For Miguel Zenón’s 43rd Birthday, an Uncut Downbeat Blindfold Test from 2005

For virtuoso alto saxophonist-composer Miguel Zenón’s 43rd birthday, here’s the uncut version of a Blindfold Test we did for Downbeat in November 2005. He was 29 at the time, and already extremely literate in the lineage of his instrument.

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Miguel Zenon Blindfold Test (Raw) — (2005):

1. Ornette Coleman, “In All Languages”(from In All Languages, Harmolodic/Verve, 1987) Coleman, alto saxophone, composer; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Charlie Haden, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

That’s Ornette. At the beginning it sounds like this other tune that I know, but I don’t know this tune. It sounds like Charlie on bass, but that’s another horn in there. I wonder if it’s Don Cherry. Or maybe not. It doesn’t sound too high for a pocket trumpet. But definitely Ornette, though. I don’t know this recording, but who’s going to say anything about Ornette? One of my main inspirations in terms of one of the first alto guys that really got away from the Charlie Parker thing and was able to do something original back then. He still does actually. I saw him the other day when we played with Charlie at the Blue Note. He was there. So I was pretty nervous! But it was great to see him. I’ve had the chance to meet him a couple of times, and he’s one of those guys who everything he says seems to have a meaning somehow. He doesn’t talk unless he wants to say something important. But I’m pretty sure that this is Ornette. It sounds like a fairly recent recording. From the ‘70s maybe? It’s the way the recording sounds, and to me the more recent music is a lot freer in terms of time, whereas his earlier music was free in terms of the improvisation, but what was happening with the rhythm section was pretty much a bebop approach, like walking bass and the cymbals just kind of swinging in that way. This is totally free in terms of tempo, too. But in terms of the sound, you can tell this has reverb and all that stuff, so it’s maybe ‘80s or even more recent than that. 5 stars, just because it’s Ornette and it sounds incredible. I’ve seen Ornette recently perform a few times with his current group, and he’s almost like Wayne Shorter in the way he uses little motifs that he’s carried through ages, but he still uses them to compose. Sometimes you’ll be able to recognize something that’s an obvious motif from Ornette’s language, but then it’s a totally different tune. So that’s what happened when he started the tune and the first phrase – I thought it was this other tune I’ve heard before. But then he went into something totally different. It’s a definite gift, I guess, for a composer to have motifs so strong.

2. Donald Harrison, “Doctor Duck” (from Eddie Palmieri, Palmas, Nonesuch, 1994) (Palmieri, piano, composer; Harrison, alto sax; Brian Lynch, tp; Conrad Herwig, tb; Johnny Torres, bass; Richie Flores, congas; Anthony Carrillo, bongo; Jose Clausell, timbales, Robbie Ameen, drums

I don’t know this record, but it sounds like something maybe Eddie Palmieri would do. Yup! There’s the montuno right there. This is probably Donald Harrison. Well, it might not be him, but I know he did all those records with Eddie, and because of the montuno and the kind of tune it is, it’s pretty obvious that it’s Eddie’s recording. Of course, Eddie Palmieri is one of the legends of Latin music in general, and this track specifically is a perfect example of a traditional Latin jazz kind of track, very danceable in terms of the form, in terms of the way the percussion is playing behind them, just going for it, establishing a percussive movement and setting. There’s not that much interaction between the soloist and the band; it’s more like they’re establishing that… It’s the same way you would do on a salsa group, establishing a groove, and the alto player, who I think is Donald Harrison, is blowing on top of that. But of course, as I said, once the tune started I was trying to guess who it was, and I guessed Eddie first of all because of the instrumentation, because I know he used trombone, trumpet and alto on a lot of those records, and also once he started playing the montuno it was obvious that it was Eddie Palmieri. That’s probably Brian Lynch on trumpet. Yes, that’s definitely Brian. He’s playing the changes real clear, but then he’s playing some kind of modern stuff. This kind of stuff to me is really nice to listen to. It’s very groovy and very down-the-line, pretty obvious Latin. It has the percussion, the montunos, the bass, the tumbao—everything. It’s almost like dance music. It’s trying to capture that same vein, all the music that Eddie does. Eddie’s one of those guys, along with Pappo Lucca, who plays with the salsa group Sonora Ponceña in Puerto Rico. Every piano player who’s working on montunos, they swear by these guys, because they kind of invented a way to put what all that stuff that was coming from the très, from the son montuno in Cuba, to put that stuff in the piano—and in a modern way, too. So they are very different, but every piano player you talk to, they always cite them as their main guys for montuno. It’s incredible that Eddie still plays like that, too. 4 stars, just because it’s Eddie and a legend. If it was somebody else, I probably wouldn’t give it 4 stars. As I was saying, this isn’t something I would sit down and listen to. It’s something that’s more danceable, very groovy and very nicely done.

3. Sonny Criss, “Blues In My Heart” (from Crisscraft, 32-Jazz, 1975/1997) (Criss, alto saxophone; Ray Crawford, guitar; Dolo Coker, piano; Larry Gales, bass; Jimmy Smith, drums; Benny Carter, composer)

I have absolutely no idea who it is. He sounds great. I can’t recognize the alto player by sound. Maybe when he starts improvising, I’ll be able to… He’s playing a lot of Bird stuff, but the sound has something else to it. It might be Charles McPherson. Maybe Frank Morgan. He has a very distinctive vibrato, but I don’t recognize him. [Do you know the tune?] It sounds familiar, like I might have heard it, but I don’t recognize it either. He’s got a great sound. The way he uses vibrato specifically, it’s hard for me to pinpoint who it is. He has a way of using the vibrato which is uncharacteristic of other alto players. But he’s definitely playing a lot of bebop stuff, too. So whenever he’ll play a run, I can say it’s definitely a guy who admires Charlie Parker a lot. But I’m not familiar enough with the sound to pinpoint who it is. The way he’s playing the bluesy stuff is kind of different, though. He’s being very economical about the notes he’s playing. He didn’t really play a lot of notes. He was being very patient. 3½ stars. Sonny Criss? Wow! I’ve heard him a couple of times, but I’m not really hip to him that much. Oh, that was by Benny Carter. When he started playing, I was thinking of Benny Carter, but the sound didn’t match…

4. Tim Berne, “Huevos” (from Science Friction, Screwgun, 2001) (Berne, alto sax, composer; Marc Ducret, electric guitar; Craig Taborn, keyboards; Tom Rainey, drums)

This is definitely more modern than that! This recording sounds almost like a live recording. It sounds weird. It doesn’t sound like the other recordings. My first guess would be Tim Berne maybe. His sound. Just the composition. But I’m really not that familiar with his playing. I’ve never actually heard him live. I’ve heard him on recordings. When the composition first started playing, I thought he was Henry Threadgill, but once he started playing, it’s not quite the same sound. Although it might be him! But now that I hear it a little more, it’s not like something Henry Threadgill would write, at least from the stuff I’m familiar with. It’s pretty complex and really well done. He has a lot of instruments in there. I can’t really pinpoint how many. Maybe a couple of guitars? One guitar. Drums… It sounds really thick. It could be Marty Ehrlich. He has that kind of sound, too. But my guess would be Tim Berne. The other guy I might think of is Dave Binney because of the composition, but his sound is totally different.[AFTER] I guessed it, but by chance. As I said, I’m not really that familiar with his playing or his music at all. But the times I’ve heard him, I could recognize him by the sound, what he started playing. I couldn’t tell you for sure it was him, but I could guess it was him also because of the music. I’ve heard a little of his music and the music he does with other people, and it’s along the same vein—specific instrumentation and driven by some kind of complexity and a very systematic way of doing it. It was a great piece. 4 stars.

5. Jerry Dodgion, “Quill” (from The Joy of Sax, LSM, 2004) (Dan Block, Dodgion, Brad Leali, alto sax solos; Mike LeDonne, piano; Dennis Irwin, bass; Joe Farnsworth, drums)

The alto is way up front in the mix. I can’t tell if that’s the recording.. But it sounds great. I can’t recognize them. There are a couple of alto players. The second guy, I can’t tell… He’s playing a lot of Cannonball stuff. I’m not really sure if it’s Cannonball, but it’s definitely from Cannonball. I wonder how many saxophones there are. Sounds like a big saxophone section. It sounds like one of those Thad Jones arrangements, although it isn’t, but just the way the groove is set. Maybe it’s Jerry Dodgion. I can’t tell about the other guys, though. I wonder who the second guy is, the guy who sounds to me like Cannonball? Well, I thought it was really. It was grooving. It sounded to me like it was a really big saxophone section. I couldn’t really tell by the orchestration; there were a lot of different things happening. But it was pretty happening. 3½ stars. I can’t guess the alto players, though.

