correspondent in New York, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has been able to develop the following Sound Cloud audio track of Sir George’s Bachian treatment of Autumn Leaves.

From one “George” to another, we thought it would be fun to share this light moment with you.

Simultaneously Soloing with Tom Harrell and George Robert

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Having two “horn” players solo at the same time is one of the most difficult challenges in Jazz.

Not only does each soloist have to follow his/her own thoughts while creating an improvisation, but this has to be done in such a way as to blend into what the other soloist is offering to avoid the whole thing sounding like a jumbled mess [aka – a cacophony].

Performing together over a long period of time may help in pulling off simultaneous soloing, but it is not a guarantee.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

You can’t do it for too long or you’ll more than likely lose the listener’s attention, and, no doubt, your own sanity.

When it works, it’s akin to a musical miracle. When it doesn’t you can chalk it off to the fact that it probably wasn’t a good idea to try it in the first place.

To give you idea of what brilliant simultaneously soloing sounds like, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has created the following video featuring Tom Harrell on trumpet and George Robert on alto saxophone performing George’s original composition Vikings' Theme.

The song structure of George’s tune is a bit unusual in that it follows on ABAB pattern with each section made up of 16-bars.

The simultaneous soloing kicks in at 1:00 minute and finishes when Tom and George restate the “A” theme at around 2:00 minutes to take the tune out.

A 2:16 minute blazer that probably had everyone shaking their head in delight [and relief] when it was over.

Joining Harrell and Robert are Dado Moroni on piano, Reggie Johnson on bass and Bill Goodwin on drums.