Live Jazz: The 7th Panama Jazz Festival

By Fernando Gonzalez

Panama City, Panama. The 7^th Panama Jazz Festival, celebrated in Panama City January 11-16, concluded Saturday with a free, outdoor concert at Plaza Catedral, in front of the historic cathedral in Old Panama City. What started only a few years ago as a Quixotic adventure by Panamanian pianist, Grammy winner and educator Danilo Pérez has become one of the most significant events in jazz, and music education,  in Latin America.

But as good as the music was throughout the week, it was only part of the story. The festival features the participation of educational institutions such as the New England Conservatory, Berklee College of Music, the Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico, Fundazione Siena Jazz from Siena, Italy, and the Golandsky Piano Institute at Princeton University. And the educational activities — directed by saxophonist Patricia Zárate, Perez’s wife — included educational programs, clinics and workshops ranging from Panamanian Folklore to yoga, a children’s program and technology. Also, during this festival it was announced the launching of Berklee College of Music’s Global Jazz Institute, a new, interdisciplinary initiative.

Danilo Perez

“The festival was a labor of love, not just for me but for many people, Carmen Aleman, Robin Tomchin, Javier Carrizo, many people,” said Pérez in an interview Saturday. “But also many people would come and tell me ‘Jazz? In Panama? Salsa maybe, but jazz? Really?’ And in our first year I put up most of the money and frankly, I almost lost everything. We barely made it. But in the second year we got one sponsor, Samsung, and that helped; and the third year we got another, Toyota, and then the administrations in Panama joined in and helped out — and here we are.”

“I know now, for some people it looks like this just happened, that it started yesterday. But it didn´t happen that way,” continues Perez, who notes he started educational activities 25 years ago.  “Many people have helped. This has become a movement.¨

This year’s edition was attended by an estimated 22,000 people (again, a reminder:  for jazz, in Panama).

Ellis Marsalis

The event is now the main promotional and educational program of the Danilo Pérez Foundation, an organization created in 2005 to promote social change through education in music.

The festival´s headliners this year included pianist Ellis Marsalis’s trio, saxophonists Joe Lovano and Carlos Garnett, singer Lizz Wright, bassist John Patitucci, guitarist Tom Patitucci, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and percussionist Jamey Haddad, alongside the ubiquitous, ever present Perez on piano.

Following a festival tradition of paying tribute to a Panamanian jazz figure, this year’s event was dedicated to Panamanian pianist Sonny White (neé Ellerton Oswald) who in the mid-1930s worked with Sidney Bechet, Teddy Hill, and Billie Holiday, among others. Notably, White was the pianist for Holiday on “Strange Fruit.”

Musically, the festival offered some extraordinary moments, beginning on Thursday with Marsalis’ soberly elegant performance leading a trio also featuring Jesse Boyd on bass and Jason Marsalis, drums, as well as the stunning set by Lovano, Perez, Patitucci, Carrington and Haddad.  Friday’s program followed with a moving (and effective) appearance by Garnett,  a Panamanian player perhaps best known in the US for his work with Miles Davis, and  a quietly powerful performance by Wright — made  even more remarkable by the fact that she was supposed to be on her way to Costa Rica for a vacation.

Lizz Wright

But a last minute cancellation due to illness by singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and a personal plea from Pérez, brought Wright to Panama. She turned out to be an inspired choice. Performing nearly without rehearsal with an ad hoc (albeit deluxe) backup band, Wright offered a set of standards and originals with uncommon aplomb and grace.  She has a dark, rich voice with deceptive range, and her dramatic, opening number, “I Loves You Porgy,” sung a cappella, silenced the cavernous Teatro Anayansi and the raucous Panamanian audience. It also set the tone. There were several high points in the set,  but the called-on-the-spot duet with Pérez on “Embraceable You” was a reminder of the nature and power of jazz — not just improvisation and swing and soul but also smarts, adventure and risk-taking.

But if the music was impressive, the loudest noise was the buzz of educational activities, not only because of the teachers at hand (Lovano, the Patitucci brothers, and Haddad offered hands on workshops throughout the week) but the level of participation.

“New England Conservatory came first. Berklee [College of Music] started coming in 2006, and both soon realized that something was happening, ” says Perez who is a Berklee and NEC alumnus, has taught at both schools, and is now the artistic director of Berklee’s Global Jazz Institute. “They realized we have grown organizationally but also in concerts and clinics and workshops. When they first came we had 4 concerts now we have 15. We have 80 clinics, panels, workshops. And they have seen these kids grow up before their eyes. Their level has gone up. The first year we auditioned for scholarships nobody qualified. We gave one scholarship and it went to Melisa Saldaña from Chile. Now …”

This time, an estimated 830 students attended the educational program, eight scholarships were given out to Berklee (seven to Panamanian students, one to a Costa Rican pianist)  and six to the Golandsky Piano Institute at Princeton, N.J..

This will have an impact long after the music has faded.  A reminder that at the Panama Jazz Festival, what happens onstage is only part of the story.

Lizz Wright and Ellis Marsalis photos courtesy of Toddi J. Norum: http://toddinorum.zenfolio.com

News: The Berklee Global Jazz Institute

By Fernando Gonzalez

The just launched Global Jazz Institute, announced at a gala at the 7^th Panama Jazz Festival, is not your standard program – not even for a forward looking institution like Berklee College of Music.

“The vision is comprised of three elements,” explains pianist and educator Danilo Pérez, Artistic Director of the program. “ The student has to commit himself or herself to promote social change  through music; the work is interdisciplinary (we are including dancers, painters and others to add dimensions to the work that are not commonly associated with jazz); and it has an ecological component. I have been nurtured by spending time in the jungle [in Panama] with Patti [saxophonist Patricia Zárate, his wife] and the girls [daughters Daniela and Carolina]. We found out that those visits helped us to maintain a balance, that we connected to a very powerful creative world.”

Danilo Perez

“Also, we did a study on the connections between ecology and culture,” continues Pérez. “And, for example, we found out that with all the changes that had been happening [to the Panamanian jungle] there is only one flutist left [among the indigenous population] who remembers and knows the old rituals – and you have to travel seven, eight hours to find him. So it made it very clear to us that restoring the ecological balance was to also protect the culture.”