6. Steve Coleman, “Ascending Numeration” (from Alternate Dimensions: Series 1, Self-Produced, 2002) (Coleman, alto sax; Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet; Anthony Tidd, electric bass; Regg Washington, acoustic bass; Sean Rickman, drums; Pedro Martinez, percussion; Yosvany Terry, clave)

I know the drummer already, I think. Sean Rickman. The way he’s playing. The sound of his cymbals. This is Steve Coleman. I’ve sat in with him a few times, and I’m usually lost. I get together a lot with him and talk. If I were going to say anything about him, he’s probably my greatest living inspiration in a musician. He’s the hardest-working guy I’ve ever met. He’s always working on something. He’s one of those guys who never gives up in terms of the information he has. He’s not content with what he has already. He’s already looking for more, always looking for something new, always reading and trying to bring everything that’s around him into music. I think this is the record where he uses two bass players, maybe Resistance Is Futile, or maybe the one before. I’m not sure of the name, but I’m pretty sure I know this recording. Reggie Washington is playing acoustic and Anthony Tidd is playing electric. I’ve sat in a couple of times at his gigs, and I talk to him a lot about music… I’ve gotten together with Steve a bunch of times, and we just play and talk about the kind of stuff he does. It’s always inspiring. But his music is very, very complex. It’s almost important to go out and sit in on a gig with him if you don’t know what’s happening. You could kind of skate around it, but I think the main thing with him is that he’s trying to put his own effort to not skate in everything he does. Even though something can be very complicated for somebody listening from the outside, he’s trying to play it as perfectly or as accurate as possible. He’s very accurate about playing changes and playing meters, and I know he’s very serious about the whole thing and not just getting by, kind of just playing licks. He’s an inspiration, because he plays it at such a high level. But then when you talk to him about something, he usually just talks about Bird or Coltrane, and goes back to the tradition, which he knows real well. But the thing that’s most inspiring about him to me is that he’s really been able to take all that tradition and classic jazz stuff, and he’s been able to translate into something that sounds incredibly modern. But the roots of his music are all in something that’s very tradition. That to me is incredibly inspiring. He’s very precise about changes. When you hear anybody else playing this music, and you hear him play, he’s not missing anything. He knows this music so well. Everything he does, at least from what I’ve learned from talking to him, is pretty systematic. It’s preconceived, in a way. He conceives everything from the rhythm to the harmony to the melodies, and everything that happens on the tune has a purpose. It could be something numerical, or he even goes as far as astrology and stuff that goes beyond just playing numbers and music. I wouldn’t be able to into deepness on it, but I know he’s serious about incorporating many elements of nature, and just… Everything that has to do with the world, basically. He’s very serious about incorporating that somehow in his music. So the rhythmic thing… When I first met him, I was an incredible fan, and I had all these records, and I started asking him about tunes, like this tune that’s in 5/4 or 7/4 or whatever. The first thing he told me is that he didn’t think of it like that, he didn’t think of it as 5/4 or 7/4 in meter. He thought of it almost like a rhythmic melody. He’s got a rhythmic melody that just happens to be 11/8 or 7/4, but he doesn’t measure it in terms of meter – it just happens to be that way once he starts playing the tune, and they have to incorporate everything around that. His music is an incredible inspiration to me in every way—conceptually, sonically, the way he plays. Especially after I got to meet him and talk to him. A really big influence on me. 4 stars. There’s things he’s done that I like better than this. My favorite is probably this double record he did with a big band and also a quartet called Genesis and Open Another Way. The thing he did in Cuba is also incredible. And by far my favorite is The Sonic Language of Myth. That period when he did those records is incredible.

7. Kenny Garrett, “April In Paris” (from Roy Haynes, Birds of A Feather, Dreyfuss, 2001) (Garrett, alto saxophone; Roy Hargrove, trumpet; David Kikoski, piano; Dave Holland, bass; Roy Haynes, drums)

I know this tune, I just can’t think of the name. It’s a great tune. “April In Paris”? I had to think of the lyrics. I’m still not sure if it’s Kenny Garrett, but if it isn’t, it’s definitely somebody who’s really into Kenny Garrett. Just the sound. He has a way of bending into notes, especially when he plays high. It’s very distinctive to the way he plays, even if he’s playing ballad. But I’m still not sure if it’s him. But I’m pretty sure it’s him. Would this be one of those recordings with Freddie or Woody Shaw? Maybe one of his first couple of recordings. Kenny Garrett is probably the most influential alto player of the last 20 years. Anybody from my generation, or even younger or a little older has been influenced by him one way or another. Because what he did was so strong… Basically, he was kind of the Michael Brecker of the alto, of that generation. The way he played in terms of sound and his whole approach to the alto was very un-alto. It was more like a tenor. He was coming from the Trane kind of influence, but he brought all that stuff into the alto. He’s an incredible soloist and knows how to build. So any time you hear him, he’s going to be consistently good. But as I said, he’s so strong, the way he plays, that even for myself… When I started getting into jazz, he’s one of the first guys I started transcribing and really getting into. But eventually, I had to stop listening to him, because he was so strong that it’s hard to get away from trying to sound like that. So I had to stop listening to him completely. As great as he is, I don’t listen that much to him any more, because I’m trying to get away from the vein that everybody else has gone. But he’s an incredible alto player, one of the top today, if not the top. Just what he did with sound, just that, the way he approached sound on the alto is enough to get him into the hall of fame or whatever. 4 stars.

8. Lee Konitz-Sal Mosca, “Baby” (from Spirits, Milestone, 1971/1999) (Konitz, alto saxophone; Mosca, piano)

This sounds like one of those Lennie Tristano-Lee Konitz heads, putting a different melody in a standard, but I know it’s not Lee Konitz. Or maybe it is. More recent Lee Konitz. Yeah, it’s definitely Lee. But his sound is very different. If I were going to mention someone other than Bird who really did something for the alto back then… They were all kind of contemporaries, Bird, him and Ornette; they were coming out of the same time, just a little before and after and so on… But the incredible thing about Lee Konitz is that he was able to do something totally different from everybody else who wasn’t Bird. Even Cannonball… He and Ornette were the only ones who just went totally left. It’s almost like they did it on purpose. But he had a sound back then that was a very cool approach, not like a hard-headed sound like Bird had. It was more Stan Getz, kind of Paul Desmond, very cool and delicate. It was a strong sound, a great sound, but a very different sound. The way he plays his lines now is pretty much the same as he played them back then, though obviously more advanced and a lot different. But it’s very unlike something that Bird or somebody coming out of the Bird vein or the bebop vein would play it. The way he moves around the changes is very different in many ways. He uses a lot of different approach notes, he resolves the changes in a different way than somebody within the bebop vein would. Everything about him is different. What makes him different from somebody like Ornette is that Ornette to me was coming from a point where he was trying to find freedom with melody. He wasn’t really worrying that much about changes. He was trying to bring melody back to the forefront and this got to be the main characteristic of the music. Whereas Lee was still dealing with changes and standards. He was playing the same kind of changes that everybody else was playing; he was just playing them very different. It still sounds good, but it sounds very different, and for somebody who’s heard all these alto players coming out of the Bird tradition, when you hear Lee Konitz, it’s incredibly refreshing. It’s incredible! But his sound now has more of an edge to it, and he’s got a way of approaching and swelling into the notes that makes it very obvious that this is something that would be more recent. I don’t know who the piano player is. Is the tune “My Melancholy Baby”? 4½ stars. ‘71?

9. Henry Threadgill, “Dark Black” (from Up Popped The Two Lips, Pi, 2001) (Threadgill, alto saxophone, composer; Liberty Ellman, guitar; Tarik Benbrahim, oud; Jose Davila, tuba; Dana Leong, cello; Dafnis Prieto, drums.

This is Henry Threadgill. Right away. That instrumentation. The way he’s doubling the melody with a lower instrument. He does that a lot. He’s an incredible composer. Probably one of the top jazz composers today just because of his originality and what he brings to the music. Very dense. His music is very dense, very well-done. A very original sound on the alto. It’s almost coming from that avant-gardist kind of sound on the alto, but his music is not free. His music is very composed. Is this Zooid? I don’t know what he calls it. He’s got the band with cello – it might be Dana Leong – and tuba, but I forget the name of the guy he uses. Maybe it’s Liberty Ellman on guitar. Maybe Elliott Kavee on drum or Dafnis; he switches. I don’t think it’s Dafnis. The music is very dense for me. It’s hard for me to find something to grab. I would have to listen to it a couple of times to start finding my own logic to understand it. I guess that’s kind of my fault, too; I’m always having to find something in the music that I can understand in a way to be able to follow it. But it’s incredibly well done. 4 stars.

10. Greg Osby, “Mob Job” (from Channel Three, Blue Note, 2005) (Osby, alto saxophone; Matt Brewer, bass; Jeff Watts, drums; Ornette Coleman, composer)

I just bought this record a couple of weeks ago. That’s Greg Osby. It’s an Ornette tune. I would probably put Greg, Steve Coleman and Kenny Garrett in the same category, as guys from the same generation who all are coming from different places but have something fresh happening. Kenny Garrett I’d say is coming more from the tenor as opposed to the alto—maybe Trane, Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson. Whereas I know from talking to Steve that he’s totally a Bird fanatic, and everything he does is somehow coming from Bird. Whereas Greg Osby, in terms of the sound and things he does in the lower register and his lines and so on, is coming from a Cannonball vein, but a lot more modern approach. Greg is also a great thinker, a total conceptualist, and he has a lot in common with Steve in that way, though their ideas are very different. They deserve the same amount of respect in that sense. Greg is definitely a huge influence. I like this record a lot; it’s probably the one I like most of the last two or three he’s done. Before this one, I thought Symbols Of Light, the one he did with a string quartet, was incredible. This one is at that level. 4 stars.

11. Eric Dolphy, “Round Midnight” (from George Russell, Ezz-Thetics, Riverside, 1961/1999) (Dolphy, alto saxophone; Russell, piano; Steve Swallow, bass; Joe Hunt, drums; Thelonious Monk, composer)

Is this Eric Dolphy? This is “Round Midnight.” He’s got such a special sound. Every time I listen to him, it seems he’s blowing as hard as possible into the horn. He has so much energy. Could the arranger be George Russell? I don’t know if this is a George Russell recording, but I know they did some stuff together. The instrumentation and the beginning reminds me of stuff he’s done. A few people I know who knew Eric Dolphy personally, they say he was the nicest, sweetest person, and he doesn’t sound like that when he plays! He has so much energy when he plays. Definitely not nice and sweet. Very aggressive. Especially his sound. He sounds like he’s blowing so hard into the horn, but it’s not like he’s getting out of control, but like a laser kind of sound. His approach to the intervals and melodies is very personal. To tell you the truth, it wasn’t until recently that I started to find a way to get into his music and listen to his records for a long enough time… Before they kind of pushed me away a little bit. Before, with the combination of his sound and his aggressiveness, I couldn’t hear what he was trying to do in terms of changes and melodies. I couldn’t really see his whole vocal approach. His whole thing is like a vocal thing, and I couldn’t see that; I was interested in something that had more finesse, like Cannonball and Bird or Lee Konitz. This doesn’t have finesse at all. But in the last couple of years, I’ve started to try to get into his head, basically, and see what he was going for. He was an incredibly organized guy. When I started listening to him the first couple of times, it almost sounded to me like he was just playing random things, but now I listen to it and it sounds incredibly organized. This is a very virtuosic and personal way of playing the instrument, definitely. 4 stars.

