Night After Night

For whom the bell tolls.

In all honesty, I can't claim to have spent all that much time at CBGB lately; the fact of the matter is that the bulk of the club's programming in recent years hasn't held so much interest for me. But I'd be lying if I didn't confess that there's something altogether genuine and appealing about this grungy nightclub's complete and utter lack of pretension -- regarding its hipster caché, creature comforts or much of anything else.

One thing is certain, though, it was a pretty great place to catch underground punk and metal acts. Shows are more comfortable at B.B. King's, certainly…but since when has metal had anything to do with comfort? Of the three times I've seen Napalm Death, the show at CBGB was far and away the best, in terms of music and experience alike. Other acts whose CBGB sets I remember fondly include Lamb of God, the Haunted, Soilent Green, Isis, Coalesce, Hot Cross, Lickgoldensky and the One AM Radio.

That's probably why I felt a genuine pang when this press release hit my in-box this morning:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CBGB TO CLOSE ON SEPTEMBER 30TH

After over 30 years, the legendary rock club CBGB will be closing for good on September 30th, 2006.

CB's, as it is universally and fondly known, opened its doors in 1973, making it NYC's oldest continuously-operating rock venue.  Owner Hilly Kristal originally intended the club to showcase country, bluegrass and blues (hence the acronym), but the lack of places for unsigned bands to perform in New York at the time made CB's a magnet for the punk and art-rock scenes that were emerging downtown.  Throughout the 70's, such seminal artists as The Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, The Patti Smith Group, Television and Suicide performed at CB's regularly, and the club served as an incubator for what would become the most influential music of the era.

When punk metamorphosed into hardcore in the 80's, CB's remained on the city's cutting edge, offering a home for The Gorilla Biscuits, Agnostic Front, The Cro-Mags, Sick Of It All, H20, Murphy's Law, Leeway and the other pillars of the NYHC movement.

As the New York nightlife industry grew bigger and more cutthroat in the 90's, CB's remained an endearingly stubborn throwback, sticking firm to the open-door booking policy that first welcomed its inaugural class of rebels - whoever you are, whatever you do, your band can play at CBGB.  In a downtown scene increasingly governed by fashion and status, CB's has zealously adhered to the formula that made it meaningful, by refusing to apply stylistic filters to its bookings, welcoming all comers to sink or swim on their own merits.

A much-publicized altercation with their landlord in mid-2005 led to an a star-studded benefit concert in Washington Square Park, and even Mayor Bloomberg vocally led his support to the little club that had developed, over the decades, into a globally-recognized cultural institution.

However, despite the universal outpouring of love, and numerous attempts to resolve the matter legally, Krystal has been unable to arrive at terms with the building's owner, and a three-decade musical legacy will come to an end in just a few short months.

Fittingly, steadfastly independent New York concert promoters Rocks Off have signed on to book CBGB's closing festival, set to take place throughout August and September.  They are in touch with many of the artists who made CB's famous, and are hard at work putting together a final schedule that will do justice to the club's enduring impact in the many varieties of rock and roll it has helped to cultivate throughout the years.

Until the final schedule is announced, all press inquiries can be directed to [contact, phone number and e-mail address, available by request -- Steve].

RIP, CBGB.

Even if the programming has made the club largely irrelevant for some time now -- and even if the facts of Kristal's public battle against his landlord frankly make sympathy difficult -- it's still sad to lose yet another piece of New York City's musical history. What would make this more bitter still would be if this real estate were to be developed, like so much of the East Village, into another odious high-rise condo like the monstrosity on Astor Place, or yet another N.Y.U. dormitory. So far, however, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Is punk rock too unsentimental to support its own equivalent of the Village Vanguard? Apparently so. On the other hand, from the look of the crowds thronging the streets of Manhattan lately, Kristal has probably sold more T-shirts in the last year than in the entire preceding decade.

