OGJB Quartet: Telling Stories Through Sound

Over the years many people have urged Barry Altschul to write a memoir. The 74-year old drummer, composer and bandleader has certainly led an eventful life. The subject of collecting stories came up over drinks at the High Horse after the OGJB Quartet (Oliver Lake, Graham Haynes, Joe Fonda and Barry Altschul) gave a spirited performance at Amherst College’s Buckley Recital Hall on Sunday, March 5. The concert kicked off the 28th season of the Magic Triangle Jazz Series.

Altschul told us how as a 12-year old, he introduced himself to Louis Armstrong after an outdoor concert. “Let me give you a piece of advice,” Armstrong told the budding drummer, “if your wife isn’t your biggest fan, fuck it.” The Bronx-born percussionist graduated from Taft High School with Larry David (“sarcastic even then”), along with a crazy dude named Kramer. He told us about an early crossroads experience, having simultaneous offers to join the bands of Chick Corea and Jimi Hendrix. Paul Bley, his boss at the time, told him “you’re a jazz drummer.” He went with Chick. We heard stories about an alto saxophonist named Gambino who sounded just like Bird and never left Sicily, about Philly Joe Jones and Art Blakey sharing drum secrets with him, and his life-long friendship with Roy Haynes (Graham’s father and grandfather of fellow drummer Marcus Gilmore.)

When I asked Joe Fonda, who lived in the Valley in the second half of the 1970s, if he had ever played in Buckley, he told me he had not, although he had a peak experience hearing Altschul play there in 1975 with Anthony Braxton.

More history was made on Sunday, as the Quartet played a 70-minute concert to over 250 people. The collective, whose first recording is due next month on the outstanding Finnish label, TUM, has only performed live a handful of times. But the veteran band (Lake is 75, Fonda, 62 and Haynes, 56) played with a loose cohesiveness, while exploring originals by all four members of the ensemble.

In creative music, terms like “front line” and “rhythm section” lose meaning. Figure and ground constantly shifted within each piece. So did roles. Neither alto saxophonist Oliver Lake nor trumpeter Graham Haynes play a lot of notes or hog the spotlight. But each has a distinct and easily identifiable sound that lent personality to each composition.

Highlights included Just a Simple Song, a beautiful ballad written by Altschul that began with a haunting unaccompanied solo statement by Haynes. Another high point was a Haynes composition, Bamako, a spiritual journey featuring Haynes on the West African stringed ngoni, Altschul on thumb piano, Fonda playing arco bass and Lake reciting an original poem. The finale, Listen to Dr. Cornel West, written by Fonda, was the most overt swinger of the set, anchored by an insistently funky bass line. In general, the music was delivered in knots of sound in sure-footed, but shifting meter. The engaged listener was rewarded with a coherent, well-balanced evening of music made by four active modern masters.

Although jazz musicians come in all types and shapes, it should come as no surprise that many are master storytellers. They are, after all, contemporary griots, itinerant world-travelers, constantly accumulating experiences across cultures. Their job is to communicate feelings, translate emotions into sound. Let’s hope Barry Altschul puts down his drum sticks long enough to pick up a pen and share some anecdotes.

Darius Jones is Keeping Jazz Alive

I always cringe when I hear jazz organizations and backward looking aficionados lamenting the death of jazz, full of half-hopeful hand-wringing about “keeping jazz alive.” Some pine for bygone days (80 years ago!) when jazz was the popular music, others huff and puff about jazz being “America’s classical music.” Both attitudes are hindrances, locking the music into acceptable styles and conventions and furthering the thing they hope to avoid: turning a vibrant, expressive art into a museum piece, far removed from the world we live in. Those filled with nostalgia are always disappointed in the current state of affairs, always fearful of uncharted territory. But from my vantage point, there has never been a better time to be a jazz fan. Today there are hundreds of creative musicians forging pathways to the future. Darius Jones is one of them.

The alto saxophonist and composer cut through the inclement weather on Saturday, January 7 to deliver a searing, jaw dropping set of music for 70 intrepid listeners at the Parlor Room in Northampton. The concert was the second part of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares’ double whammy, which hosted the Jean-Paul Bourelly/William Hooker Duo in Jim Olsen’s same cozy venue the previous evening.

Jones and his trio, bassist Adam Lane and drummer Jason Nazary, mostly drew from Big Gurl (Smell My Dream), their outstanding 2011 AUM Fidelity release. “Equally earthy and avant-garde,” wrote Carlo Wolff in Jazz Times in his album review, “intellectually stimulating though anything but academic… Jones can keen, weep, caress–and cut, too. The appealing unruliness to his music coexists with authority.”