For saxophone-woodwind maestro and composer Ted Nash’s birthday, an uncut Downbeat Blindfold Test from 2010, and Downbeat Articles from 2016 and 2010

To mark the birthday of Ted Nash,  master composer and master practitioner of the reeds and woodwinds family, here’s the uncut proceedings of a Downbeat Blindfold Test that he did with me in 2010, and a pair of articles that ran, respectively, in the 2016 and 2010 issues of Downbeat. Apologies for the formatting issues on the two articles.

Ted Nash Blindfold Test: (2010)

John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, “Foreign One” (from ETERNAL INTERLUDE, Cuneiform, 2009) (Hollenbeck, composer, drums; Tony Malaby, tenor saxophone solo; Gary Versace, piano)

Wow. That was intense. That was, of course, “Four In One,” Monk, but a complete taken-apart-and-put-back-together version of it. It’s almost an original composition in itself, using Monk’s theme as sort of an inspiration. Certainly, the big unison line at the end kind of recalls the whole passage of 16th notes. But it’s really recomposed. The sound, the production of it is very clean. Because of the cleanliness and the in-tune quality and the great proficiency with which they dealt with it technically, it almost sounds electronic at times. I know I can hear a lot of edits, and I think it’s not just for best takes; I think that’s kind of part of the sound that the composer is after, is to have these kind of clean chops. I like using the board and using edits to make a statement. I don’t do it myself that much. I prefer things to kind of flow forward. I haven’t heard this before. My guess is it might be either John Hollenbeck’s band, or it could be Dave Holland. If it’s Hollenbeck, I know he was the arranger. If it’s Dave Holland, I wouldn’t know who did the arrangement. [It’s Hollenbeck.] It is Hollenbeck? I’ve heard his music a little bit, and I think he’s really creative. This stuff is very intense. The tenor solo really leads into the next section. Pretty interesting how that is designed. A lot of times, people allow the soloist to take a lot of the space. When I studied with Brookmeyer, he actually was getting more and more away from having improvised solos, except for ones that really serve the purpose of the composition. I do miss extended solos when it gets to that degree. But it could have been Donny McCaslin or Chris Potter. Those are the two… Maybe Tony Malaby. It’s Tony? I haven’t heard any of them in that context very much, but the freedom sounded more like Malaby to me than the other plays—but I hadn’t heard him play with such a great technique up in the upper register, which made me think of the other two. I really enjoyed it, and I think that Hollenbeck definitely somebody who has got his own thing going on. It doesn’t sound like a cliche big band. I get tired of sort of the cliche approach to writing in a big band. This is very refreshing. 4 stars.

Mark Turner, “Nigeria” (from Billy Hart Quartet, ALL OUR REASONS, ECM, 2012) (Turner, tenor saxophone, composer; Hart, drums; Ethan Iverson, piano; Ben Street, bass)

I loved the humor in that, especially at the end. It was also interesting to have that notey line, that very linear theme played, and then have an extended drum solo. You don’t hear that very often, and I think it was an interesting choice. The pianist is interesting, because I don’t recognize at all his left hand. He’s got a different way of playing chords. It’s not the cliche way people accompany themselves when they’re playing with their right hand. He was playing fuller triad kind of things in his left hand, rather than more extensions. The looseness of it reminds me a little bit of my friend Frank Kimbrough, and how he’s I think got a lot of his influence from people like Andrew Hill and Herbie Nichols and like that. Is the saxophone player Mark Turner? Ok. I’m not extremely familiar with his playing except for a few things I’ve heard. I think he’s remarkable. He’s got a nice, light, airy sound, and he’s very linear. He reminds me of an extension of Warne Marsh and that Lennie Tristano kind of thing when he’s doing that. It doesn’t necessarily have… In this recording and some of the things that I may have heard, it doesn’t necessarily have a lot of room for that kind of bluesy expression, but it’s a little more intellectual. I like it for that. I think he’s got something going on that does feel like an extension. You can hear the lineage from some of those older players coming out of the Warne Marsh school of very linear playing. I like it very much. I like the looseness and the freedom. The drummer sounded a little like Jeff Ballard to me. At times, for me, it lacks a bit of real deep expression. So I give it 3½ drums. [AFTER] I thought it might be Ben Street, because he played with Mark with Kurt and Jeff—that made me think of Jeff Ballard. Ethan Iverson makes sense. Very creative. He’s got his own way of doing things.

James Carter, “Playful—Fast (with Swing)” (from CARIBBEAN RHAPSODY, EmArcy, 2011) (Carter tenor and soprano saxophone; Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra; Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor; Roberto Sierra, composer)

Is it Branford Marsalis? Oh. I’m not familiar with this. I know Branford did some things with orchestra. It became sort of tongue-in-cheek. It started off very 20th century, with influences of Berg, and then it gravitated toward more of a Gershwinesque kind of ending with the blues. It really was all about the blues, but it didn’t really feel like that was coming. Then it became just a little tongue-in-cheek, poking fun at certain cliche aspects of the blues. But it was a beautiful recording. Who was it? James Carter? That was my second guess. I swear to God I was going to say him because of his technical stuff in the low register, but I hadn’t heard him stretch out so much, and his harmonic sense seemed to be a little more developed than I thought… I thought maybe it was Branford. But he’s got such an amazing technique, especially with the slap-tonguing and stuff; it made me think of James Carter right away. But I had no idea he was doing this kind of stuff. 3½ stars based on the quality of the recording. It was interesting and had some humor.

Vinny Golia, “NBT” (from SFUMATO, Clean Feed, 2003) (Golia, composer, sopranino saxophone; Bobby Bradford, trumpet; Ken Filiano, bass; Alex Cline, drums)

That was intense. It’s very influenced by the Ornette-Don Cherry thing. I don’t recognize it. I’m not sure if the instrument that the saxophone player was playing was a sopranino or a soprano. It was hard for me to tell; it seemed the range was sopranino. I don’t recognize the trumpet. It did sound like Don Cherry to me, but I think it might be a bit later than some of the stuff they did. I liked it. I loved the thematic material, the way they played that with a certain kind of looseness, and that it was kind of anything-goes for a while. For me, at times, I felt like they could have come to more ups and downs in the overall shape, because it kind of kept one intensity throughout most of it. There’s some humor; the quote by the trumpet player of “I Love You,” which I like. The sopranino player was playing straight through in one direction, and it carried me through, I have to say. It kept my attention. I didn’t feel like it was completely without regard to anything. But just in general, I felt I could have seen more ups and downs and shapes within the freedom. For me sometimes, when music is totally free, there has to be a little bit more story-telling at times. But this obviously is what these people do, and they’re very good at it, and for me it held up. 3½ stars. [AFTER] I don’t know who Vinny Golia is. I was thinking that might be Bobby Bradford, because he’d been in the band with John Carter. He’s the only other trumpet player I could think of who was that close to Don Cherry. But I wouldn’t necessarily have recognized him.

Rudresh Mahanthappa, “Playing With Stones” (from SAMDHI, ACT-Music, 2011) (Mahanthappa, alto saxophone, laptop; composer; David Gilmore, electric guitar; Rich Brown, electric bass; Damion Reid, drums; Anantha Krishnan, mrdingam and kanjira)

I’m not sure I recognize the alto player. I might know him if I heard him in another context. It feels like it’s his composition. There’s an ostinato that goes on for a long time with repetitive rhythmic support that almost suggests an Irish, an African thing… At the same time, it’s got a heavy sense of some kind of Afro-rhythm, but also that jig-like thing with the melody on top. Then it breaks down into a very atmospheric section; it has some more effects on it. I enjoyed that section. For me, it was kind of light. Not every piece has to tell a very specific story. Sometimes it’s just part of a larger story. When you hear the entire record, you might have a better sense of why this piece was what it was, and why it was limited to a certain kind of experience. I’m definitely not familiar with it. My guess might be Steve Coleman, from his stuff with the Five Elements group. No? That was a wild guess, because I’m actually not that familiar with his music. This might be a player I know, though, in a different context. 3 stars. [AFTER] I’ve been hearing a lot about him, but I still haven’t had a chance to check him out. I heard something that was a little more straight-ahead once… I like what he gets to at times. It’s very conceptual. Again, it seems like a piece of a bigger story. I’d like to hear more of his music.

Will Vinson, “Late Lament” (from STOCKHOLM SYNDROME, Criss-Cross, 2010) (Vinson, alto saxophone; Lage Lund, guitar; Aaron Parks, piano; Orlando LeFleming, bass; Kendrick Scott, drums; Paul Desmond, composer)

That was beautiful. I really loved the alto player’s sound. It’s very warm and dark without being stuffy. For my taste, a lot of alto players play with such a brightness, and this is the kind of sound I really enjoy hearing. Very expressive. 4 stars. Everybody is playing with a lot of space and maturity, and willingness to let it be what it’s going to be without forcing it. That means a lot to me in music, when there’s that kind of relaxed sense of allowing it to be something. The guitar player is gorgeous, too. I’m sure I know who both players are, but off the top of my head I’m not sure. [AFTER] I don’t know him. He’s got a beautiful sound. I don’t know Lage Lund either. There are so many great players out there. Having heard this, I want to check him out more. Beautiful sound. I like his conception, too.