The vision and approach in the program, explains Perez, is “basically, expanding the work we were doing in Panama, but under the umbrella of the school. And I loved it.”

As set up now, the program, which officially starts this Fall semester, can vary from two years to four. As Mitzi Dorbu, a spokesperson for Berklee further explained, “students may pursue a performance degree, diploma, or two-year certificate through the institute.”  Some of the courses in the curriculum include Survey on Improvisation Styles, Global Jazz Ensembles, and Creative Improvisation Through Interdisciplinary Collaboration.

There are 14 students enrolled in the program. And while any student can apply, the selections are based upon a live audition and an interview. “While the institute is looking to attract advanced players that are musically gifted, selection for the BGJI will not be solely based on musical proficiency,” explained Dorbu. In practical terms that translates to the fact that in addition to demonstrating creativity and instrumental proficiency, the students should have a social awareness and be open to other disciplines. Applicants to the program are encouraged to submit personal work in other artistic disciplines, along with original music.

“We’re looking to foster multifaceted, creative students who will be also open to artistic interests other than music,” explained saxophonist Marco Pignataro, Managing Director of the program. “We’re looking to develop the whole artist, not just the musician.”

For more information contact mpignataro@berklee.edu or log on to the Berklee website at http://www.berklee.edu.

CD Review: Tito Rodriquez “El Inolvidable”

Tito Rodriguez

El Inolvidable (Fania)

By Fernando Gonzalez

The Golden Age of Latin music in New York, centered around the Palladium Ballroom, was largely defined by three orchestras: Machito and His Afro Cubans, led by Frank “Machito” Grillo, and the groups of timbalero Tito Puente, and singer and multi-instrumentalist Tito Rodriguez. Each had a distinctive sound. All offered a rare mix of finesse, power and sabor (swing?) that remains the high watermark for large Latin jazz ensembles.

But of the three, The Big Three as they came to be known, Pablo Rodriguez Lozada, best known as Tito Rodríguez, is the least known to general audiences.  El Inolvidable, a two-disc retrospective of his 60s recordings, should serve as a hell of a party starter – and a reminder of his contributions.

Rodriguez had impeccable musical schooling off and on the bandstand, monster hits,  produced his own TV show and headlined at top spots. But as Ned Sublette and Harry Sepúlveda point out in their informative booklet notes, the lack of appreciation for Rodriguez has had more to do with his short career (Rodriguez died of leukemia on February 28, 1973 at age 50) and the vagaries of his record companies’ promotional efforts than with band or his own work. As they put it “Not only was Rodriguez’s band generally considered the most danceable of the three, it was, player for player,…probably the greatest collection of Latin musicians ever assembled in one regular working dance orchestra.”

And the fact that musicians such as bassist Israel Lopez “Cachao,” pianist and arranger René Hernandez, trumpeter Victor Paz, pianist Eddie Palmieri, saxophonists Mario Rivera, Ray Santos ( also an exceptional arranger) and Bobby Porcelli, were at one time or another members of his band makes their point amply. You can actually hear a lineup of the band as Rodriguez calls up their names, one by one, in his spoken intro to “Esta es mi Orquesta,” which by the time it was released, in 1968, was outdated. (It would have been a great contribution to fans and students to note the players and arrangers on these tracks.)

There are no fillers in the collection and some delightful surprises (Cachao’s  “Descarga Cachao” basically a tight, swinging Cuban jam).  And, although some hits have not been included (most notably “Inolvidable,”  and “En La Soledad”), this is a very satisfying collection.

The set shows Rodríguez as a singer who can move from the sonero tradition, skating gracefully over the dance grooves (check “Yambú,” presented here live), to the easy swing in the Venezuelan-llanera music-classic-turned-guaracha “Alma Llanera,”  his signature “Mama Guela,” or Chano Pozo’s  “Blen, Blen, Blen.”) to smooth crooner (“Cuando Ya No Me Quieras,” “Si Te Contara,” or “ Cara de Payaso,”) and back with ease.

But not everything was sweetness and light – thankfully.

Rodríguez developed contentious relationships with fellow bandleaders, especially Tito Puente and Johnny Pacheco (by all accounts some for show and marketing, some real), and took them public, writing pieces about it, tweaking them, mocking them and generally showing his disdain, predating rappers by, oh, twenty something years. Check “Avísale a Mi Contrario,” (Warn My Rival) a direct shot at Puente.  And listen closely to “El Que se Fué,” (The One Who Left) in which he sweetly sings “The one who left doesn’t matter, who matters is who’s coming in,”  and in the refrain, still over a killer dance groove, adds “I don’t care about you or twenty like you, I keep swinging. You were not the one with the groove,” all allegedly directed at Pacheco.

Romantic? Elegant? Smooth? Oh sure, but he could also bring it if needed.  And his audience heard it too. It was the barrio gone uptown – but still the barrio.

That tension was there, in the implacable grooves pushing forward under his exact phrasing, and the smart, sharp arrangements. And that’s just one reason why Rodriguez is inolvidable. Unforgettable.

CD Jazz Review: “Frankly” by Paquito Hechavarria

Paquito Hechavarría

Frankly (Calle54/Sony Music)

By Fernando Gonzalez

You may not know who he is, but you have heard Miami-based Cuban pianist Francisco “Paquito” Hechavarría. He´s the one who played the exacting, driving tumbao (a repeated  pattern) in Gloria Estefan’s monster hit “Conga.” And well before that he played on Mongo Santamaría´s classic Our Man in Havana. But also you probably heard him on Barry Manilow’s “Hey Mambo,” or with David Byrne, or Ricky Martin, or Israel “Cachao” Lopez, or Christina Aguilera. The list is long.

In fact, Hechavarría is the quintessential “musician’s musician” –  a poisoned compliment that acknowledges mastery in his peers’ recognition, just as it suggests obscurity.

Frankly, his fifth album as a leader, speaks to his remarkable musical bilingualism, confirms his technical brilliance and might, just might, bring him out of the shadows.