Playlist:

Os Mutantes - Everything Is Possible (Luaka Bop) and Ao Vivo (Som Livre/Gala)

Grateful Dead - Dick's Picks, Vol. 23: Baltimore, MD, Sept. 17, 1972 (Grateful Dead)

The Mars Volta - Amputechture (Universal, due Aug. 22)

Grateful Dead - Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, Oakland, CA, Dec. 30, 1989 (Archive.org M3U stream)

Phish - Live in Brooklyn, June 17, 2004 (JEMP/Rhino, due July 11)

Grateful Dead - Dick's Picks, Vol. 1: Tampa, FL, Dec. 19, 1973 (Grateful Dead)

Girls and boys.

"The difference between doing rock shows and cabaret shows is that at rock shows, the microphone smells like old beer and spit, while at cabaret shows, it smells like Chanel No. 5, and it's caked with red lipstick," singer Lee Ann Westover explained on Monday night at Makor, the midtown nightclub run by the 92nd Street Y. She's probably one of the few performers in a position to know, since the band she fronts, the Lascivious Biddies, has played its share of both kinds of gigs. I'd admired this group for some time now, based on its two studio albums filled with memorable pop tunes, angelic three- and four-part vocal harmonies, jazzy instrumental chops and a generally playful character. All four members have a knack for penning memorable songs with clever lyrics, and the group's recent DVD, Live in New York City, provides a glimpse of its onstage charm. But only live do you really get a full sense of the chemistry between these four performers.

Guitarist Amanda Monaco and pianist Deidre Rodman are both serious jazz musicians who lead bands of their own. At last count, Monaco leads three different small groups; her first CD, The Amanda Monaco 4, demonstrates an avant-bop sensibility, and there's another one in the works. Rodman steps out as a solo act on occasion, and leads a large ensemble that's still called the Alphabet Lounge Big Band even though it long ago relocated its sporadic activities to Barbès in Park Slope. The members of that group attest to Rodman's skills: saxophonists Roy Nathanson and Donny McCaslin, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes and singer Kate McGarry are all at least semi-regulars. She's played with, and arranged for, Elvis Costello and Darius de Haas. Twin Falls, her recently issued third CD, is a gorgeous duet session with electric bass guitarist Steve Swallow, which I wrote about in TONY (and also in one of the footnotes to this post).

Juilliard-trained bassist Saskia Lane has a day job at a P.R. firm, but by night, you might find her on all manner of bandstands; Monday night, she was still a bit dazed from having played with Jay-Z and Beyoncé the previous evening at Radio City Music Hall. She plays with rock-solid time and gorgeous tone, and she improvises like a champ. The group is fronted by Westover, whose brassy voice and sassy demeanor has won over countless lovers of pop, jazz and, yes, even cabaret. (Just ask Terry Teachout, one of the biggest Biddy boosters.)

Monday night's set opened with "Famous" -- which might well be the Biddies' theme song, were it not so hard to imagine four such personable, seemingly well adjusted women easing into a life of pampered, debauched celebrity -- and included most of their catchiest originals, among them the twangy "The Truck Song," plaintive "Wichita," sly "Intellectual" and "Neighbor," no doubt the sexiest paean to Mr. Rogers anyone has ever penned.

And, like all good jazz and cabaret performers, the Biddies also have a way with recasting covers in their own image. "Think of Jimi Hendrix in Peggy Lee's dress," Westover suggested, before slinking into a slow-burning take on Hendrix's "Fire." A standard more familiar in piano-bar circles, "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," was renamed "Bling" in honor of Lane's Sunday night playmates; Monaco gamely tossed in the handful of hip-hop licks she claimed to know. The encore, "Ask" by the Smiths, was mandated as much by Monaco having lugged 35 pounds of effect pedals on the subway to the gig as by the enthusiastic response of an audience that clearly included a number of regulars.

The original songs are reason enough to admire the Lascivious Biddies. So, too, is the group's instrumental prowess; during several tunes, Westover stepped away from the microphone while Monaco, Rodman and Lane locked into lithe, elegantly arranged instrumental counterpoint. But the thing that really cinches the deal is the obvious camaraderie between these four performers, whose mutual supportiveness clearly transcends the bandstand. Glamorous, feisty and demure all at once, the Biddies could almost be the cast of Sex and the City tranformed into the Modern Jazz Quartet.

