Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith’s Cosmic Rhythms

Pianist Vijay Iyer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith have been accumulating honors and accolades like Michael Phelps collects Olympic medals. But the two, who mesmerized a capacity crowd at Bezanson Recital Hall on Tuesday, September 27, have come to their success in very different ways.

After serious study of the sciences at Yale and a PhD from UC Berkeley, Iyer burst on the music scene in the late 1990s, collaborating with alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa and poet/vocalist Mike Ladd, forming a celebrated trio and composing for all manner of ensemble. In the last four years alone, the 44-year-old pianist has won numerous awards (Doris Duke, MacArthur, ECHO) and polls (2014 Downbeat Pianist of the Year, 2015 and 2016 Downbeat Jazz Artist of the year, multiple Albums of the Year.) He is also the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard. His rise has been meteoric.

Wadada Leo Smith, on the other hand, couldn’t even get arrested during the first half of his career. When asked over dinner how he summons the energy to keep up with his international travel schedule and his torrid composing and recording regimen, the 74-year-old trumpeter said he spent the first 40 years of his life “resting.” Although early commercial success eluded him, Smith was busy creating his own language on his instrument and his own system of music notation, while forging relationships with Leroy Jenkins, Anthony Braxton, Anthony Davis and Derek Bailey. In the last few years, however, he has won a MAP Fund Award, Chamber Music America New Works Grant, Mohn Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was short listed for a Pulitzer Prize for Ten Freedom Summers, was awarded an honorary degree from Cal Arts and is on the cover of the current issue of Downbeat, where they called him “a national treasure.”

Having traveled divergent paths to notoriety, these two icons came together to kick off the 15th annual Solos & Duos Series at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The 75-minute recital closely followed the contour of their well-received recording, a cosmic rhythm with each stroke (ECM, 2016), down to the epilogue, a tribute to the great contralto Marian Anderson, the first African-American to sing at the Met. The bulk of the program consisted of a suite dedicated to the late Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi, whose line-based drawing graces the CD cover, and whose words give the release its title.

The music was spacious, abstract, atmospheric, filled with emotion. Without sustained melody or steady pulse, the concert was unmoored to the usual signposts. We were left with sound, texture and the interaction of two masters of expression. Smith uses silence more convincingly than anyone since Miles Davis. In fact, with his bent frame and his bell pointed downward, he resembled the Prince of Darkness. Smith’s conception is an acquired taste, one that has not changed appreciably since his New Haven days in the 1970s. Eschewing extraversion and pyrotechnics, Smith pleases crowds with subtlety and a cracked vulnerability.

Iyer used Fender Rhodes and his laptop to layer moods while producing gorgeous tones from Bezanson’s exquisite 9-foot Steinway. Self taught on piano, Iyer nonetheless has considerable technique at his disposal. Following Smith’s lead, however, he mostly played sparingly, using runs and clusters only when the music demanded it.

We live in a time when capitalist realism dominates every aspect of contemporary society. For most of us, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine a world without neoliberal capitalism. That’s what makes this music so powerful. It forces us to acknowledge that a new world is possible. We can organize our lives in ways that are different from what we’ve been sold. Musical rules can be reinvented; sound can be organized in new ways. The yardstick is not just whether it swings, but whether it serves human needs.

The probing interaction and deep listening between these two giants – separated by 30 years, different cultural backgrounds and career trajectories – gives us hope that the gulfs that divide the world in so many ways, are surmountable.

Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares begins Season 5 with the Steve Swell Quartet

After a three-month hiatus, we were back in the saddle September 15, presenting the first of 16 concerts we will produce through June 2017. We hit the ground running thanks to the Steve Swell Quartet, who kicked off Season 5 of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares before a full house at Hampshire College.

There were heavy hearts on stage, as this project was supposed to feature pianist Connie Crothers, who passed away a month ago at the age of 75. After a moment of silence and Swell’s words of respect for his dear friend, the trombonist launched into an extended, unaccompanied solo full of smears, bleats, pretty notes, glissandi and lots of emotion.

Without Crothers, the group pivoted from their original plan to reprise Swell’s riveting Silkheart release, Hommage á Bartók. Although there were music stands on stage and occasional intricate unison passages featuring Swell and alto saxophonist Rob Brown, the single, 70-minute set was for the most part, freely improvised.

But freely improvised does not mean formless. In fact, the virtuosic rhythm team of bassist William Parker and drummer Gerald Cleaver were a driving force all evening. The two have shared many bandstands over the years, most notably in Farmers By Nature, the superb trio they share with pianist Craig Taborn. The driving, malleable pulse they produced served as a touchstone.