Yosvany Terry, “Contrapuntistico” (from TODAY’S OPINION, Criss-Cross, 2011) (Terry, alto saxophone, composer; Michael Rodriguez, trumpet; Osmany Paredes, piano; Yunior Terry, bass; Obed Calvaire, drums; Pedro Martinez, percussion)

I really liked that. It was a nice journey. Is it Billy Drewes on alto? No? It sounds just like Billy Drewes to me, in a really positive way. A similar kind of sound and way of phrasing, especially in the low register. I didn’t get a chance to hear the trumpet player improvising that much; it reminds me a little of Tim Hagans. Then I’m not sure who this is. I liked the piece. It had a nice flow to it. The line is like a journey somewhere. You’re starting off and you have a vision of something, and you start out on this trip, and you go, and then you get to a certain point, and you rest for a little bit, like, on the top of a hill, and then, when you think you’re about ready to go to sleep, you realize you’ve got to walk home. That’s what happened there. It came back. Then you realize you’ve got to take this journey back home. There was patience involved with it, I thought. Yet the solos had intensity and were very creative. 4 stars, just for the overall concept and strong improvising. [AFTER] I don’t know Yosvany Terry. Very, very good. I know Mike Rodriguez; I’ve worked with him a bit, and I’m a big fan of his. He didn’t have a real extended solo, so it was hard for me to tell. But I like the alto player’s concept. I think he’s coming from similar influences as someone like Billy Drewes; some freedom, and yet good technique, good understanding of harmony, and so on. Interesting. Similar in sound to Billy.

Eddie Daniels, “Three In One” (from ONE MORE: THE SUMMARY—MUSIC OF THAD JONES, VOL. 2, IPO, 2006) (Eddie Daniels, clarinet; James Moody, Benny Golson, Frank Wess, reeds; Jimmy Owens, flugelhorn; John Mosca, trombone; Hank Jones, piano; Richard Davis, bass; Kenny Washington, drums; Michael Patterson, arranger; Thad Jones, composer)

Obviously, the classic Thad Jones, “Three In One,” which I played many a Monday night at the Vanguard. I’m not sure I see the real reason for re-recording this. It’s pretty much Thad’s arrangement, especially the sax soli, which I thought sounded really beautiful with the clarinet on lead. I think it would almost have been reason enough to record this like that, just to hear that really relaxed clarinet sound in the lead. But it felt like the solos were rushed, like they needed more time to express something. It felt like someone’s idea to do something that would be kind of cute and fun, but didn’t have enough reason really to be documented. The soloists sounded fine, and I thought the bass and drums were hooking up pretty good. It was very relaxed. It didn’t have the intensity that this piece usually would have with the big band. The trombonist sounded a lot like John Mosca to me. Ah, that’s why! I didn ‘t recognize anyone else. The clarinet sound was beautiful. Who was it? Eddie Daniels? Is it his record? 3 stars. I love the piece, I love the beautiful sound of the clarinet, I love Mosca’s solo. Again, I don’t quite see the reason to re-record this as it was, as it’s not a stronger statement than the original. Who else was on it? So it’s people who had a lot of close association with Thad, and wanted to do a tribute to him. For that reason I understand it. If it was just someone’s conceptual idea of something creative, for me it lacks a little. Again, very relaxed. Not really tight by all means, but a nice, relaxed feel.

John Ellis, “Dubinland Carnival” (from PUPPET MISCHIEF, ObliqSound, 2010) (Ellis, tenor saxophone, composer; Alan Ferber, trombone; Gregoire Maret, harmonica; Brian Coogan, organ; Matt Perrine, sousaphone; Jason Marsalis, drums)

I totally love the theatrical quality of this. I’m a big fan of theatrics. It’s got a lot of humor, and what I love is that the musicians are not afraid to go ahead and embrace that humor. If they were afraid to do that, it would suffer greatly. 4 stars for everybody’s complete commitment to what the piece is supposed to be about. That’s fun. It feels like a circus. The circus is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be entertaining. There’s a little high-wire act going on there. The harmonica sounded like a synth, a keyboard harmonica. It sounded like a real harmonica in the beginning, and then it seemed like maybe it was a synth. The organ sounded great, and I love the tuba as a bass function. It gives it a lot of depth, and it helps for that theatrical quality. I’m not sure if I know the musicians. The tenor player phrases a little like Chris Potter, but I haven’t heard enough of his improvising, the way he thinks and feels, to know who it is. [AFTER] John Ellis? I don’t know his playing. I think there’s a lot of personality in his playing. I didn’t hear enough of his improvising to… But it’s a showcase for who he is, and his risk-taking. I don’t know Gregoire Maret. He did things technically on harmonica that seemed to be almost impossible. Amazing. I loved it. Jason Marsalis is great. He has a great concept of how to play over odd time signatures. He’s got the ability to play in different time signatures like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra, “Like A Lover” (from LIVE AT MCG, Telarc, 2005) (John Clayton, bass, arranger; Snooky Young, trumpet solo; Jeff Clayton, soprano saxophone solo)

I think this is a piece of a larger picture, for me. It feels like a movement of something rather than an entire statement. I liked the use of what felt like a quarter step in the beginning, and then it came back at the end there, with a little rhythmic thing in the low brass. It was like a use of some kind of a rubbing quarter steps, which I don’t hear very often. There’s moments with this kind of syncopated, smooth line that was going on that reminds a bit of some of Brookmeyer’s stuff from the ‘60s, which I think a lot of great orchestrators have developed their take on—like Maria Schneider and some other different composers. I liked the plunger solo coming out of nowhere, in a way. It was like a great contrast to what was going on before, which was very atmospheric, and this was like that kind of spark of somebody kind of screaming for something, like “Let me out.” But then, when it got to the soprano, I felt it went on too long, and it felt like the piece didn’t support that long a soprano solo. I thought it could have been more integrated into the orchestration. I think the orchestration could have grown out of the soprano solo, or vice-versa. I think that needed to happen there after the trumpet solo. So it promised something for me in the beginning which it didn’t feel like it delivered as much. But again, it may be just a small statement of a larger piece. There were some intonation problems in the woodwinds which made… This kind of orchestration needs to be really in tune to sound at its best. Even with that said, I think it’s beautiful orchestrating. I’m not sure who it is. 3½ stars for the ability of the orchestrator. It’s a live performance; if it was a studio performance, they’d have had time to make a little bit tighter. [AFTER] It makes sense with Snooky Young. That’s his thing. I was thinking it sounded like someone who was copying Snooky a little bit, the way that he belts out those little phrases. This is not the typical Clayton-Hamilton that I know, which is a little more full-on and really swinging hard. So it was good to hear that. Again, it was a live concert, and John Clayton, the orchestrator of this music, is really gifted. This is one of the most swinging big bands I’ve ever heard. This is an departure from my experience of their music.

Marty Ehrlich, “Frog Leg Logic” (from FROG LEG LOGIC, Clean Feed, 2011) (Ehrlich, soprano saxophone, composer; James Zollar, trumpet; Hank Roberts, cello; Michael Sarin, drums)

I liked it. Of course, this is a freer piece, but it’s within the context of something that’s quite structured. So you get both. You get structure and then absolute freedom, too, which I really like. Someone’s vision is very clear. There was a lot of clarity in this performance. The trumpeter sounds a lot like Ron Horton, who is on my record, in his approach to phrasing and the way he goes up in the upper register. It’s someone who maybe comes out of the same influences as Ron. It sounds a lot like someone who is influenced a lot by Ornette Coleman as well on the alto, so it’s got that kind of freedom… Both the trumpet and the alto have angular lines going. But I like that they don’t suddenly just go off in a direction and stay there for a really long time. There’s a responsibility about how much freedom and how to involve everybody and keep it all intact. I think that’s one thing that people who are playing music that’s much more free…there’s still a responsibility to tie things in with each other. I thought they did it very well. For that, 4 stars. Also, the incorporation of the cello, and how that was voiced in, was very nice. Also, using the instruments in registers that you don’t often hear them, like the alto playing parts that are written way down low, with the trumpet way up, like a tenth up, and stuff like that—sort of unusual ways. I like when people don’t limit themselves to using the instruments for how they’re always used. It always creates something kind of fresh. I don’t recognize the players, though. [AFTER] Marty Ehrlich makes sense to me. I haven’t heard James Zollar in that context. I’ve always enjoyed Marty Ehrlich’s playing. We’ve crossed paths at different times. He’s a wonderful multi-instrumentalist, a beautiful musician, and definitely very committed to his own vision, which I really like.

Gerald Wilson, “Aram’ (from DETROIT, Mack Avenue, 2009) (Wilson, composer, arranger; Terrell Stafford, trumpet solo; Antonio Hart, alto saxophone solo)

This performance was all about momentum and intensity, and it kind of built from the beginning and didn’t let up, and then the only way they could really deal with it is just to fade it out. Which was a little disappointment for me… It’s the end of the album? Ah, then it’s the end of a big statement again. I sort of wanted to see how the composer would bring it to an end, and they just did it by fading. So the intensity went away, but the moment was still there. It’s still there now! It’s off, but it’s still going. A lot of intensity. My favorite thing in this was out of this waltz, which keeps going and keeps going and keeps going, then suddenly this bridge, you have two bars of 4/4 swing with a whole different approach to the harmony, and then all of a sudden back to the 3/4. So you keep coming back to this thing, and you keep promising something with this 4/4 swing, and then you’re back into the 3 again with a minor kind of vibe. So it’s sort of like a tease. It didn’t say a whole lot to me overall, because I think the statement was meant to be a limited statement, in a way. I think the soloists jumped up on the intensity, and then did what they were supposed to do. I don’t recognize the composer or the players. 3 stars. I might have a different opinion if I heard a whole album’s worth of material. But for that performance alone, 3 stars. [AFTER] I should have said Gerald Wilson. I thought that might be Gerald Wilson’s band, because I recognized certain things about his harmony. Anyway, I didn’t. Pretty swinging, but it felt like it didn’t have a lot of dimension to it; it felt one-dimensional. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because that’s obviously the choice he was making. But I kept waiting for it to go in another direction, and it didn’t. My hat is off to him for being his age and still having so much passion for music. He’s not the kind of person who is going to sit down and rest. He’s going to keep going and keep going.

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Ted Nash re Presidential Suite for Downbeat  (June 2, 2016):

In an election cycle when political oratory is most often delivered via Twitter and soundbytes, Ted Nash’s Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom (Motéma) is refreshing both in premise and execution. Premiered by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in January 2014 (billed herein as the Ted Nash Big Band for contractual reasons), the eight-part suite comprises the 56-year-old saxophonist/flutist’s notes and tones refractions of excerpts from iconic speeches on the subject of freedom by eight world-historic 20th century political leaders, each read for the occasion by a separate surrogate.