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Sunday night's show by Hatfield and the North -- a New York City debut some three decades after the band's brief heyday -- got off to a slower start, and took a bit longer to coalesce despite a set front-loaded with the songs that open each of the band's two studio albums: "Big Jobs / Walking Up to People and Tinkling / Calyx" (from 1974's self-titled debut) and "Share It" (from 1975's The Rotter's Club). The scene was the Bowery Poetry Club, the sound was loud and remarkably clear, and most members of the standing-room-only crowd appeared to range in age from 35 to 55: old enough to have bought the band's albums when they were new, or, soon thereafter, to have traced some arcane prog-rock genealogy backward: Robert Fripp to Bill Bruford to former Hatfield keyboardist Dave Stewart, for instance. (That was my route, anyway.)

And this, I thought, was a shame, because a new potential audience for this band is as yet untapped: the jam-band crowd. I'm no expert, but it's not so hard to imagine that Hatfield and the North's pastoral British vibe, the band's intricate meters, ellided songs, lengthy improvised stretches and general whimsy could easily appeal to admirers of Phish and its ilk. But that would also likely require the sort of regular road work that Hatfield managed to miss out on during the last 30 years of inactivity, and that it probably isn't equipped to undertake at this point.

While the three veterans (bassist-vocalist Richard Sinclair, guitarist Phil Miller and drummer Pip Pyle) and their new keyboardist Alex Maguire played well enough from the start, the set took some time to gather steam. It probably didn't help that the two opening numbers were followed by a set long on latter-day material that postdated the original band. "Seven Sisters" was a relatively straightforward ballad, inflated to an almost Genesis-style grandiosity at its climax. "Licks for the Ladies," from the debut LP, segued into "Finesse Is for Fairies," a funk-bop riff that brought forth a burning solo from Miller, as well as torrents of tripping notes and watery chords from Maguire. (It might have gone over exceedingly well at Bonnaroo.) "Psychic ED," a hymnlike ballad written by Maguire and Pyle, paid tribute to the late Soft Machine saxophonist Elton Dean, in whose band the keyboardist had previously played. "What's Rattlin'," by Pyle and Sinclair, waxed poetic over the tattoo of an insistent march. "Take Your Pick," a loosely swaying instrumental, segued suddenly into a one-two punch of vintage compositions "Aigrette" and "Rifferama," and it was here, at last, that the set built up an imposing momentum that led to a towering climax.

Had that been the end of the show, the report would clearly have been mixed despite all best intentions. But after a short intermission, the band picked up right where it left off, a reprise of "Calyx" leading directly into "Underdub" and a pair of tunes by Miller's pre-Hatfield band Matching Mole, "Godsong" and "Lything and Gracing." Sinclair took a slinky extended solo over Maguire's church-organ chords and Pyle's marching beat in "What in the World." The second set culminated in four more Hatfield standards in quick succession. "Halfway Between Heaven and Earth" and "Giant Land Crabs in Earth Takeover Bid" had room to spare for instrumental excursions; the plaintive "Fitter Stoke Has a Bath" segued into the gentle resignation of "Doesn't Matter Anyway." The last song might well have ended the evening on an impressive mellow note, but the crowd wouldn't hear of it; the encore was a fiery take on another Matching Mole instrumental, "Nan's True Hole."

The prospects of a return visit in less than 30 years isn't actually out of the question: Sinclair twice mentioned that Hatfield and the North will be playing Montreal in September. Outside after the show, the lanky, congenial veteran spent time surrounded by enthusiastic fans, several of whom urged Sinclair to contact this local club or that local promoter. If only the New York live-music business -- and life in general -- could be that easy.