Hechavarría, 70, came of age musically in the Havana of the 1950s, arguably the Golden Age of Cuban music. It was a time of superb combos and orchestras and now nearly-mythical places such as the Tropicana, Sans Souci and Montmartre clubs or hotels such as the Habana Riviera and the Hotel Nacional. Hechavarría, then a teenager fresh out of the conservatory, was part of Conjunto Casino, one of the leading ensembles of the day. And he also performed with well-known bandleaders such as Senén Suárez, and Nelo Sosa, the Tropicana club orchestra and the late composer-pianist-bandleader Julio Gutiérrez.

“All that was unbelievable,” he told me in an interview some years ago. “I had just started, and there I was, in the major leagues.”

But his truly stellar moment came when he joined the Orquesta Riverside, a premier large ensemble,  replacing Pedro Justiz “Peruchín,” a player as essential to the development of piano in Afro-Cuban music as Art Tatum or Bud Powell were to that of the jazz piano. Peruchín was leaving la Riverside to embark on a solo career.

“He was the greatest pianist in Cuban music,” Hechavarría said. “And there were some very good pianists around in those days: Lili Martínez, Jesús Lopez, Lino Frías. But what Peruchín could do in one phrase was without equal. And what he did harmonically, rhythmically, was so modern — he was 30, 40 years ahead of his time. Every important Latin pianist I know . . . has copied him or has been influenced by him.”

Hechavarría left Cuba for Miami in 1960 ( “It was the hardest thing I’ve done,” he said. “I suffered a lot leaving the Riverside. It was a great orchestra.”).  Performing in places such as the Fontainebleau Hilton Hotel, where he worked  for nine years, he moved on to Las Vegas for awhile, before returning to Miami for good in 1973. There he worked with his own group (“I think there is no place of that time that I didn’t play.”) built a name as a studio musician and, eventually, got the call for a session for a record by a fledging group with a promising singer: Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine.

“It was really exciting,” he said. “As a pianist I’m usually one of the first to record and never get to hear the whole thing with the brass or the voices. Here, the album was done, but they felt something was missing. On “Conga,” I played something I had played all my life – and that tumbao was later used to identify the tune. I was proud to be part of it.”

In the mid 90s, Hechavarría signed with Sony Discos and released Piano, a middle of the road Latin pop-jazz project that included both originals and versions of  Antonio Carlos Jobim´s “Usted Abuso,” (Voçe Abusou), the Doors’ “Light My Fire,” and  Grover Washington’s hit “Just the Two of Us.”  Calculated to please several, disparate audiences, it captured none and sank without a trace.

In Frankly, Hechavarría gets a chance fitting to his talent.  Produced by Nat Chediak and Fernando Trueba (the guys behind, among other achievements, Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés unexpected late-in-life career coda), Frankly surrounds Hechavarría with a strong supporting cast featuring saxophonist Phil Woods, trumpeter Brian Lynch, bassist Andy Gonzalez, drummer Dafnis Prieto, and percussionist Pedro Martínez. The program is a coherent selection of classics from the Great American Songbook reinterpreted in an Afro-Cuban jazz vein.

That said, there is Afro-Cuban jazz and then there is Afro-Cuban jazz. This is not lazy, paint-by-numbers jazz with congas. Rather, Hechavarría and the ensemble re-imagine the songs with a smart mix of brains, brawn and humor.

Take the opening “Change Partners,” in which the pianist, goes with ease from single-note, post-bop phrasing to exacting montunos and back. Or “Sweet Lorraine,” remade here as a courtly danzón that turns into a gentle mambo under Lynch’s soloing.

In Cole Porter’s “I Love Paris,” played in a driving 6/8, the song refrain (in Spanish) says that “Havana is great fun, but I adore Paris.”  And “Love is a Many Splendored Thing” is reinvented here as a down-to-earth rumba guaguancó. Hechavarría plays it impeccably but primly, almost in a mocking cocktail-time-at-the-Algonquin mode. (Knowing Hechavarría — a portly, quirky, jacket-wearing, hat-and-ponytail man, usually with a cigarette in a holder dangling from the corner of his mouth — the thought is not as much of a stretch as it seems)

The nod here, however, is to González, Prieto and Martínez who build and maintain a driving groove without ever raising their instruments´ voices.  Lynch and Woods, as guest soloists in three songs each, contribute ideas and distinctive voices. They flow with ease between bop and post-bop ideas and — especially from Lynch, a veteran of the Latin scene — the accents and turns of phrase of danzón and mambo.

Hechavarría plays throughout with remarkable clarity and restrain. The temptation of any great technician is to play and play, and then play some more, needed or not, because he or she can.

Be it self-editing or a producer’s nudge, in Frankly, Hechavarría seems to  be distilling a lifetime of  clubs, dance halls, concerts and studio sessions (in two verbal and musical languages, by the way)  into deceptively simple, fluid lines. More often than not, he seems content with just hinting at everything he can do (killer tumbaos, clockwork montunos, long, baroquely adorned single-note lines — and that’s for starters) without feeling the need to actually show it — and the music is better for it. By playing less than all he can, Hechavarría might actually wind up finding the larger audience he deserves..

CD Review: “Cantora” Mercedes Sosa

y Fernando Gonzalez

It’s perhaps fitting that Cantora, simply woman singer in Spanish, turns out to be the last recording by Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa, who died of kidney and liver failure, Sunday, October 4, at a clinic in Buenos Aires. She was 74.

Cantora is a disc of collaborations with a stellar roster of  Latin music singer and songwriters, some young enough to be her grandsons and granddaughters, representing a broad musical spectrum including conventional pop and rock, but also alterna-folk and classic tango.  The set up could suggest that Cantora is just another gimmicky “concept” disc, trading on brand names, searching for that mythical wider audience. If it’s not, it’s because, well, it rings musically true.

For starters, Sosa sings Sosa. Her voice might not be as strong, but it remains an admirable instrument, rich, powerful but also malleable, still stunningly expressive. Her vibrato has grown wider with age but she uses it with restrain. There is almost an audible affection and admiration in the work of her collaborators (some of whom were not even in the same studio with her) and it’s all warm and fuzzy, but the arrangement is clear enough — it’s their move. It’s up to them to stay true to their own style and still keep up and blend with Sosa – and to their credit, most do.

