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.

Marc Ribot Fills Bezanson Recital Hall with Joy

What a thrill to finally meet Marc Ribot, a lynchpin of New York’s creative music scene since the 1980s. One of my primary curatorial strategies is to identify important musicians who I want to hear who rarely get to western Massachusetts. The great guitarist met all criteria.

Ribot remembered playing a club in Springfield with Brother Jack McDuff in the late 1970s and visiting the Iron Horse in Northampton 30 years ago. That’s been it. Ribot’s work with the Lounge Lizards, John Zorn, Tom Waits and his own work leading a dizzying variety of projects, has cemented his reputation as a critical figure in music. The 185 people who filled Bezanson Recital Hall is another testimony to his reach.

The timing for his December 8 Solos & Duos Series concert could not have been better. Ribot was artist in residence at The Stone for the week ending December 4. Each night, before collaborating with Milford Graves, Dave Douglas, Henry Grimes and others, he played a set alone. His solo chops were in good shape, he told me, and the days off meant he was not burned out.

Over 70 minutes, he treated the crowd to a spellbinding, musical kaleidoscope. After the show, we gathered in the lobby calling out melodies we heard during the concert. “Somewhere” and “Singin’ the Blues” were full-blown and unfolded over time; many others were snippets that passed as quickly as they arrived: “Happy Birthday”, a Christmas theme, a couple of Albert Ayler tunes, a Monk quote. Ribot also devoted considerable time to a composition by Frantz Casseus, the Haitian-American guitarist and composer who was an early mentor. It was the most gorgeous section of the evening. In a moving and personal article, (http://bombmagazine.org/article/2540/) Ribot wrote that before Casseus died in 1993, Ribot and his family promised to look after his work.

There was a music stand in front of Ribot, but he spun his concert with his head down and eyes closed. The only time he referred to a score was during a couple of abstract John Zorn game pieces. Seated around 10 blue balloons, Ribot popped them on cue, as the audience perked up and smiled.

Ribot not only employed balloons, which he rubbed as well as punctured, he used pencils, knives, slides and a radical de-tuning of his 1937 Gibson HG-00 to produce worlds of other-worldly sounds. The blues he played through this altered instrument were oddly familiar but seemed made of other matter. Sections of the concert referenced flamenco music, European classical styles, various blues feels, even Indian techniques. But it was none of that. It was a synthesis of all of it, by an amazing polyglot with imagination. Just as the guitarist has to relax his fingers to be fleet, the mind also has to be free of stress to allow ideas to flow in real time. Ribot demonstrated this with beauty and grace.

Ribot saved a cherry to put on top of a transcendent evening of music. After returning to the stage to acknowledge a standing ovation, he called his long time friend Marty Ehrlich to join him for an encore. The alto saxophone master and Hampshire College professor easily fell into an improvised conversation, and then Ribot began to frame “Body and Soul.” For the next five minutes, these two veterans pulled the song’s contours precariously, landing the tune on its feet each time, in ways only seasoned artists can.