At the show, I picked up a copy of Hatwise Choice, the first volume in a planned series of archival releases, compiled by Dave Stewart with the cooperation of his former bandmates. While none of the titles on the disc are familiar (for what turns out to be a fairly obvious reason), the recordings feature embryonic versions of many songs and instrumentals that would later turn up on the two studio albums. The demos sound surprisingly good for their age and provenance; live tapes from BBC performances are better still, and reveal what a ferocious beast this band was in its heyday. Most Hatfield and the North fans probably already own this; if not, it's a mandatory purchase. (You'll find more information and ordering instructions here.)

Playlist:

Hatfield and the North - Hatwise Choice, Vol. 1 (Hatwise Choice)

Robert Fripp - Exposure (DGM)

Ljova - Vjola: World on Four Strings (Kapustnik)

Easy Star All-Stars - Radiodread (Easy Star)

Radiohead - OK Computer (Capitol)

Jeff Buckley - Grace (Columbia)

Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere (Downtown)

Os Mutantes - Tecnicolor (Universal)

Bang on a Can & Don Byron - A Ballad for Many (Cantaloupe)

Iron Maiden - Iron Maiden (Sanctuary)

Hüsker Dü - Flip Your Wig (SST)

Hers and his.

Until such time as she launches a blog of her own, it falls to me to point you to the good Dr. LP's review of the Fès Festival of World Sacred Music, now online at Jazz Times. I'm betting that it's an excellent read, full of detailed observations, exacting criticism, well-turned phrases and personable asides. I can't say so for sure, however, because I refuse to read it until I've filed my own review. It's far too easy to unconsciously purloin some choice bit of prose from writers whose work you admire.

The photo, for what's it's worth, is one of mine... a brilliant burst of near-sundown radiance streaming over a towering wall near the makeshift Bâb Boujloud stage, just before a free concert by Azzedine Montasser and guests on June 6. While you probably can't see it, there's a sizeable flock of swallows gliding and swooping just above that wall -- twilight apparently being the best time of the day for a bird to catch its fill of bugs.

And while it's definitely not as impressive as a Fès Festival review, you can find my TONY preview of this Sunday's New York City debut by Canterbury prog-rock legends Hatfield and the North here.

Playlist:

The Bad Plus - These Are the Vistas (Columbia)

Various Artists - Long Shadows (Rambler avant-garde megamix MP3: beautifully executed, highly recommended, and available for free download here.)

Rhonda Vincent - All American Bluegrass Girl (Rounder)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - The Magic Flute - Dorothea Röschmann, Erika Miklósa, Christoph Strehl, Hanno Müller-Brachmann, René Pape, Arnold Schoenberg Choir, Mahler Chamber Orchestra / Claudio Abbado (Deutsche Grammophon)

Philip Glass - The Voyage - Landestheater Linz, Bruckner Orchester Linz / Dennis Russell Davies (Orange Mountain Music, due for release August 8)

Deicide - The Stench of Redemption (Earache)

Phish - Live in Brooklyn, June 17, 2004 (JEMP/Rhino, due for release July 11)

Subterranean homesick blues.

Let's get one thing straight, right off the bat: Lorraine Gordon was not in Hanoi with Jane Fonda. It's one of the more colorful of the many legends that has become attached to the 83-years-young owner of the Village Vanguard, New York City's most hallowed surviving nightclub.

"That's another myth," Gordon told my TONY colleague K. Leander Williams, in an interview that appeared in the June 20-27, 2002 issue of the magazine. "She visited North Vietnam during the war, and I was a member of a great organization called Women Strike for Peace. We're both beautiful women, but no, we've never met."

Other tall tales abound. One credits Gordon with discovering Thelonious Monk. Not true, she says in the same interview. But she did convince her first husband, Blue Note Records founder Alfred Lion, to sign Monk, and she did schlep the iconic pianist's early sides around to the retailers. Later, she married Max Gordon, founder of the downtown nightclub where she and her brother had spent many a youthful evening at the bar, trying to stretch a beer or two across the duration of multiple sets -- the same way young fans do today.