The piece gestated in mid-2012, when Wynton Marsalis approached Nash to compose a long-form followup to the JALCO-commissioned Portrait In Seven Shades. In searching for “a strong theme or throughline,” Nash, the son of the prominent trombonist Dick Nash and the namesake nephew of a first-call studio saxophonist, hearkened to his formative years in Los Angeles.

“My parents were civil rights activists, very liberal and open-minded,” Nash said, recalling that they hosted parties for the Black Panthers during the ’60s. “I don’t want Presidential Suite to have a particular political slant, but I did grow up with a strong message of human rights and freedom.” In winnowing down a few hundred speeches to the final eight, he continued, “I looked for three elements—a prominent orator, a significant statement, and considerable eloquence. I also looked for rhetorical brilliance, originality, historical importance, delivery and inspirational quality. The ones that made my A-list were the ones that moved me the most emotionally. Great rhythm and intonation, too, because that’s part of what I was dealing with.”

After completing due diligence, Nash—who has written 56 arrangements for JALCO apart from the two extended pieces—set to work. He spent much of a JALCO tour “sitting on the bus with my keyboard, my laptop, headphones on,” transcribing the pitches and cadences of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan—as well as Winston Churchill, Jawaharlal Nehru and Nelson Mandela—into musical notation. From those raw materials, he created compositions tailored to the messages, to the personalities that delivered them, and to the musical personalities of his bandmates. “It was a fairly intuitive process,” he said. “I would sit and try just to feel something, without having too strong rules in approaching each song.”

For example, on January 6, 1941, 11 months before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, cited freedom of speech, FDR cited freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear as the four overarching American freedoms. After Nimmer’s Bobby Timmons-ish opening solo, mirroring Roosevelt’s pattern of “ending most of his phrases with a long cadence down,” Nash constructs four separate environments that precipitate a staunch, affirmative solo by trumpeter Kenny Rampton; a jubilant gospelized declamation by trombonist Vincent Gardner; an outer partials exploration by alto saxophonist Sherman Irby; and a Mingusian, “don’t mess with me” statement by bassist Carlos Henriquez.

The late baritone saxophonist Joe Temperley—who suggested that Nash explore Winston Churchill’s “We Shall Fight On The Beaches” speech from June 4, 1940, when Nazi forces were at the height of their power—takes an 8-bar solo on the through-composed “This Deliverance,” whose solemn yet affirmative mood captures the milieu to which it refers. On the evocative “Spoken At Midnight,” refracting Nehru’s oration to the Indian Constituent Assembly on the eve of India’s independence, Nash sets up striking instrumental voicings within a 7/4 structure that contains several subordinate time signatures within it.

Nash opens “The American Promise” (based on LBJ’s March 15, 1965 speech before Congress in support of the historic Voting Rights Act) with a parodic cowboy motif that signifies on Johnson’s Texas origins, before Dan Nimmer channels Paul Bley in duo with drummer Ali Jackson, leading up to a big band unison on “a wild freebop line” upon which Wynton Marsalis (his only appearance on the album) and Elliot Mason solo forcefully. “Johnson’s pitches were just about impossible to put in a consistent tonal center,” Nash said. “Everybody in the band is on board and speaking these words.”

Marsalis advised Nash to investigate Burmese activist’s Aung San Suu Kyi’s iconic essay, “Freedom From Fear,” the source of the ruminative “Water In Cupped Hands,” the only selection gestated not in a spoken speech but completely in Nash’s imagination. Actor Glenn Close reads the text before the instrumental, as does Sam Waterston before “The American Promise.” “The actors were the only people I invited to read,” Nash said. Executive Producer Kabir Sehgal invited the others, who include former Senator Joseph Lieberman, diplomat William Vanden Heuvel, British statesman David Miliband, homilist Deepak Chopra, former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, and historian (and Sehgal’s liner note co-author) Douglas Brinkley.

Towards actualizing this mega-project, which includes a comprehensive 20-page booklet with informative liner notes, Nash raised “somewhere over $25,000” via Kickstarter, and contributed another several thousand dollars “out of pocket.” “As Wynton says, it’s so important to document the things you do,” Nash said. “I hope it’s not just for archival reasons, and that people will actually check it out.”

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Ted Nash & The Orchard, Downbeat News Piece re Portraits in Seven Shades:

For most of March, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra executed a tour much like any other—a 21-concert, 19-city sojourn that launched in Washington, D.C., coalesced in the south central red states (Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee), headed up the Mississippi River (Missouri and Minnesota), caravanned east across the Great Lakes (Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, upstate New York, and Pennsylvania), and concluded deep in the south (Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida).

The event signified an important transition in the Jazz at Lincoln Center business model. For the first time since Big Train, from 1999, JALCO was backing a brand-new CD, Portraits in Seven Shades, a kaleidoscopic suite by Ted Nash, on its eponymous signature label, also brand-new, to be distributed in both physical and digital form through the Orchard, a publicly traded mega-aggregator of independent labels that holds close to 14,000 jazz titles. Not inconsequentially, Portraits is the first-ever JALCO release devoted to original music by a band member not named Wynton Marsalis. (Don’t Be Afraid [Palmetto], from 2003, comprises Ronald Westray’s arrangements of Charles Mingus repertoire.)

Portraits gestated in the context of Marsalis’ increasing emphasis on delegating creative and aesthetic responsibilities to his employee-associates. “The band is an institution, and to be viable, the institution has to grow,” Marsalis said. “I was one of the founders, so at first it was based on me. As we’ve refined the sound and concept, we’ve incorporated more people into our voice.” Partly due to this policy, the orchestra’s identity is less dependent on the presence of its most celebrated figure, who positions himself not facing the band, but in the trumpet line. To wit, JALCO didn’t skip a beat on the several occasions between 2004 and 2006 when a recurring lip inflammation sent Marsalis to the sidelines, and it has sold out several Rose Theater concerts—most recently a Carlos Henriquez-led homage to Dizzy Gillespie and Tito Puente—in which he did not participate.

During a 2005 tour of Mexico, Marsalis commissioned Nash—whose prior  contributions to the band book included charts on such repertoire as “My Favorite Things,” “Tico, Tico,” Wayne Shorter’s “Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum,” and Ornette Coleman’s “Kaleidoscope” and “Una Muy Bonita”—to compose a “big form piece” around a theme of his choosing. Nash decided to base each chart on his response to a different painting from the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, with which JALC has fostered a reciprocal relationship. Allowed to absorb MoMA’s holdings on various off-hours visits, Nash eventually winnowed down to works by Claude Monet, Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Marc Chagall, and Jackson Pollock.

In imparting to each movement its own flavor, Nash wields a vivid palette of orchestral and rhythmic color. On “Monet,” a lilting, impressionistic work in 3/4, he juxtaposes higher-pitched instruments with the bass, extracting beautiful colors from the trumpets by deft use of various mutes. Violin and accordion infuse “Chagall” with a klezmer feeling, while he opens “Picasso” with a distillation of a Spanish progression, sandwiching a long section in which Nash transfuses Cubist aesthetics into notes and tones by deploying McCoy Tyneresque fourths—a cube has four sides—as “an integral component of the thematic material, the harmony and the voicings.”

On “Pollock,” Nash emulated the abstract expressionist avatar’s paint-splattering techniques by conjuring piano fragments and coalescing them into a line that evokes a jagged Herbie Nichols theme, while giving the blowing section an open Ornette Coleman like quality with background passages comprised of unassigned note-heads. He conjures the melted clocks and parched mise en scene of Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” with a 13/8 groove, melodic tonalities that evoke “a lost creature searching,” and simultaneous improvised solos on trumpet and alto on which the lines flow one  into the other.

Like Marsalis, Nash, now 50, blossomed early, a “young lion” before the term became marketing vernacular. The son of eminent L.A. studio trombonist Dick Nash and the namesake nephew of studio woodwindist Ted Nash, he moved to New York at 18, after spending much of his teens employed by Lionel Hampton, Quincy Jones, Don Ellis, and Louis Bellson. Before signing up with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, as it was known until 2007, Nash accumulated a c.v. marked by consequential stints with the Mel Lewis Orchestra, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Gerry Mulligan, the Carnegie Hall Big Band, and various configurations of the New York’s Jazz Composers’ Collective. On Portraits, Nash draws vocabulary from all these experiences, not neglecting the predilections of each JALCO member when they improvise and play ensemble.

“[JALCO] has a distinctive quality, not necessarily in the older styles of music that we’ve received the greatest exposure for playing, but in the stuff we’re writing now and play in New York or on the road,” he stated. “With Mel, we’d swing on Thad Jones and Bob Brookmeyer, and then open up the solos so it became a kind of quartet. Here the solos are less extended, and seem more to address the music; everyone is committed to making a statement from beginning to end of a piece. The ensemble becomes almost its own voice—not the clean style of the ‘New Testament’ Basie band, but more like Ellington’s approach, with different timbres, different individuals. There’s a soulful feeling, a support system I’ve never felt before, like a quest for truth. We cover more ground than any band I’ve been with, too—Wynton’s opuses like All Rise and Congo Square, stuff that’s completely free and out there, stuff that’s the very beginning of jazz.”

Perhaps the sprawling, impossible-to-pinpoint scope of JALCO’s repertoire is a reason why it has not translated its enviable worldwide visibility and Marsalis’ enormous prestige into strong unit sales on prior recording projects. The institution hopes to ameliorate this situation in their partnership with the Orchard by using its international digital network—it services 700 stores and has representatives in 25 countries—to effectively target their buyers. With Portraits, this entailed securing placements on such usual-suspect store pages as iTunes, eTunes, Amazon, and bn.com, as well as international outlets like Fnac and Virgin. Furthermore, in the weeks leading up to the release, Nash did considerable promotional activity, while Orchard conducted outreach and contests via social media—email lists, Facebook, Twitter, the JALC and MoMA subscriber bases.