Also, musically Cantora succeeds because it stays true to Sosa and coherently close to folk music throughout. And while it includes songs in traditional folk styles, it also acknowledges other, newer, popular genres such as rap and cumbia villera, a take on cumbia that emerged in the shantytowns of Buenos Aires, as if suggesting that this might be today’s folk music.  It´s a subtle but powerful statement — and one that fits Sosa´s character and extraordinary career.

Sosa was born in poverty, her father a day laborer, her mother a washer woman, in Tucumán, a province in northwest Argentina, on July 9, 1935. At 15, she won an amateur-hour contest sponsored by a local radio with a two month contract for appearances as its grand prize.   It turned out to be the start of her career.

By the late 50s she had moved on from traditional folk  and embraced the Movimiento del Nuevo Cancionero, a fledging movement with a new approach to folk music that updated the standard folk lyrics to sing about the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. This, naturally, led her in time to champion the Nueva Canción (New Song), a movement in Latin America in the 60s that blended traditional rhythms and lyrics addressing social and political concerns. This became a deadly serious business in Latin America in the 70s, as ruthless military dictatorships took power. Sosa was detained and body searched on stage at a concert in 1979. Many in the audience were detained. In the following weeks, her concerts were cancelled after anonymous bomb threats were called in. And while there was no cause open against Sosa, her songs were banned on the radio and she was prohibited from performing.

Understandably feeling persecuted and unable to make a living, Sosa left in self imposed exile to France and Spain.

She returned to Argentina in 1982, just as the military dictatorship was beginning to disintegrate. (In fact, in retrospect, Sosa´s epochal 13-night comeback stand at the Opera Theatre in Buenos Aires, captured on the disc Mercedes Sosa en Argentina, was in itself a measure of the increasing weakness of the regime.)

Sosa had been an international artist, performing in the United States and Europe, since the 1960s, but in her condition as an exile she transcended her role as a folk singer and became a symbol of resistance and the struggle for human rights.  It was a heavy mantle that she carried effectively – while also making clear to whoever wanted to listen that she was an artist first.

“Sometimes, one is made to be a big mouth or some sort of Robin Hood and it’s not like that,” she once told me, in the 90s, with an edge of frustration in her voice. “I am a woman who sings, who tries to sing as well as possible with the best songs available. I was bestowed this role as big protester and it’s not like that at all. I’m just a thinking artist.”

And being a “thinking artist” for Sosa not only meant singing questioning lyrics, but also opening up her musical world.

Since her return to Argentina and for the past 20 years, rather than basking on the warm glow of her status and playing it safe musically, Sosa increasingly crossed over stylistic boundaries, taking a Pan-Ibero-American approach. She would still sing Argentine folk music and remain true to her Nuevo Cancionero roots, but also integrate music by Brazilian artists such as Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque; Spanish singer songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat and rocker Joaquin Sabina. And in Argentina, where the music communities long lived in parallel worlds that rarely acknowledged, much less addressed, each other, Sosa seemed to make a point of ignoring stylistic boundaries. She worked with neo-folk singers such as Leon Gieco (a Bob Dylan-like figure) but also recalcitrant rockers such as Charly Garcia, pop rockers such as Fito Páez and new tango stalwarts such as bandoneonist Rodolfo Mederos. And it wasn’t just big names but also up-and-coming songwriters, playing sort of fairy godmother by calling attention to their work, giving them, in a word, her blessing.

Which brings us back to Cantora, which includes collaborations with old friends such as Serrat,  García, Spinetta and Paez, but also Shakira, Gustavo Cerati, René Perez (Calle13), Lila Downs, Julieta Venegas and Franco De Vita, as well.  (This is, by the way,  an international edition of an original two-disc set released earlier this year in Argentina. Other artists from that collection who are not featured here include Pedro Aznar, Luis Salinas, Luciano Pereyra and Ruben Rada.)

Most of the songs were written by the guests, although there are also intriguing reprises. Some weak (Shakira over emotes her part in Silvio Rodriguez´s “La Maza”). More are exceptional such as the smart remaking of Victor Heredia´s “Canción Para un Niño en la Calle,” (Song for a street kid) by René Perez, who alternates his rapping with Sosa´s singing creating a truly touching counterpoint.

Nine, or exactly half, of the songs in the set feature strings arranged by long time Sosa’s pianist and musical director Popi Spatocco. And while the sound is lush and lustrous it also at times gets too precious, almost reverential and it covers the program with a certain melancholy. (Brazilian singer Daniela Mercury, even toned down from her usual high energy, hyperkinetic self to perform Chico Buarque’s “O Que Será,” comes as a welcome relief.)

Sosa sounds at ease with pop rockers Cerati, Garcia, Páez and Spinetta, but truly shines in her collaborations with Lila Downs (Heredia’s classic “Razón Para Vivir”) and Julieta Venegas (her own “Sabiéndose de los descalzos,” which could easily have been part of Sosa’s 70s repertoire). At the risk of reading too much into it, she sounds then as if passing the torch to a younger generation of  folk singers, also reinterpreting their tradition to make it of their time.

Open minded, respectful of the past but decidedly forward looking, Cantora is a worthy finale for an extraordinary career.

To read other reviews and commentary by Fernando Gonzalez clilck here.

Live Jazz: The Jazz Baltica Festival in Salzau, Germany

By Fernando Gonzalez

Salzau, Germany.  This year’s edition of Germany’s Jazz Baltica Festival was billed as “The Battle of the Big Bands,” and included the Jazz Big Band Graz, the Bohuslan Big Band with Steve Swallow, the NDR Big Band directed by Maria Schneider, and The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. Still, as good as some of their performances were, and some were indeed terrific, the highlights of the event might have been the shows by a couple of small groups: The Hank Jones trio with James Moody and Miguel Zenón Quartet. And their performances stood as perfect bookends, celebrating both the history and, arguably, the future of jazz.

Salzau Castle

Held in and around the Salzau castle, a bucolic setting near Kiel in Northern Germany, July 1-5, the Jazz Baltica festival is part of the classical music-oriented Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. It was started in 1991 as part of a program of cultural cooperation between Baltic states and has since grown into one of the important stops in the jazz summer circuit in Europe.

