Article about Jazz performances

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Jazz seemed to be all over the place this year, a big tent
for multimedia mixing, vociferous protest and challenges to
the standard definitions of a performer’s role. Here are 10
outstanding concert experiences — nine in New York, and one
in Newport, R.I., where jazz’s mainstream goes each summer
to take its temperature.
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For any jazz devotee within striking distance of New York,
the year begins in earnest with Winter Jazzfest. This year,
the festival’s weekend marathon brought over 100 bands to
roughly a dozen venues across two nights. The best thing I
heard was a duo from the pianist Kris Davis and the drummer
Billy Drummond. They’re an uncommonly good match:
Her playing is dense and richly stacked; his is fluid, letting
the gentle persuasion of his ride cymbal lace the music with
momentum. (They appear together on two tracks from Ms.
Davis’s 2016 album, a collection of duets titled “Duopoly.”)
A month before the release of “Araminta” — a stern, turgid
and mysteriously funky collection — the trio Harriet Tubman
played to a packed house at this low-key performance space in
Chelsea. J.T. Lewis’s drums and Brandon Ross’ electric guitar
helped give the songs a fortified structure, but Melvin Gibbs’s
distorted bass was the thing that overtook you: Somewhere
between Krautrock, doom metal and dub, it became a space
your body could disappear into.
The performance artist, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist
Laurie Anderson performed here for the first time with the
jazz bassist Christian McBride and the cellist Rubin Kodheli.
For an hour she played brightly articulated violin and affecting
synthesizer harmonies in light-footed exchange with her new
compatriots, pausing here and there to deliver deadpan stories
of childhood and unsettling reflections on the abuse of power.
More than 20 years after its founding, the Vision Festival —
celebrating improvised music and its cousins across artistic
disciplines — remains one of New York’s most essential art
events. On one evening, I heard two sets that stopped me
cold. The alto saxophonist Darius Jones guested with the
all-star trio Farmers by Nature (the pianist Craig Taborn, the
bassist William Parker and the drummer Gerald Cleaver).
His round, spiked-syrup sound did battle with the church’s
acoustics, plowing straight to your ears before getting sucked
into the rafters. Then the Artifacts Trio took the stage, taking
a different approach: Nicole Mitchell’s flute and Tomeka Reid’s
cello met with Mike Reed’s cymbal-heavy drumming to make
an aqueous sound that allowed itself to be warped and melted
and spread about by the room.
The British tenor saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings brought a
five-piece configuration of the Ancestors — his collaborative
project with a crew of South African musicians — to the same
Greenwich Village club where they had played during Winter
Jazzfest five months prior. The band’s politically minded music
The Best Live Jazz
Performances of 2017
Pic from: unsplash.com
By: GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
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is danceable, generous and casually propulsive: It’s easy to
happen upon it at a festival and like it. But here, running its
own show, the band hit a new level — particularly thanks to
Mr. Hutchings’ relentless, thick-toned soloing and the semi-
operatic vocals of Siyabonga Mthembu.
Mr. Sorey, a drummer and multi-instrumentalist, was about
to release his powerful new record, “Verisimilitude,” when he
settled in for a five-day run at the Stone. Night 1 he played
with Jen Shyu, also a multi-instrumentalist as well as a
vocalist and movement artist. He ranged from bells and other
percussion to a makeshift didgeridoo and a MIDI keyboard;
Ms. Shyu played stringed instruments and sang, often lifting
and folding her limbs to the music. Often, Ms. Shyu sang a
note and Mr. Sorey matched her just one step up, creating a
troubled resonance, giving your ear two options and insisting
that you not choose one.
Mr. McBride’s first year in charge of booking the Newport
Jazz Festival in Rhode Island was more or less an unqualified
success. Here are some highlights I didn’t get to mention in
the review: the Vijay Iyer Sextet showcasing knotty, brittle
tunes from its debut disc, “Far from Over;” Joanne Brackeen
playing solo piano in an intimate room, moving from the rich,
scattering abstraction of “Green Tea Soy Latte” to the boogie-
woogie joy ride of “Knickerbocker Blues;” and Cecile McLorin
Salvant, singing a slow, luxurious rendition of “Sophisticated
Lady,” embracing the song’s pathos even while questioning its
premise.
Mr. McCraven, a Chicago-based drummer, producer and beat
maker, has quietly become one of the best arguments for jazz’s
vitality. Recently he’s been traveling to various cities, pulling
together musicians and executing one-off performances that
he tapes (presumably for later use). Mr. McCraven isn’t an
esoterica guy, but he’s certainly obsessed with resonance and
charge and the weight of sound. At H0L0, a dark basement in
Ridgewood, Queens, he convened a team of string and mallet
players — the vibraphonist Joel Ross, the harpist Brandee
Younger, the cellist Tomeka Reid and the bassist Dezron
Douglas — to create bristling, bulbous music with an electric
pulse.
With an intergenerational sextet convened in a circle
onstage, the alto saxophonist Ms. Roberts projected images
reflecting on police violence, patriotism and resistance for the
multimedia presentation “Breathe ...” Meanwhile the group
played free-form music of plain-stated beauty, each musician
acutely attuned to the utterances of the others. At one point,
an image of the girlfriend of Philando Castile — who died
after being shot by an officer in front of her — haunted the
screen as Ms. Roberts let out a blooming, dolorous melody,
escaping the embrace of the whispery synthesizer underneath
her. Hearing her play, feeling the heft of those images in that
quiet room, listeners became acutely aware of the fragility of
their own breath.
Mr. Frisell, a luminary New York guitarist, this year released
“Small Town,” a duets album with the younger bassist
Mr. Morgan. On the album, a radiator warmth pervades
everything; at this show, you got more direct access to the
materials: the trebly, yellow hue of Mr. Frisell’s guitar and
the exposed earth tones of Mr. Morgan’s bass. They played
two tunes from the album, including a ravishing take on
Paul Motian’s “It Should’ve Happened a Long Time Ago,” but
they also detoured unexpectedly into standard jam-session
repertoire. There was a slinky version of Thelonious Monk’s
“Epistrophy,” then a wily deconstruction of “Giant Steps.”
The set ended somewhere in between — on a pop cover that
reflects perfectly Mr. Frisell’s creative credo, and feels apt
today: “What the World Needs Now.”
Pic from: unsplash.com
For more information:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/arts/
music/best-live-jazz-performances.html