For a few years, I enjoyed a close working relationship with Lorraine Gordon, as a publicist for the firm that then handled the Village Vanguard's public relations. I had the privilege of almost daily contact with the always straight-shooting, sometimes cantankerous Gordon and her staff. The better I got to know her, the more I loved her, and the more convinced I became that the story of where she came from, what she's done and what's she's seen would make one cracking good memoir. I'm happy to report that such a book is finally coming this fall, and I'm envious of Barry Singer for being the lucky co-author.

I also had the incalculable fortune of spending a lot of time in the Village Vanguard. Make that a LOT of time, actually. I was not a complete stranger to the scene; in fact, the Vanguard was one of my first pilgrimages when I moved to New York City. The night I was there is preserved on a pair of live CDs by Arthur Blythe, in fact. They actually aren't among his better records, truth be told, but together, they form an honest snapshot of a working musician in a room so haunted and hallowed that the very words "Live at the Village Vanguard" on a CD cover have come to confer a degree of authenticity in jazz like few other phrases in the language. During the time that I worked with Gordon and the club, I became a regular. It turned out to be fortuitious timing: During one particularly arduous stretch my life, I salved my aching spirit by going to hear Tommy Flanagan's sterling trio with Peter Washington and Lewis Nash five or six times during one of his traditional two-week runs. (Flanagan's take on Duke Ellington's "Sunset and the Mockingbird" will never fail to moisten my eyes.)

On Monday night, the JVC Jazz Festival paid tribute to this inimitable, invaluable force of nature with "Sweet Lorraine," an extensive, multi-artist bill at Carnegie Hall. All five of the acts on the bill, however disparate, had one thing in common: Each has been nurtured by Gordon and her club. First up was New Orleans clarinetist Dr. Michael White and his Original Liberty Jazz Band, a trad-jazz combo that has provided festive sounds for many a New Year's Eve in the club. (Dr. LP and I spent December 31, 1999 at the Vanguard with this band, reasoning that if the dreaded "Y2K Bug" sent the world to hell in a handbasket, there were worse places to be than in a basement loaded with booze.)

White's intonation can be patchy at times, but the spirit and sheer depth of insight with which he leads his seasoned players more than makes up for any shortcomings. "Shake It and Break It" danced on the very edge of giddy chaos, while "Give It Up (The Gypsy Second Line)," an original patterned on "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon," found common ground between Dixieland and Eastern European folk idioms -- inevitably including klezmer, thanks to White's keening clarinet. George Lewis's "Burgundy Street Blues" and the standard "In the Sweet By-and-By," the latter featuring a Satchmo-like vocal by trumpeter Gregg Stafford, wrapped up a rollicking set.

Drummer Paul Motian first played at the Village Vanguard in 1955, but his career became indelibly associated with the club on June 25, 1961, when a few sets he played with pianist Bill Evans and bassist Scott La Faro were recorded by Riverside, and issued as Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby. The drummer led a very different kind of trio on Monday night, a version of his Trio 2000 + One: Chris Potter on tenor saxophone and Larry Grenadier on bass, with nary a chordal instrument to be found. The set opened and closed with two of Motian's original compositions: simple, stark melodic constructions, the sort that make for excellent springboards. Both Potter and Grenadier consumed solo space with admirable restraint; the music was actually skeletal much of the time. (Wisely, Potter actually pushed his microphone aside, filling the cavernous auditorium with his sound. It was enough to make one question why, in a hall specifically designed for delicate acoustic music, everything JVC does here has to be amplified to excess.)

Between those two bookends, singer Rebecca Martin -- Grenadier's wife, and one of the most distinctive young singers to come forward in some time -- joined the band for three selections from its upcoming CD, On Broadway, Vol. 4: The Paradox of Continuity, due in August on Winter & Winter. (I adore about half of this disc; much of the rest features pianist Masaumi "Pooh" Kikuchi, a potentially engrossing player whose distracting verbalizations make the likes of Glenn Gould and Keith Jarrett seem like small-time offenders by comparison). Proving himself a consummate supporter, Potter wrapped satiny tendrils around Martin's sandy, salty voice in "Everything Happens to Me" and "The Folks Who Live on the Hill," the singer happily eschewing any trace of hackneyed jazz-singer cliché. During both of those songs, Motian restrained himself to steadily rippling brushwork; his introduction to "You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me," on the other hand, crackled and splattered restlessly. Martin and Grenadier held fast to the line, and Motian fell in with them for the first chorus, Potter responding with a fabulously oblique, earthly solo.