Because of the programming philosophy, over the years, the programs have been often set up as meeting places for artists from all over the world to work on one-of-a-kind projects with regional bands and players. (Some of the musicians who have appeared at Jazz Baltica include Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, David Murray, Charles Lloyd but also Jan Garbarek, Lars Danielsson, Dino Saluzzi, E.S.T., Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Tomasz Stanko and Marcin Wasilewski. It’s a long, rich list)

The concerts take place on several stages – including a club-like setting in the castle and an outdoor stage. The main halls are in fact two reconditioned barns, the large one has a capacity for about 600 and the smaller one sits about 200.

MIguel Zenon

Saxophonist and composer Zenón — clearly not someone inclined to take the easy path — took the opportunity to present new material from his upcoming album, Esta Plena (Marsalis Music) in his performance in the small hall. The title reflects the fact that the music represents his take on the traditional plena style of his native Puerto Rico. That Latin jazz has been evolving by leaps and bounds in recent years, well beyond the tired jazz-with-congas idea, should not come as news. For some time now, a young generation of Latin musicians has been integrating indigenous rhythms and styles from their own cultures — such as tango, and flamenco, but also Mexican huapango, Panamanian mejoranas and Uruguayan candombe — and reworking them with the syntax and vocabulary of jazz. And yet, what Zenón has been doing – blending Puerto Rican styles such as jibaro (country music) with his own post-Ornette sound – is in a class by itself. Moreover, he has been able to keep his group — Luis Perdomo, piano; Hans Glawischnig, bass and Henry Cole, drums – together and the quartet seemed to breathe as one, changing dynamics and turning on a dime, anticipating and responding to the most minute musical gestures on the fly. And yet, beyond that, there was a raw, earthy feeling to the music even as the ideas seem to sail by unpredictably, in seemingly all directions. The overall effect illuminated both traditions, jazz and plena, anew.

James Moody and Hank Jones

Later that day, also in the small hall, Hank Jones, 91, and James Moody, 84, neither asked for, nor made, any concession to age. Backed by George Mraz, bass and Willie Jones III, drums, Jones played the trio part of the set at an intense, crisp pace. Elegant and understated, he was all business; the pieces were short, the solos tight, clear and to the point. When Moody joined — he had recorded the marvelous Our Delight (IPO) with Jones in 2006 — he added not only his rich tenor sound and a fluid stream of ideas but also a touch of humor and vaudeville (his by-now classic parody “Benny’s From Heaven” brought down the hall). It was a master class of jazz history, swing and showbiz by two masters, all rolled into one.

And, as though that wasn’t enough, Jones appeared later that evening as a special guest with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and Moody was part of the closing set with saxophonist Bunky Green (a Jazz Baltica mainstay) and his quartet, augmented by Donny McCaslin on tenor sax, and Zenón on alto — a four saxophone delight.)

If this year is any indication, Jazz Baltica is certainly well worth a visit.

For more info about the Festival click here  Jazz Baltica.

News: R.I.P. George Russell

By Fernando Gonzalez

Composer and theoretician George Russell died on July 27^th at a hospice nursing facility near his home in Jamaica Plain, MA from complications to Alzheimer’s. He was 86. He was probably the most influential figure in jazz over the past 60 years whom the general audience never heard of. But musicians knew.

I thought I knew him because I knew some jazz history and had recordings of his compositions. Then I became one of his students and I discovered a remarkable teacher, one who pushed and made me listen with fresh ears.

A drummer by training, he was part of the group that hung out at Gil Evans’ apartment in New York and included Miles Davis, Max Roach and Gerry Mulligan. “It was like a school in a way,” Russell told me in an interview some years ago. “Not an ordinary school but an esoteric school — and Gil was the schoolmaster. He was a calming force.”

In 1947, Russell wrote Cubana Be/Cubana Bop for Dizzy Gillespie, and two years later “Bird in Igor’s Yard, ” a startling fusion of Charlie Parker and Stravinsky, for Buddy DeFranco. While hospitalized for 16 months, he developed his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, an ambitious theoretical work that reformulated the chord/scale relationship. First published in 1953, it is considered the first major contribution to music theory by a jazz musician. ( His second volume on the Lydian Concept – The Art and Science of Tonal Gravity – was published in 2001.)

Russell’s work on modal music had a profound influence on Davis and led the trumpeter to his explorations in the now classic Kind of Blue. Throughout the 1950’s and 60’s, Russell continued his work on the Lydian Concept, refining his ideas while teaching at the Lenox School of Jazz in Lenox, MA and leading his own bands. His groups included musicians such as Bill Evans and Art Farmer (with whom he recorded the influential The Jazz Workshop), John Coltrane (who was also deeply influenced by Russell’s modal work), Eric Dolphy, Don Ellis, Bob Brookmeyer and Steve Swallow.

Frustrated by the lack of work and recognition, he moved to Scandinavia in 1964. He stayed for five years but his his work, both as a musician and teacher had a lasting impact in the Scandinavian scene and musicians such as saxophonist Jan Garbarek, guitarist Terje Rypdal, and drummer Jon Christensen.

“When I think back I realize it had a really, really big impact on me,” Garbarek told me in 2005. “It was a sort of an initiation rite. I was a very young player, only 17 at the time and being invited to play with George Russell and go on tour with him and to think this well respected, admirable musician accepted me, was like stepping into manhood.”

“But at another level it was the first time I encountered music theory,” continued Garbarek. “I had no knowledge of those concepts. I read his book and he was my teacher and he was always extremely careful not to impose his views or tell you how to do things. That I always thought was his outstanding feature as a teacher. He would catch himself imposing something and he would say ‘Forget that, erase what I said’ and explain in a more open way, just giving you tools. That was all that mattered to him.”

Composer Gunther Schuller, an old friend and then president of the New England Conservatory in Boston, enticed him to come back to the States in 1969 to teach at the newly created Jazz Department.

The teacher Garbarek described is the teacher I also remember from my days at the Conservatory. Russell was not your typical wise, old, warm-and-fuzzy professor. He was rather exacting and demanding, and challenged you to nothing less than to hear music anew.