The four musicians have deep shared histories dating back more than 25 years, resulting in a high level of what John Corbett calls “interaction dynamics,” how the musicians relate to one another.

In his insightful pocket book, “A Listener’s Guide to Free Improvisation,” the Chicago-based record and concert producer talks of “the palpable sense of give-and-take and the excitement of watching musicians build something jointly.” Witnessing the evening’s interactions, we felt that excitement, even a sense of danger, wondering if the train would part from the rail, trusting the artists could navigate clearly uncharted waters.

William Parker is what we call a leading light. Not merely a great musician, but a lynchpin, a towering figure, someone who will command chapter headings when the jazz history of our time is written. We were reminiscing about some of the dozens of visits he’s made to the Valley: from early concerts under the banner of Michael Ehlers’ Eremite Records in the 1990s, to his 2015 UMass Fine Arts Center’s Solos & Duos Series duo with poet David Budbill.

It was great to hear him play bass exclusively, and a treat to hear his fantastic arco work. Was it the distinctive looking bow, made by percussionist/sound artist Tatsuya Nakatani that made the bass sound especially resonant?

Hats off to Steve Swell, who has persevered against all odds to continue to organize and participate in music that matters. Like Roswell Rudd, Wolter Wirebos and a few others, Swell knows the entire history of the trombone, and is able to synthesize sounds popular from the 1920s onward to produce a modern music full of expression.

Thanks to Marty Ehrlich, who has brought great distinction to Hampshire College and enlivens the music scene both on campus and throughout the region. He and Larry Berger and his student staff have created a welcoming home for Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares, one that we hope extends into the future.

Michael Dessen’s Trio Honors Yusef Lateef

Like standing up straight, listening to long forms in a short form world is good for you. Sometimes you don’t realize how easily you’ve succumbed to the sound bite, the 3-minute song, lists and bullet points, until you engage with something that unfolds over time and requires your open mind and undivided attention.

Michael Dessen’s Trio with Chris Tordini on bass and Dan Weiss on drums, performed Somewhere in the Upstream, Dessen’s evening-length composition dedicated to one of his major mentors, Yusef Lateef. Friday’s concert at Holyoke’s ever-evolving Gateway City Arts concluded Season 4 of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares.

As our senses slump from too much ear and eye candy and other empty cultural calories, how invigorating to listen to the slow reveal of sounds and moods delivered by three extraordinary musicians operating on one wavelength. After the Holyoke concert, Dessen’s 10-year old trio travels to Brooklyn to perform at I-Beam then visit Systems Two to record the material we just heard.

The music took us through periods of near stasis, where rhythm and melody changed incrementally at low volume, to sections of aggressive, hard swinging funk, to an unruly universe of other-worldly electronic sounds. The concert flowed without the usual interruption for applause between solos. The lack of clap was not because the playing was subpar, quite the contrary.

I listen to a lot of the best jazz drummers. I’m hard pressed to name anybody I’d put ahead of Dan Weiss. His crisp subdivision of beats, his unending invention, his constant ratcheting up and down of energy, made it hard to keep my ears off him. Weiss was the Jazz Shares Season 4 bookend drummer, beginning our season driving Amir ElSaffar’s Two Rivers Ensemble with a transcendent performance.

Bassist Chris Tordini certainly seemed to enjoy playing with Weiss. Their rapport felt natural and unforced. Tordini was able to establish deep flexible grooves with a few well-chosen notes, reminding me in that regard of Chicago lynchpin Joshua Abrams.

Michael Dessen, who spent about six years in the Valley getting his masters from UMass and teaching at Hampshire, is one of a handful of gifted improvisers on trombone. During the public afternoon conversation about Yusef that I had with Dessen and a dozen others at 340 Bridge St., we heard about weekly private lessons with Lateef, where discussion of music theory would co-exist with talk of Yusef’s Ahmadiyya Muslim practice and Dessen’s understanding of Zen Buddhism.

It was a long overdue treat for me to present my good friend Michael Dessen in concert, and re-connect him with Terry Jenoure, Jason Robinson, Matt Waugh and other old friends, including a long-lost childhood friend who lives locally and happened to see a concert flyer. What a beautiful coda to an amazing season of Jazz Shares concerts.

Here is what shareholder Tony Stavely jotted down during the concert:

Trio: Homage á Yusef Like a legato snake Who’d swallowed accents Grave and acute, the Trombone notes sallied forth, Pas de deux and do si do, With bursting bass tones And the most many im- Aginable agile drumstick strokes And kicks — all possible kicks — All around the room.