Motian's set, it could be argued, was music made for the Vanguard: subtle, introverted and slightly diffuse, it compels a listener to lean in and listen more closely. That's possible in Carnegie Hall, too, but the effect isn't quite the same. On the other hand, trumpeter Roy Hargrove, in at least one of his several guises, plays a version of brash, mainstream hard-bop that's made for the masses and easily discernable in the cheap seats. Eventually, that was the Hargrove that showed up, although he started the set with "Trust" (from the newly issued Nothing Serious), a graceful number that features the burnished beauty of his flugelhorn playing.

Dressed to the hilt in sharp-looking suits, Hargrove and the younger members of his posse (saxophonist Justin Robinson, bassist Dwayne Burno, drummer Willie Jones III) resurrected the "young lions" movement of the '80s; guest vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson and pianist Ronnie Matthews added a dash of veteran wisdom to the mix. Wanderers and stragglers fought their way up the aisles after Hargrove's first selection; his second, which opened with a cacophonous outburst of dashing, crashing instrumental lines, scored the scene perfectly. But it was here that serious audio problems crept into the set, and Hutcherson's vibraphone was the victim. You could see him playing, but as he headed to the top end of his instrument, the sound disappeared -- and every attempt to remedy the situation on the fly resulted in crashing feedback. Hargrove clearly noticed, and the longer the problem lingered, the less interested he seemed to be in his own set. His solos became brash and perfunctory, as he left Robinson and Matthews to carry both this tune and most of a Latin-style closer. In the end, the hero of the set was Jones, an undersung player whose crisp technique and imperturbable swing -- and, it must be said, his close-cropped, vintage look -- made it seem as if somehow he'd been clipped out of some old vintage TV clip from the late '50s or early '60s and magically brought to life on the stage.

During a previous JVC Jazz Festival some years back, the Bad Plus was one among a handful of bands booked into the Vanguard for a series of atypical one-night stands. "The Bad Plus? That's not a band, it's a bad report card," is what Lorraine Gordon reportedly said of the group's unusual moniker. (Or something like that -- Ethan Iverson will remind me of the precise wording, I hope.) Still, she took a liking to the group, inviting them back for a full week. It's exactly that kind of personal reaction that has seen the likes of Don Byron, Bil Frisell and Dave Douglas repeatly playing the club, sometimes leading projects that might seem distinctly un-Vanguard like; Lorraine simply appreciates these artists, and trusts them to respect her bandstand.

That booking also led to the Bad Plus signing with Columbia Records, for a tenure now reportedly concluded. Monday night, the group repaid the favor, paying homage with a tight, witty set that was clearly the evening's finest. Embarassing as it is to admit it, this was my first live encounter with the trio, and it was revelatory. Digging into the torrential head and tumbling triplets of pianist Iverson's "Mint," drummer Dave King was poetry in motion -- only the poetry is some off-color mix of Gregory Corso and a dirty limerick. All elbows, grins and pratfalls, King rumbles, lunges and snaps even when the music he's making is of the utmost delicacy. Iverson patiently summons corruscating lines and prodigious, granitic chords; bassist Reid Anderson provides a rock-solid fulcrum upon which his bandmates teeter and bounce.

Each is also an accomplished writer. King was represented by the playful clatter of "Thrift-Store Jewelry," while Anderson supplied a ballad, "Giant," which opened with a long bass solo of hymnal eloquence -- the spirit sundered only by a lingering cell-phone intrusion. Alluding to a statement made by the evening's host, Jeff Levenson, Iverson noted the skepticism that the Bad Plus had sparked among jazz purists. "If it's good enough for Lorraine," he concluded, "it must be jazz." The group closed with a Burt Bacharach chestnut, retitled "This Band's in Love with You" for the occasion: a straight-faced, respectful reading rendered slightly off-kilter by the anomalous sight of the physically commanding King punctuating phrases with gently tinkled harness bells.