He remained at N.E.C. until 2004 when he became Distinguished Artist-in-Residence Emeritus. He also organized a 14 piece band, his Living Time Orchestra, with which he toured regularly. His 1985 recording, The African Game, received 2 Grammy nominations.

That was the beginning of a period of much deserved, if late coming, recognition including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a designation as a National Endowment for the Arts American Jazz Master, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Oscar du Disque de Jazz, and six NEA Music Fellowships, among others.

Q & A: Larry Rosen — music entrepreneur, producer and musician, Part II

By Fernando Gonzalez

This is the second part of a conversation in Miami Beach with music entrepreneur, producer and musician Larry Rosen. Part I addressed the state of the music business. This second and final installment focuses on Rosen’s work as a live jazz producer in Miami.

Rosen, who has been living in Miami since 2,000, is the producer of the jazz series Jazz Roots, now in its second season, at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami.

PART II: The Next Important Thing: Selling jazz in Miami — and selling jazz.

FG: You are now producing a jazz series for the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. Looking at the history of Miami as a jazz market, what did you think would be the challenges now, and what that made you think it could work now?

LR: Running GRP records I had artists traveling all over the world. So when artists had a record out, they would go out and promote it in different cities. We would know what the sales were in those cities; I knew what kind of market [that city] was. So when I came here, after leaving GRP, I certainly knew what it was like for jazz here. Anyone who’s in the jazz business knows that Miami is not a jazz market. But you don’t really understand Miami unless you live here. So once I started living here I got a much better understanding of the ethnic mixture of Miami, what audiences go to see, what’s happening, where is it happening and what the general vibe is, and I understood why this is not a jazz market.

FG: What are some of the issues that you see as particular to Miami?

LR For starters, among the majority of the population here, there is no real history to listening to jazz when they were growing up. And then, there are no jazz clubs. The thing with New York City, or most cities, is that there are clubs, audiences build through those clubs, and then they’d go to the record retail store and buy the music, go to concerts, and listen to the stations that would support [jazz]. But not here. So the reality in Miami is a very limited audience experience in a changing environment.

FG How did you then approach selling jazz in Miami?

LR When I came here I got a better understanding of why this was not a jazz market, and I also started to understand the dynamics of the market more. At the time the Performing Arts Center was being built, so when I thought of jazz here, and considering that there are no clubs, it sounded like the Performing Arts Center is the place. But I also knew that it had to be different from other jazz programs at performing arts centers in other cities. I felt here it had to be catered to this community not only in that [the program] had to present world-class artists but also that there would have to be an educational component.
You had to educate the audience — at all levels. It wasn’t just for the person that would spend $100 in a ticket but the young people in school. So an education program had to be a very important piece because education is a way to reach out to a community in a much more in-depth way.

FG: So by “education” you mean not only work with the schools and creating educational activities but also a certain approach to the marketing.

LR: My approach was to connect the dots. In New York you say ‘Tonight at the Village Vanguard: Sonny Rollins,’ you don‘t need to say anything else. They know. Any place else you do need to connect the dots. You need an over-arching theme. ‘Jazz at the Center’ is not going to sell the program to people. You need to make connections [about the music] for people, and for that you have to go to the roots. And the roots of all the music of the [Atlantic side of the] Americas are the drums. It came from Africa and became the roots of Brazilian music, Cuban music, Puerto Rican music, reggae, calypso, and in the United States it developed into blues and jazz and gospel and rock and rap. So the pitch that I wanted was Jazz Roots meaning these are the roots of much of the music of the Americas and given the ethnicity of Miami if we tell that story well, we connect the dots: if you like samba you should like Sonny Rollins; and if you like Sonny Rollins you should like Machito and if you like Machito you should like [Tom] Jobim — because everything is coming from the same source. From a musical point of view we are all related, we are all cousins. That was kind of the main focus. So the series would touch on all these different styles that are all related to jazz.

FG: Do you see this as a strategy that can be used elsewhere besides Miami?

LR: I think what is happening in Miami is something of a beta test of this idea of using the performing arts center [as the hub of the marketing jazz in the city], and also involving NPR radio, the PBS television affiliate here, going out and creating educational programs, and creating marketing packages. Packaging becomes extremely important.

FG: What kind of work has been developed in the schools in Miami?

LR: With the schools we started with different ideas. We found out that in Miami-Dade [the county where the cities of Miami and Miami Beach are located] there are 900 kids in jazz bands. So there are jazz bands in every single high school, and they may play Afro Cuban jazz or Latin jazz. Other might play Duke Ellington. So one of the things we decided was: we’re going to bring every one of these kids to these concerts. We raised $280,000 and the first thing we did was to bring in these kids. So working with the performing arts center, we reached out to the school system and figured out how to put group schools together and bring them to the shows, 150 kids to each concerts.

They would come in the afternoon for the sound check, meet the artist, then we’d take them to the educational center and have someone from FIU [Florida International University] or some of the schools to give them a talk about the roots of the music and how this related to this particular show and this particular artist. And after that we’d give them dinner and bring them in to sit in the audience, experience the show and then get back in the bus and their community. Realize that 99% of these kids would never go to a performing arts center because their parents would never go to a performing arts center because they think of them as some sort of expensive, elitist place to go. You can change kids lives by doing this.

FG: Is there also a curriculum component to this?

LR: Next year we are writing a curriculum for the whole Miami School System that would be both in middle school and high school that’s going to take about the culture related to the music. So [through] the University of Miami doctoral department we are working in conjunction, writing this curriculum that’s going to meet the regulation of the state of Florida so — when a teacher is teaching History, English, Social Studies or anything else — they can then utilize this information and integrate it into their curriculums. This is not just for music teachers. I’m making music samples for them and there will be a turnkey thing where to get this information so Jazz Roots becomes much more in depth as an educational program in Miami. And if it works here, it’s another beta test, we’ll move it to other cities.

FG: You have been living in Miami for awhile now so that might be reason enough, but still, you are a business person, why Miami and why Miami now?