Jones introduced “A Train” by paying homage to its composer, Billy Strayhorn, Strayhorn’s employer, Duke Ellington and especially Johnny Hodges, the alto saxophonist who made the original come alive. As a blustery introduction slowly revealed the contour of the melody, the pace blistered, and the tune, while still recognizable, was turned inside out. It looked backwards without sentimental longing. It looked forward with unblinking courage. It was an exhilarating 10 minutes.

There was also E-Gaz, a tribute to another alto saxophone master, Eric Dolphy. An original by Jones, it too evoked the spirit of the original without imitation. It was all there: the cry, the moan, the advanced technique, groove, blues and rage. The rhythm section was in lock step all evening. Lane providing deep, spiraling bedrock bass lines, Nazary pushing and accenting, smiling all the way. In contrast to Friday’s duo concert, which uncovered meaning through episodes of probing interplay, Saturday’s event was a concentrated display of well-oiled precision.

Jones told me of a summer spent in deep study of the approach of Steve Coleman, one of the most influential jazz musicians of the last 30 years. He said at the end, it made his head hurt. He meant it without disrespect. Though they share a prodigious technique and a predilection for precise, knotty heads and modern phraseology, Jones hues closer to the blues and embraces a multitude of tempos and moods.

At one point in the concert, Jones repeatedly shook his head and said “2017.” He talked about the beauty and promise of the American experiment, and remarked how as “a free black man from the South,” he had been able to create and thrive. Without mentioning the incoming president by name, he braced himself for the days ahead and launched the band into a Jones original, “Ol’ Metal-Faced Bastard.”

If the days ahead fill us with dread and apprehension, at least we can rest assured that with musicians like Darius Jones coming into their own, the future of jazz is now.

The Return of Jean-Paul Bourelly

Guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly, a big man who lives large, has long had an outsized presence in my musical life. I first heard him on a couple of great Black Saint dates by Muhal Richard Abrams, followed by a few fabulous Cassandra Wilson recordings for JMT. Then I heard Boom Bop, his 2001 record featuring Archie Shepp, Henry Threadgill and two Senegalese percussionists. I was hooked. But he’s lived in Berlin for decades, rarely visiting the U.S. and developing his music beyond the faint spotlight of the jazz industry.

I’ve gotten to know Bourelly through his partner, Branwen Okpako, a filmmaker and professor at Hampshire College. Over a couple of dinners at our house, Bourelly and I hatched the idea of doing a concert together. Our 5th season of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares was already booked, but I was so excited by the prospect of hearing him live, we decided to add an 11th show. Judging by the turnout for his concert with drummer William Hooker at the Parlor Room on Friday, January 6, many shared my excitement.

Bourelly is beginning the process of re-introducing himself to America. He’s going to be living in the States, looking to work and network. For this impromptu concert, he enlisted Hooker, a colleague from Bourelly’s time in New York in the 1980s. Although they hadn’t played together in 30 years, Bourelly knew that “William would bring the spirit.” Hearing a tight working band can be exhilarating, but seeing two veteran musicians who had not set eyes on each other in decades come together and make a coherent statement was equally awe inspiring.

Hooker is a survivor of New York’s unforgiving jazz business, bringing his mojo to countless situations since the mid-seventies. His powerful drumming is augmented by a regal presence and recitation delivered with thespian polish. On Friday, he read from a small spiral notebook, but at one point, while Bourelly played a soft blues, Hooker coursed through the packed house intoning a repeated prayer: “Let light and love and power restore the plan on earth.” It was a peak moment.

The music was improvised, unrehearsed, the road map devoid of many details. The notes Bourelly left behind provided the barest of instruction: “guitar solo”, “walking”, “drum solo”, “end with rhythm.” What the program lacked in direction, it more than made up for in drive and emotion. The music was drenched in the blues, with references to Jimi Hendrix and shades of Carlos Santana. I found Bourelly’s unison singing with his guitar lines, a technique George Benson used to use, especially effective.

Bourelly told the assembled that to him, much of the music being made in recent times has been too nice. He said that in these dark times, nice is not what is needed. Part of his impetus for moving back to the United States was to help create an aesthetic of resistance to the coming regime. The music needs him on the scene.

He has a March concert scheduled at The World Stage in Los Angeles with Stone Raiders, his trio with Darryl Jones and Will Calhoun. His plan is to set up shop in the DC area, so we hope that as he gets his American footing, opportunities to hear the great guitarist will multiply.