“Everything in the digital world works the same way,” said Richard Gottehrer, the Orchard’s Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, who knew the ancien regime as a songwriter (“My Boyfriend’s Back”), producer (“Hang on Sloopy”), label-owner (Sire), and talent manager (Blondie, the Go-Gos, Joan Armatrading). “You try to engage the fans, and the fans become the vehicle for spreading the word as opposed to radio.”

“We’re classic long-tail territory,” said Adrian Ellis, JALC’s Executive Director. “Jazz is niche music, and clearly, the wider the distribution of your catalog, the greater chance that your fans around the world can find it.” Although the label’s primary purpose is to exploit its massive archive, comprising every JALCO concert over the past two decades, JALC intends to make full use of its on-site studio and recording facilities to document new work going forward in a timely manner. Ellis estimates four to five releases each year; the format decisions will key to perceived sales potential.

Neither Ellis nor Ken Druker, JALC’s Director of Intellectual Property, were prepared to state what the next releases would be.

“We’re working through the rights issues, the mixing and mastering,” Ellis said. “The Orchard appears to offer an easy, cost-effective distribution route for getting things out at an appropriate pace.”

What is clear is that JALC is in the digital marketplace for keeps. “I believe in the ultimate integration of all aspects of what you do,” said Marsalis, whose own separate deal with the Orchard stipulates that they will co-produce as well as distribute his projects. “We’re a non-profit, and we create nothing but content all the time. We have an opportunity to use that content to expand our audience, to turn people around the world on to jazz, and raise money. Our dream was to have a space (I call it a “cloud”) where there’s radio, video, and digital content, which can be streamed, downloaded, or purchased. The money we make can go directly back into providing some type of public service.”

Ted Panken

For Danilo Perez’ 54th Birthday, Downbeat Features From 2010 and 2014

Best of birthdays to maestro Danilo Pérez. who turns 54 today. A few years ago on this date , I uploaded a post containing transcripts of an uncut Downbeat Blindfold Test that we did in 2001 and a WKCR interview in 1993. That post linked to a pair of Downbeat articles that it was my honor to write about Danilo in 2010 and 2014 respectively. Today I’m posting the texts of those articles.

 

Danilo Pérez, See a Little Light – Downbeat 2014

At 2:30 in the morning on the penultimate night of the 2014 Panama Jazz Festival, Danilo Pérez hopped off the bandstand of his new, namesake club in the American Trade Hotel in Panama City’s historic Casco Viejo district. He was exhilarated, and for good reason. Pérez had just concluded the week’s final jam session—a fiery encounter with tenor saxophonist George Garzone, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Adam Cruz—with an exorcistic five-minute piano solo on John Coltrane’s “Mr. P.C.”

“That was like Bradley’s,” Pérez called out, punctuating the point with an emphatic fist-bump. The reference was to the late-night Greenwich Village piano saloon where Pérez was a rotation regular from 1989, his first of three years with Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra, until Bradley’s closed in 1996. That was the year Pérez released Panamonk, cementing his status as a multilingual storyteller who renders Afro-Caribbean and hardcore jazz dialects without an accent.

Earlier that evening, Pérez had focused on his latest release, Panama 500 (Mack Avenue), at a concert at the City of Knowledge, a 300-acre former U.S. military base along the Panama Canal where the festival transpired. The 12-tune suite evokes Panama’s half-millennium as a global crossroads, incorporating indigenous melodies and local variants of African-descended rhythms. On the recording, Pérez fleshes them out with structural and harmonic logics developed over a 14-year run with the Wayne Shorter Quartet, and animates them by unleashing two intuitive rhythm sections—bassist Ben Street and Cruz from his working trio of the past decade, and Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, his partners with Shorter—capable of matching the twists and turns of the leader’s open-ended improvisations. He phrases with a singer’s malleability and a drummer’s effervescence. The concert marked only the second public performance of the work, but Pérez and his unit—Patitucci, Cruz, violinist Alex Hargreaves and conguero-batá drummer Ramon Díaz—delivered it with precision and flair, overcoming a balky sound system, dubious acoustics, and several obstreperous attendees.

Throughout the week, Pérez, 48, multitasked efficiently despite minimal sleep. He fulfilled numerous extra-musical obligations, analyzing the big picture and extinguishing logistical brushfires. At an opening-day press conference, he displayed considerable diplomatic skills, communicating the festival’s educational mission and socio-economic impact in concrete language that the politicians and bureaucrats he shared the stage with could understand and support. He never removed his educator’s hat. There were visits to his Danilo Pérez Foundation, which offers top-shelf musical instruction and life lessons to several hundred at-risk children, 19 of whom have received scholarships to the likes of Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory. Furthermore, Pérez participated in an array of clinics, workshops and master classes conducted by faculty and an elite octet dubbed the Global Jazz Ambassadors [GJA], culled from the Global Jazz Institute, the 30-student enclave that Berklee hired Pérez to conceptualize and develop a curriculum for in 2010.

After a two-hour rehearsal on the morning before the “Panama 500” concert, and another one with Patitucci and GJA for an evening concert in which he would play timbales, congas and cajon, Pérez walked to the City of Knowledge food court for lunch. Over the next hour, he discussed his creative process, staying on point through periodic interruptions—a fan asked for a photo; a violinist and a documentary filmmaker stopped by the table for separate chats, as did Oswaldo Ayala, a popular Panamanian accordionist-vocalist who would debut a new project that evening when the GJA concert was done.

“Records for me are like signposts, and now we have to make a lot of new windows through which to enter and exit,” Pérez said. “They really need to know all the little details; otherwise, there are places where we could get lost in the mud. I’m excited about finding ways to open up and get those notes off the paper.”

The little details and the portals coexist in equal measure on Panama 500. In its formal complexity, Pérez hearkens to the specificity of intention that infused his ’90s recordings—The Journey and Motherland, both heavily composed meditations on Pan-American themes in which the drums power through, and also blowing-oriented dates like Panamonk and Central Avenue, on which he imparted a funky, Mother Earth feel to an array of odd-meter claves. But the mood is more akin to the spontaneous, fluid, experimental sensibility—a quality of instant composition—that palpably infuses 2005’s Live At The Jazz Showcase (ArtistShare) and 2010’s Providencia (Mack Avenue).

Originally, Pérez had intended to follow Providencia with a less speculative program of standards and originals, but experienced a creative breakthrough after the 2013 festival. “When I got back to Boston I knew what the record would be, that I wanted to tell the human path of what happened when the Spanish discovered—or rediscovered—Panama and the Pacific Ocean,” he said. “I started writing new material and improvising at the piano constantly for two weeks. I was writing for each person in the band to represent a certain aspect of the experience. The violin can be the Spanish colonizer, and then transform into the indigenous.”

Once in the studio, Pérez decided to give the two rhythm sections repertoire that they had not previously worked on. “I didn’t want the feeling on the record that people have complete understanding or control,” he explained. “The more familiar they were with a piece, I chose to go the opposite way. Before I joined Wayne, I would have been panicking that someone didn’t know all the details.”

Cruz recounted the milieu. “There was a lot to digest and process, and each section has a certain character,” he said. “So we were struggling—a fun struggle, but hard work. He’s looking for a way not to feel trapped by what he wrote, so performing it always feels fresh and pregnant with possibility.” By deploying this approach, Pérez mirrored what Street described as the “completely chaotic” environment that pervaded the making of Providencia. “I told his wife I thought we should make changes in the control room or ask people to leave,” Street said. “She looked at me almost pityingly and said, ‘Danilo thrives on chaos.’”

Upon hearing her words back, Patricia Zarate laughed long and hard. “It sounds weird for me to say my husband is special, but Danilo has a lot of charisma,” Zarate said. “He has a natural predisposition to turn really bad situations into good ones, whether it’s a band that sounds really bad that he makes sound really good, or being in the home of a student who lives in extreme poverty, transforming it into a great party. That comes from his father. I see chaos in front of me; they see a little light that I don’t see.”

Danilo Pérez Sr., a well-known Panamanian sonero of the Beny Moré school, became an elementary school teacher during the ’60s. He experimented with ways to use music as a learning tool in poor neighborhoods, and passed them on to his son, who was playing bongos by age 3 and began classical piano studies at 8. “My father clearly demonstrated to me that learning and playing a piece is not the beautiful part,” Pérez said, who played both piano and drums in his father’s bands from an early age. “It’s the struggle to get it. If you can connect to the actual lesson that the music teaches you, you have learned something profound in that process, and it will stay with you forever.”

Gillespie and Shorter, both musical father surrogates, reinforced this basis of operations. “Dizzy said that people need to simmer,” Pérez said. “Let it come from friction. Let people struggle until they find their place. Don’t try to accommodate it. Wayne also told us that. Don’t rush. Don’t make quick assumptions. A big attraction to working in Wayne’s context is that he took away everything that I could use to recycle. He said, ‘Function from the primacy of the ear and find your way in.’ Dizzy talked about that, too. ‘Listen, listen, listen, and then let the music guide you.’ That’s the way I’m doing things now. I’m just trying to redefine things that I have thought about or worked on for years.”

Patitucci, who hosted the Panama 500 rehearsals at his Westchester home, described how Pérez manifested this attitude. “Danilo’s process is long,” Patitucci said. “He came in at 9 a.m. with stuff, but it was just the starting point. He’d literally investigate sounds all day, have a short break, and then go to the gig. That makes him perfect for Wayne’s music, which is not about quick answers and cliches. It’s about probing, searching, the struggle of finding new sounds and dealing with them. Danilo is not in a hurry, and he won’t settle for something expedient. He’ll go for something much deeper.”

Pérez described this mindset as “almost obsessive-compulsive, like a dementia.” He said: “It’s almost like the time stops. I feel more joy and function better when I do that, like a kid finding and creating, doing one little thing for a long time. It’s beyond what my father explained to me. It’s the most human I feel.”

Again, he credited his embrace of this perspective to Shorter’s example. “I’ve been encouraged to take these risks,” Pérez said. “I’ve been allowed to think that the creative process is invaluable. I’m starting to get into an open door to come up with a vocabulary that has been with me for years, since The Journey and Panamonk. On each of them, I was falling in love with little things in my life, and I feel like they’re coming back at me. I’m not chasing them. They’re coming back.”