LR: If you look at musical movements in America they’ve all come from some city that’s going through some social change: think New Orleans, think New York City, obviously; or Chicago and the blues; Kansas City at a certain time, Nashville of course, Los Angeles, San Francisco during the ‘60s.

I think the next place is Miami. I totally believe this is where the next music in the United States is going to be formulated. Something is going to come out of here that’s going to go around the world.

Because [to create that] you need certain things: you need ethnic mixture, cultures rubbing together, you need art, and we have Art Basel, the biggest art market in the world, and you have the style thing of South Beach, plus you have financial wealth.
And you have the Performing Arts Center, which can be the centerpiece of this whole thing, and you have a city looking to reach out to the arts to create something here.
That’s’ why I think the next thing is going to happen here. And that’s why I think it’s so important to organically build what has to be built here in order for this new music to come out. Jazz is going to have a part of it, Latin music is going to have a part of it, electronics will have a part of it, and it all fuses here to create something that entrepreneurs can step into.

And I think something really important is going to happen here…in Miami.

To read Part l of the Larry Rosen Q & A click here.

Q & A: Larry Rosen — music entrepreneur, producer and musician, Part I

By Fernando Gonzalez

For more than 20 years, music entrepreneur, producer and musician Larry Rosen has shown an uncanny sense to be one step ahead of the changes in the music business. In 1982, when the industry was still debating CDs, Rosen and partner Dave Grusin founded GRP, a record company predicated on a then-groundbreaking all-digital philosophy for recording and a CD-only policy for releases. In the 1990s, as new forms of music distribution were coming into view, Rosen moved on and founded the online music retailer N2K.
He has his own production company and is the co-chairman of LRSmedia, which “creates music brands and products, which it sells and markets through their own produced television, radio, Internet, and live performance events.” The most notable such products are the one-hour prime time special Legends of Jazz (PBS, 2005), which was followed, in 2006, by a 13-part series of the same name. He is currently working on an eight-part television series titled, Recording: The History of Recorded Music, which is scheduled for broadcast in the fall of 2009.
Rosen, who has been living in Miami since 2,000, is also the producer of the jazz series Jazz Roots, now in its second season, at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami.

Our conversation took place in Miami Beach.

PART I: The Old Model

FG: It seems that every discussion about the crisis in the music industry tends to focus on the impact of the web and piracy. What is your view?

LR: The whole business model of the record industry doesn’t work anymore. The old business was made of certain components: the record label was at the top of the heap because they were the ones who had the funding. They were the curators who chose the artists, made the records and then went out and made sure that records sold. In order to do that, they had to have radio — a very strong component of any strategy to sell records. Then you had to work the market with live performances, be them in clubs or concerts. And finally, you had to have the retailers where people could go buy this music. And you had to have all those parts working together to make it work.

FG: But that was then. The music, the creative core is still healthy, but none of the other components is still working.

LR: Well, there is no record retail environment anymore, there are very few radio stations that make a difference (because most have been bought up by giant conglomerates). And, of course, people are not buying physical product anymore – which was the way music was distributed through record companies and what gave them their power because they controlled the manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, sales to stores, and paying the artists. So you look at all those pieces and you see why the entire paradigm is not working. The record company is not needed anymore, the physical product is not where it’s at anymore, it’s diminishing every year, radio doesn’t play its role anymore and the record retailers do not even exist anymore. So none of it works. It’s a new ballgame.

FG: Historically, the record industry must be the only one of the major industries that does little or no Research & Development . Given those changes you mentioned, and the fact that much of the old structure that nurtured and provided the industry with it creative ¨workers¨ and its customers is now in shambles, should the industry rethink its approach?

LR: The answer is ‘Yes, of course.” Will it happen? The answer is “No.”
When you say “the industry” primarily, in the past, it meant the record companies, because they were the ones who signed the artist and the ones who, if successful, would make money from this thing. But record companies don’t spend money on anything unless there is a direct return on their investment — right now, this quarter. And that´s a big problem within the music industry. And that´s why it´s declining so quickly.

FG: Wasn’t it always like this? There was a time when companies were owned and driven by personalities and their tastes – the Erteguns, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, Bob Thiele. Was it different then? How did it change?

LR: This [industry] was once run by entrepreneurs who loved the music, loved the artists, and would invest in an artist and stick with him year in and year out and build that artist. When this industry got to be bigger and bigger and bigger and was consolidated, these public corporations bought up all the other record labels and had MBAs running them. And these guys would be looking at quarterly results, the stock price and have all the pressure of the market. The last thing they were concerned about is what it’s all about: the music. And if you are not really concerned about the music and all you care is the quarterly result, why would you ever educate anybody to develop an audience in the future? You might not be running that company two years from now.

FG: It’s clear how that might affect artistic decisions, but was the approach so short-term across the board, even with business decisions?

LR: Let me give you another example: When CDs came in, the record industry didn’t want to spend any money on CDs. I was there. As an entrepreneur I saw a great opportunity. But the record companies said: “Look, I have all these pressing companies, all the retailers have all their shelves in 12 inch high bins, who needs to have a CD? That’s 5 inches, we have to redo the stores and I have to invest millions in a new pressing plant. I don’t need this thing.” They were not supportive of the CD.

FG: Was there also a concern about the fact that when you are putting out CDs you are putting out masters and the potential consequences of that for your business?

LR: Yes, it’s true. Technology is going to change the whole fundamentals of your business, but you are not going to stop it, that’s the point, so get with it. There is no choice. Technology is going in one direction, consumers are going in that direction and you are a total ass if you are trying to stop it. But that’s what they tried to do. And you can see what happened: they killed themselves. So when I think about where the opportunities are in music and what has to happen, the so-called record companies are not even in the picture.

FG: And then we went past CDs, past physical distribution and began dealing with downloads. Was the lesson learned?.

LR: Same thing when it came to the idea of buying and distributing music electronically. They were totally against it. And I started another company N2K in which the whole idea was to sell music electronically and move in the direction I felt technology was going. And they tried to actually stop that from happening. The reality is that you can’t defy gravity. It´s idiotic. You won’t stop technology or progress. It’s that simple. No matter what you think, it doesn’t make any difference.

FG: So then what is the new paradigm, the new model?