The evening concluded with a brief set by the Village Vanguard's resident Monday night big band, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. Organized by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis in 1965, the band has been in residence for four decades, surviving the passing of both founders. "It violates our contract to play above street level," trombonist and band leader John Mosca quipped, as he and baritone saxophonist Gary Smulyan took the solo microphones for a playful Jones burner, "Three and One." Resident composer and pianist Jim McNeely's "Hardly Ever," from the suite Up from the Skies, was a typically elegant ballad, in which the band offered lush, impressionist passages behind a handsome solo by trumpeter Terrell Stafford and a scorcher by alto saxophonist Dick Oatts.

The band featured one of its most famous alumni, tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, in Bob Brookmeyer's "Nasty Dance," which -- with all due respect to its enormously distinguished composer -- seemed little more than a string of loud, swaggering action-movie cues, a convoluted concerto that shifted gears every time the soloist threatened to build any real momentum. Closing the set was a fast-paced rendition of another Jones standard, "Little Pixie," in which one band member after another came forward to solo. In the club, this would have ended the set on a high note; here, however, the house lights were raised midstream, pinching the fuse on a firecracker of a performance.

Ben Ratliff's New York Times review can be found here, and David Adler talks about the show, and the Bad Plus in specific, here.

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Adler's fine blog on jazz and politics, Lerterland, belatedly joins the blogroll (under "Music," at least for now); so do Tim Rutherford-Johnson's The Rambler (under "Music"), ANABlog (under "Musicians") and Running the Voodoo Down (under "Poptones"). A few seemingly inactive sites have been removed; if one of these belongs to you and your hiatus is only temporary, please let me know.

Playlist:

Jimmy Giuffre 3 - 1961 (Fusion/Thesis) (ECM)

Paul Motian Trio 2000 + One - On Broadway, Vol. 4: The Paradox of Continuity (Winter & Winter)

Jacob Garchik - Abstracts (Yestereve)

The MG Marching Band - Broadway/Lafayette (Meadownoise free MP3 download album... engaging chamber jazz recorded live in the NYC subway station to which the title refers)

Carl Maguire - Floriculture (Between the Lines)

Polwechsel - Archives of the North (Hatology)

Joseph Haydn - Orlando Paladino - Patricia Petibon, Elisabeth von Magnus, Michael Schade, Christian Gerhaher, Concentus Musicus Wien / Nikolaus Harnoncourt (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi)

Peter Eötvös - Chinese Opera; Shadows; Steine - Klangforum Wien / Peter Eötvös (Kairos)

Angels in America

'Angels in America,' the Opera
By Steve Smith
MusicalAmerica.com
June 20, 2006

BOSTON -- A quarter century after the first American case of AIDS was diagnosed, Angels in America -- playwright Tony Kushner's two-part, seven-hour epic about the disease, the lives it touched, and the callous disregard with which politicians marginalized its explosive early spread -- long ago transcended topicality to become a major landmark in this country's theatrical oeuvre. That Kushner's play should have given rise to a new opera is less surprising than is the fact that a subject so distinctly American in setting and tone -- if not its subject, a more universal concern -- should have been taken up not by a prominent native composer, but by a Hungarian avant-gardist who has been creating opera for less than a decade.

Peter Eötvös devoted a great deal of his early career to the cause of other composers: as a performer in Karlheinz Stockhausen's ensemble, as conductor of Pierre Boulez's Ensemble Intercontemporain and as an itinerant maestro specializing in toothy modern scores. The widespread acclaim that greeted his 1998 setting of Chekhov's Three Sisters thrust Eötvös into the spotlight as an operatic composer of note. Angels in America, his third opera, premiered at Paris' Théâtre du Châtelet in November 2004; a second production followed at the Hamburg Staatsoper, in June 2005.