Pérez now finds himself at a crossroads not so dissimilar to the one he faced 14 years ago, when he decided to table his burgeoning career as a solo artist and commit to Shorter’s quartet. This summer, He will join Patitucci and Blade on the club and festival circuit as the Children of the Light trio, while Shorter, who pushed himself hard during 2013 with numerous 80th birthday events, stays home to compose. Pérez’s 2014 itinerary also includes several runs with the Panama 500 unit and a duo event with Miguel Zenón. He hopes to revive his long-standing partnership with tenor saxophonist David Sánchez, and a more recent relationship with altoist Rudresh Mahanthappa and trumpeter Amir ElSaffar that developed during a 2010 project titled “Celebrating Dizzy,” as yet unrecorded, on which Pérez applied principles of nonattachment to Gillespie’s oeuvre. Speaking of recordings, he has several possibilities in mind—perhaps a singers’ project, perhaps documenting orchestral work, perhaps a solo piano recital on the kind of repertoire he played at Bradley’s back in the day, informed by such early mentors as Donald Brown, Jon Hendricks and Gillespie.

Topping Pérez’s aspirational queue is to generate sufficient income from his club to buy the building that houses the Danilo Pérez Foundation. “My dream is to create the best listening room in Latin America,” he said, noting that a 7-foot grand piano would soon be installed, and that Rob Griffin, Shorter’s sound-engineer/road-manager since the mid-’90s, will be overseeing the details. “We want to provide a creative space where the musicians who go from Panama to the United States can play and develop artistically when they return, and also bring international artists to perform at the club in a way that complements the foundation. I want the foundation to be there forever.”

The foundation’s genesis dates to 1984, when Pérez, a few months shy of 18, left Panama on a Fulbright scholarship to study electrical engineering at Indiana College in Pennsylvania, where he stayed a year before transferring to Berklee—also on scholarship—in 1985. “I promised that I would come back and give time every year,” he said. Pérez committed four days each year over a nine-year span to a music-social outreach project called Jamboree, assembled big bands and taught private classes. “Although Danilo saw all these things as part of his mission, they were disconnected and unsustainable because there wasn’t an institution that could take care of this mission,” Zarate said. “So in 2003 he opened a corporation to create a jazz festival that had a social component. ‘I really need to do this,’ he told me, ‘and I am going to put in the project all the money that I have saved to buy our first house in Boston.’”

Two years later, Pérez—who had been appointed Panama’s Cultural Ambassador in 2000—met K.C. Hardin, a controlling partner of the real estate development company Conservatorio, which was then purchasing numerous properties in Casco Viejo One of them was the National Conservatory of Music, a four-story structure constructed in the 1670s—it was Panama’s first Presidential palace—where Pérez had studied in his youth. Another was the American Trade Building, a 1917 mercantile structure across a small plaza from the conservatory, that had fallen into disrepair. Hardin offered Pérez the first floor of the conservatory for a decade, at no rent, to house the foundation; in 2013, he gave Pérez complete creative control of the Danilo Pérez Jazz Club on the hotel’s ground floor.

Luis-Carlos Pérez (no relation), 35, a one-time DPF student who earned master’s degrees in jazz composition and music education from New England Conservatory, is the foundation’s director of education. “We try to teach the children human values and good habits through music,” he said in the foundation’s main practice room, which contains a Kawai grand piano, a Ludwig drum kit and a marimba. In a back room are two Apple computers with keyboards, and six PCs for students—five of them pay $40 per month; the rest are on scholarship—to do homework and access the internet.

Profanity is forbidden, as is fighting, and wearing shoes is mandatory. “We don’t teach music in a conservatory way,” Luis-Carlos Pérez said. “They need to play, to feel music like a game. We teach them to make different sounds with their body, that their body is their first instrument. Some kids may be sexually harassed; this teaches them to respect their bodies. We give them rhythm instruments, or melodicas on which they learn little tunes. We also teach teamwork, how to listen to each other. If a kid has an attitude problem, we know it’s because something is wrong at home, so we make them the leaders. That was Danilo’s idea.”

Danilo Pérez’s core notion of privileging process over product also infuses his vision for the Global Jazz Institute, whose students play in nursing homes, hospitals and prisons to give them an opportunity to feel, as he puts it, “that their talent brings with it great responsibility.” “At the institute, we teach that everything is connected,” said Marco Pignataro, a Bologna-born saxophonist who has been GJI’s managing director since its inception. “The act of giving is going to affect what you do on stage. Danilo’s teaching reflects his experience with Wayne Shorter—his sense of harmony and orchestration, the idea that creativity and humanity exist at the same time. Offstage, you’re still improvising.”

“Danilo sees the world as one huge combination of things, instead of ‘music is here and other things are there,’” said Zarate, a music therapist whose mother is a neurologist in Chile. “He was a totally different person before Wayne, who totally connects to music therapy. But while I was trying to figure out how to restore movement in people with Parkinson’s Disease, Wayne was talking about how we’re going to move humanity with music.”

For all his preoccupation with the big picture, Pérez is a stickler for fundamentals and idiomatic assimilation of traditions. “I still believe that the core of this music’s sound design and architecture comes from listening to Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, who created a vocabulary that is so representative of North America,” he said. “I emphasize that the kids be aware of bebop. I want them to look at Charlie Parker as a superhero. Their backgrounds are very similar. You see this music speak to them; it comes from the barrio.”

Pérez describes his own background as “poor, working-class,” recalling how his mother, also a teacher, “saved a penny to a penny to raise our level.” He emphasizes that “to be poor then didn’t necessarily mean issues with crime and violence, whereas now it’s implied. It was a super-optimistic, honorable culture. My grandfather would say, ‘A monkey dressed in silk is still a monkey; possessions mean nothing if you’re a crook.’ Those values were passed on to us. My mother studied so hard! I promised myself that I want to learn all my life. That’s why I went to New York, and put myself in situations where I was uncomfortable. I think the ultimate heritage you can leave for your family is the desire not to want things to be easy. When I’d see Dizzy in a corner with a little pencil and music, or Wayne writing 100 bars, that is where it’s at for me: commitment and passion.”

These first principles will continue to inform Pérez’s implementation of his social-humanitarian vision. “I understood from early on that the component of education wasn’t only for musicians,” he said. “I see so many things that could be changed in my country, and I asked myself whether I wanted to be a person who produced the change or one who just complained about it. I decided I’d do whatever it takes that I feel is ethical and moral, that doesn’t go against the values my parents taught me. Another thing I learned from Wayne is that every time you feel resistance, it’s a sign to know you’re on the right path. Use resistance as a fertilizer.”

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Danilo Perez DB Article 2010 (Final):

“I have to take a risk, otherwise I start to freak out,” said Danilo Perez, after downing a second double espresso at Saturday brunch in the restaurant of his Manhattan hotel. “I understood that early on, even when I was playing with great artists. They wouldn’t like it, because I wouldn’t do the same intro, and maybe I screwed it up the second time.”

The 43-year pianist was midway through a first-four-nights-of-April engagement at the Jazz Standard with a new project dubbed Things To Come: 21st Century Dizzy, on which he and his newest band—alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, trumpeter Amir El Saffar, tenor saxophonist David Sanchez, and percussionist Jamey Haddad, along with drummer Adam Cruz and bassist Ben Street from Perez’ working trio—were deconstructing iconic Dizzy Gillespie repertoire like “Salt Peanuts,” “Con Alma,” “Manteca,” and “Woody ‘n You.” It was only their third meeting, and Perez meant to use his ten club sets to coalesce the flow. There were arrangements, but Perez spontaneously reorchestrated from the piano, cuing on-a-dime shifts in tonality and meter, relentlessly recombining the unit into various duo, trio and quartet configurations.

Ultimately, Perez said, he hoped to extrapolate to the larger ensemble the expansive feel he’s evolved over the past eight years with Street and Cruz, one that Street positioned “somewhere between Keith Jarrett’s late ‘60s-early ‘70s trio with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian and Herbie Hancock’s Inventions and Dimensions record.” Street added: “The music has a lot of emotional freedom, but also an unspoken subtext of rhythmic science that doesn’t always need to be directly addressed.”

“It takes time and patience to be able to go anywhere the music takes us,” Perez said. “Our mission is to uncover new territories inside what’s there to create something unique, and then write to that.” Elaborating as the conversation progressed, Perez referred several times to “writing with windows through which people can enter and exit.”

“I don’t want to write in a dictatorial way, that inhibits personality,” he continued. “I want them to put me in a weird spot.” Perez credited Wayne Shorter, his steady employer since 2001, as the source of this imperative. “Wayne writes you this amazing thing, but then says, ‘Forget that, and bring your own idea—I want to hear your opinion of what I wrote.’”

Cruz cosigned Perez’ consistent non-attachment to material. “If there’s even a smattering of routine on the gig, an ‘Oh, this is what we do’ feeling, Danilo immediately wants to throw a wrench—knock all these pieces over and start again,” he said. Mahanthappa added: “More than anyone I play with, Danilo loves loading a set with surprises to keep things fresh.”

Perez also attributed this predisposition to his experience with Shorter. “He’s given my life a dimension that wasn’t there before—to be committed and fearless, and not focus on the result, but let the stuff morph as it wants to,” he explained. “I’m thinking a lot about what in my life is important to portray, and then letting the music mold and take shape as it goes.” He referenced the title of his just-mixed new album, Providencia [Mack Avenue]. “It’s to prepare for the unknown, for the future, almost as though you’re watching something in forward motion. You let ‘providencia’ take place. I’m thinking a lot about movements and movies, even about struggle. And a lot about children—when I play now, images arise of how children make decisions, doing something and suddenly switching to something else, like organized chaos, but keeping the thread.”