LR: I’m exploring that from an entrepreneurial point of view. The performing arts centers can be part of that new model. I think NPR is part of that model. I think you have to figure out who is the consumer for this kind of product, where they aggregate, how do you get the music to them, and how do they get exposed to it. And when they are, if it´s good, they´ll start taking to it.

To read Part II of Larry Rosen’s Q & A, click here.

CD – Jazz Review: Bebo and Chucho Valdes

Bebo Valdés / Chucho Valdés

“Juntos Para Siempre” (Sony Music Latin- Calle 54 Records)

By Fernando Gonzalez

For years, when his name was mentioned at all, Ramon “Bebo” Valdés was merely a footnote in popular music history: the father of Cuban pianist, composer, and arranger Jesús “Chucho” Valdés, a solo artist and director of the Afro-Cuban jazz fusion group Irakere. But, as time revealed, Valdés Sr. was himself an exceptional artist with a remarkable story.

As the house pianist, bandleader and music consultant at Havana’s fabled Tropicana nightclub at an era many consider the Golden Age of Cuban music, Bebo Valdés wrote arrangements for such top Cuban singers and entertainers as Beny Moré, Pio Leyva, Rita Montaner and Rolando La Serie. He accompanied visiting stars like Nat “King” Cole (for whom he wrote the orchestrations for his Cole Español album); composed for films, and had his own commercial hits. In 1952, he led an all-star session for producer Norman Granz that captured — for the first time on record — a descarga, or Cuban jam session.

In 1959 Bebo Valdés formed the fabled Sabor de Cuba orchestra, featuring singer Rolando La Serie. But then came the Revolution, and Valdés found himself “chased” (as he once put it), from job to job. So with the tapes of two freshly recorded sessions of his band under his arm as his savings, he left for Mexico. He stayed there for 18 months, then moved to Spain, and worked in Europe until, while on a tour in Sweden, he fell in love with an 18-year old local beauty and decided to marry, settle down, and raise a family. He remained active, but in time, his family´s needs prevailed over the demands of a music career and he accepted jobs as a lounge pianist on cruise ships and, later, in Stockholm hotels. In 1990, he retired.

It was Cuban saxophonist/clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera – who remembers being a kid in short pants when he first met Bebo — who called Valdés in 1994, trying to entice him back to the piano and into the recording studio. The resulting Bebo Rides Again (Messidor, reissued by Pimienta, 2004) featured eight new original pieces written and arranged by Valdés, reportedly in a mere 36 hours. When Bebo Rides Again unexpectedly won a Grammy, it launched a new chapter in his career.  Since then, Bebo Valdés, now 90, has won another Grammy and five Latin Grammys.

Jesus Dionisio “Chucho” Valdés, 67, is Bebo´s son from his first family. Since exploding on to the jazz scene in the late 70s as the leader, pianist and main composer and arranger of Irakere, Chucho has developed a very active, and very successful, solo career. He is widely respected as one of the premier jazz pianists in world.

But Chucho lives in Havana, and Bebo has sworn to not return to Cuba as long as Fidel Castro´s regime remains in power. As a result, father and son did not see each other for many years. They finally met again backstage at Carnegie Hall, in New York City, in 1978. Chucho was appearing with Irakere and Bebo flew in from Stockholm for the occasion. But even after the senior Valdés became active again in music, and the opportunities for father and son to meet outside Cuba improved, bridging family history, years and distance, took some time.

Chucho, Bebo and Chucho's daughter, Leyanis, at the Son Latinos Canarias Festival in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, 2003

Eventually, they did begin to play together — a joint performance on D´Rivera´s Cuba Jazz 90 Miles from Cuba, in 1995; a tantalizing duet in the Latin jazz film Calle 54 (2000) by Spanish Oscar winning filmmaker Fernando Trueba, and live appearances such as the one at the Son Latinos Canarias Festival in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, in 2003. Whatever distance and differences may have existed, Bebo and Chucho have grown close in recent years. Theirs has become, as producer Nat Chediak puts it, “a love story.”

Bebo & Chucho: Juntos Para Siempre, their first full recording together, sounds like a natural culmination of their renewed relationship.

As might be expected, given the players and the circumstances, it is a very rich, highly charged session. This is not your off-the-shelf father-and-son get together. Personal history aside, these are both extraordinary artists who are successful in their own right. And while there might have been a lot of love in the air in that studio – and some of it can be heard explicitly in Chucho’s passionate “Preludio para Bebo,” and Bebo’s “A Chucho,” a playful tribute with a gentle danzón sway — these are also two proud musicians who are not about to be topped by anyone, much less while sitting at the piano playing this repertoire.

The set also includes Cuban classics (such as Osvaldo Farre’s “Tres Palabras,” and Miguel Matamoros’ “Son de La Loma,” and “Lágrimas Negras”); jazz standards (“Tea for Two,” “Perdido”); “Rareza del Siglo” (Bebo’s first big hit in the 1940s); and a joint improvisation or “descarga.”

The playing throughout is consistently virtuosic, exuberant, and — reflecting their personalities — often mischievous. (“Tea for Two” gets a playful rope-skipping rhythmic treatment that belies the cleverness of the arrangement) Bebo and Chucho sound solidly supportive of each other in every way, changing roles generously, smoothly and effectively, now playing the lead, improvising long, curling single-note runs, now accompanying discreetly, making room for the other one’s flights of fancy. Listen for example their reading of “Son de la Loma” or the seamless back and forth in “La Gloria ..” and “Lágrimas Negras.”

Also, these are not only top notch players (and Bebo, especially, is a living repository of Cuban popular music tradition), but also astute arrangers, composers and bandleaders. So while their approach to the instrument is highly pianistic – and then lushly, romantically so – in their playing in Juntos Para Siempre they often suggest a small orchestra. Listen to Chucho´s accompaniment behind Bebo’s melody in Jose Antonio Méndez’s “La Gloria Eres Tú,” or the arrangement of Juan Tizol’s “Perdido,” detailed with clever bass lines, counterlines and punchy voicings just waiting for a horn section to show up.

Part family portrait, part piano extravaganza, part music history lesson, Juntos Para Siempre is, most of all, a damn fine good time.