Providencia is a tour de force, a kaleidoscopic suite woven from the core themes that mark Perez’ oeuvre since his eponymous 1993 debut and its 1994 followup, The Journey, on which he presented a mature, expansive, take on Pan-American jazz expression. There are dark, inflamed Panamanian love songs; original programmatic works addressing Panamanian subjects on which the woodwinds and voice that augment the ensemble improvise fluidly within the form; and improvcentric combo tunes that incorporate complex, intoxicating Afro-Caribbean meters—Panama’s tamborito on “Panama Galactic,” for example—and highbrow jazz harmony; a pair of cohesive, spontaneously improvised Perez-Mahanthappa duos towards the end. Throughout the proceedings, the pianist plays with exquisitely calibrated touch, extrapolating the beyond-category voice shaped in the crucible of Shorter’s quintet—Mahanthappa describes it as “the history of jazz piano and 20th century classical music, but improvised, virtuosic, reactive, and musical”—onto the ingenious clave permutations and capacious harmonic palette that established his early career reputation.

The precision of the language and clarity of intention on Providencia belies the loose methodology that Perez deployed in making it. Yet, rather than work with a preordained “text,” Perez, in the manner of a film director who convenes his cast several weeks before shooting to work out characters and plot, constructed his narrative after extensive studio rehearsals.

“I approached it more as a life event than a record date, different than what I’ve done before,” Perez said, referencing his earlier, more curated productions. “I’m living by the code of adventure, to play what I wish for, without preconceptions. I’m fascinated by human collaboration expressed through music, how people with different interests, different loves, can come together and create. The project was a response to an imaginary question from my two daughters: ‘What are you doing to prevent the world from disappearing? What is going to be left for us?’ It’s an invitation to get away from our comfort zone.”

Similar impulses influenced Perez’ decision to collaborate with Mahanthappa and El-Saffar, both high-concept leaders who work with raw materials drawn from South India and Iraq, their respective ancestral cultures, as well as Haddad, a Lebanese-American who specializes in articulating timbres and meters drawn from North African sources. At the Jazz Standard, Perez deftly wove their individualistic tonalities into the overall sonic tapestry. “I was curious to hear how I’d react to an unknown space, like traveling with a person that you never have traveled with or don’t know well,” he said. “I’m attracted to the connotation of globality—the global feel, the idea of bridging gaps.”

[BREAK]

“For me, jazz is the only place where globalization really works,” Perez remarked. He embraced that notion during a 1989-1992 tenure with Dizzy Gillespie’s Pan-American oriented United Nations Orchestra, when his name entered the international jazz conversation.

“Dizzy was a global ambassador, and the idea of doing a project around him seemed appropriate now,” he continued. “I believe that this group can become a sort of healing band. Maybe go to Iraq or India and play a concert with musicians there—have the group reflect how the United Nations or the government should be working.

“When I started playing with Dizzy, I was listening a lot to Bud Powell. Once I played a solo over Rhythm changes, people were congratulating me, but Dizzy sort of said, ‘Yeah…but when are you going to deal with where you come from?’ Later, I somehow added something, and he went CLUCK-CLUCK with the baton, meaning, ‘Whatever you did, just keep going.’ I understand now that by not putting up barriers, Dizzy was practicing his Bahai faith. He wanted to create a cultural passport that functions all around the world, for everybody, and he should be credited for that.”

Mentored by mainstem jazz pianist Donald Brown at Berklee, and seasoned in the idiomatic nuances over a consequential year with Jon Hendricks, who “insisted that I know ALL the history,” Perez drew on Gillespie’s first-hand knowledge of the thought process of such seminal figures as Monk and Powell, whose vocabularies he would assimilate sufficiently to make the rotation at Bradley’s, Manhattan’s A-list piano saloon.

“The education system then was not what it is now,” he said. “They channeled information through the great music of the Western world, mixing that with the rhythms they were working with, and developed a new language. I heard Bach’s flowing lines in Bud’s music, and this helped me start to hear bebop. Dizzy would say, ‘Create counterpoint; if I play this note, find another one in the chord; don’t play all the notes. Position your hands, lift some fingers, and then listen to the sound.’ Wayne talks about it, too: ‘Find the tonal magnetism.’

“When I came to the U.S., something drew me to the word ‘jazz.’ I don’t know any more what it means, but I know the feeling. I understand the emotion from being with the cats at Bradley’s or the masters I played with later. There’s a spontaneity, a moment of joy, something that drives your momentum and makes you feel more optimistic and aware. I realized I had to make a cultural decision to immerse myself in the environment, to hear how people talk, to learn. Then I started making connections—finding common tones. ‘That reminds me of the brothers in Panama—they talk kind of like that.’”

Such experiences bedrocked Perez’ quest to find a trans-Caribbean rhythmic context for Monk’s compositions during the ‘90s, documented on Panamonk [Impulse!], from 1996. The idea germinated, he said, on a 1994 tour with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra devoted to Wynton Marsalis’ arrangements of Monk repertoire.

“They approached that music in a sort of Monk-New Orleans-Panama folkloric way that resonated,” he said. “In Herlin Riley’s playing, I heard the connection between the tambores of Panama and second line rhythms, things that reminded me of danzon and contradanse—it all made sense. I had a similar experience playing with Paquito D’Rivera; I wanted to play jazz and swing, but he focused me on Venezuela and Panama.”

Sharpening that focus were occasional gigs with the Panamaniacs, a short-lived group led by Panama-born bassist Santi DiBriano, who introduced Perez to Panama’s contribution to the jazz timeline—saxophonist Carlos Garnett, pianists Luis Russell and Sonny White, drummer Billy Cobham. Perez contends that the demographic diversity stemming from Panama’s position as a global port produces a cultural mix well suited to jazz expression. He referenced Panama City’s Central Avenue, for which Perez titled a well-wrought 1998 release.

“You hear an Indian cat kind of speaking Spanish, but not really,” he began. “Then a Chinese guy semi-speaking Spanish with Chinese. Then an Afro cat. It’s almost what New York feels like, but in one small country. That’s what one has to portray, that kind of mystical mess—but an organized chaos.”

Within the Panamanian melting pot, Perez was ideally positioned to become an improviser. A child prodigy who studied classical music from age eight, he received first-hand instruction in singing and percussion from his namesake father, now 72, a well-known bandleader and sonero of Afro-Colombian and indigenous descent.

“My father was my first school, my fundamental figure,” said Perez, who became a professional musician at 12, dual-tracking during high school as a math and electronics student at the insistence of his Spanish-descended mother who felt, perhaps from first-hand experience, that music was not a dependable profession. “Music was easy for me since I was little, a language I understood quickly, so he used music to teach me to look at things I needed to function in society—“two plus two is four; four plus four is eight.” At 6 I’d pick up the guitar and start singing, ‘Besame, besame mucho,’ and he would say, ‘sing a second voice.’ ‘Papi, that’s too low.’ Later he had me transcribe Cuban records. Imagine being in that environment 24 hours a day. That connected me to music in intuitively, while the electronics and mathematics—my mother’s side—gave me the discipline and ability to learn things on my own.

“My father said he knew that sooner or later I would decide in favor of music. I think now that I didn’t even have to choose, that I was already walking on the music path and wanted to continue growing on that path. From him I understood early on that being mentored was a key, and I surrounded myself with people that know. I always want to keep being a student, to be in situations I can grow in. Otherwise, I lose touch with how music first spoke to me.”

[BREAK]

In 2001, when he first toured with Wayne Shorter, Perez faced a crossroads. Then 34, fresh from three high-visibility years playing trio with Roy Haynes and John Patitucci, boasting a c.v. that already included several influential Grammy-nominated albums, possessing strong communicative skills and multi-generational peer respect, he appeared on the cusp of the upper echelons of jazz leaders. Instead, he subsumed such aspirations, constructing his next decade’s schedule around Shorter’s itinerary and a full-time professorship at New England Conservatory. He started a family with his wife, a Chilean music therapist, established a foundation in Panama to work with gang members, created the Panama Jazz Festival, became active in Panamanian cultural politics, and allowed his music to marinate.

“When I was 16, I promised that if I ever had an opportunity to go out and do something, I would return to my country and give back,” Perez said. “When I started playing with Wayne, his approach reconnected me with values that I learned with my father as a child. I realized that for my music to continue to flow naturally, I need to keep growing as a human being. I need to intensify my promise.”

In their essence, Shorter’s musical lessons were not so dissimilar from Gillespie’s earlier admonitions. “Early on we were playing ‘JuJu,’ and I was playing things I’d assimilated from earlier listening—McCoy—and Wayne looked at me like this.” Perez made his face blank. “All of a sudden, I saw a bunch of horses—I went with it. Wayne immediately turned and said, ‘That’s the shit right there.’ I kept going for that, to the point where it become a state of mind. Every time I thought about music, he looked at me like this”—he deadpanned—“and every time I disconnected myself and thought about an event, a movie, my daughter, my wife, he’d say, ‘That’s the shit right there.’”

Shorter has offered moral lessons, too, delivered as metaphoric koans but always landing precisely on the one. “Wayne made me realize that courage isn’t determined by trying to climb Mount Everest,” Perez said. “Courage is getting in a relationship and going through the struggle. He said, ‘Happiness doesn’t come for free. We have to fight for it every day, and we have to be inspired.’ He talks about no regrets—they leave wounds. He says, ‘Don’t hide behind your instrument—see who you are.’ Develop things. With Wayne you have to have a lot of tools together, but the most important tool is to be driven by your shamanistic side, your role in society as a musician.”

Perez, who left NEC to assume artistic directorship of Berklee’s Global Jazz Institute last September, is walking that walk. He recalled a mid-‘90s fortnight run at Bradley’s playing duo with Jacky Terrason. “It was 42 sets, and by the 42nd I thought I could play anything I heard. It’s endurance, but also a belief developed by doing this so intensely with people around you. Sometimes artists walk this dangerous path of portraying ourselves individualistically, and forgetting that it’s about all of us. People send messages, energy, and ideas; jazz is important because it brings a community together. We must take up the sword. This is a quiet revolution—you dream your passion. That’s what Wayne talks about.”
[—30—]