It's surely a sign of this opera's success that even as the Hamburg staging was being revived at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam (on June 15 and 17), the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Opera Boston joined forces in the work's American premiere, under the auspices of the impressive, three-year-old Opera Unlimited festival. Staged by Steven Maier, vice president of artistic programming at Boston's Wang Center and artistic director of the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, this new production (viewed on June 17, the second night of the run) made savvy use of the Wemberly Theatre, an elegant 372-seat space within the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.

Set and costume designer Clint Ramos neatly integrated the 16-piece ensemble into his angular, all-white staging: Strings, winds, percussion and a trio of non-acting vocalists, all clad in white, flanked the raked central platform on which much of the action took place, while conductor Gil Rose, two keyboardists and two guitarists, all in black, melted into the shadows below the foot of the stage. Two large, triangular surfaces rose behind the platform, suggesting angelic wings and providing a surface on which Christopher Ostrom's lighting design and projections by Zachary Borovay played.

In adapting Kushner's sprawling play to a workable two-and-a-half hour length, Eötvös and his wife-librettist Mari Mezei concentrated on three basic strands of plot. Prior Walter, diagnosed with AIDS, struggles with the effects of the disease, as well as his abandonment by his overwhelmed lover, Louis. Joe Pitt, a practicing Mormon, grapples with revealing his own homosexuality to Harper, his drug-addicted wife, and Hannah, his mother, who is unable to accept his coming out. The third narrative -- that of boisterous, bigoted New York prosecutor Roy Cohn, who refuses to acknowledge his own diagnosis of AIDS -- lends an air of dark comedy. All three plots intertwine; in addition, both primary and secondary characters take on multiple roles, and appear to one another in visions. Almost entirely omitted are Kushner's more pointed political implications, although Cohn's diatribe when he is diagnosed alludes to the prevailing sentiment towards AIDS in the corridors of power.

Inspired by Kushner's metropolitan milieu, Eötvös spent a week in New York absorbing Broadway musicals prior to tackling Angels in America. The results are evident not so much in the musical score -- a busy, glinting construction in which angular, dissonant and athematic passages are imbued with a rich lyricism -- but rather in Eötvös' mixture of speech, semi-sung declamation and conventional operatic vocalizing. That all are discernible to the ear is a reflection of his considerable skill in setting the English language. Voices are amplified, both for emphasis and to allow mixing with non-musical sounds generated from the two keyboards.

Thomas Meglioranza, a New York-based baritone well known for his acumen in both early and contemporary music, was altogether exceptional as Prior, vividly projecting self-pity, terror, rage and hope, and comfortably sashaying in fuchsia drag during one spectral appearance. His electricity was matched by that of Anne Harley, whose dazed, rejected Harper was ideally tragicomic: pitiable, but never maudlin. Harley also provoked ripples of genuine unease in her appearances as Ethel Rosenberg, who appears to gloat over the dying Cohn. Drew Poling tore into the role of the sleazy Cohn with serious gusto -- especially in his opening scene, ingeniously scored for a cacophony of ringing telephones and chattering voices.

Nikolas Sean-Paul Nackley was moving as an understated yet deeply conflicted Joe; so, too, were Matthew DiBattista (Louis) and Ja-Nae Duane (Hannah), who plumbed the humanity of less immediately sympathetic characters. Despite harsh amplification so overbearing as to distort voices, Amanda Forsythe sang gorgeously as the Angel. Completing the cast was countertenor Matthew Truss, who stole scene after scene with his mellifluous voice and ebullient manner as gay nurse Belize. Truss also played Mr. Lies (one of Harper's hallucinations) and an addled homeless woman encountered by Hannah in the South Bronx.

Rose's musicians met the challenges of Eötvös' rich, imaginative score, with "offstage" vocalists Kristen Watson, Krista River and Donald Wilkinson adding much to the otherworldly atmosphere of an opera that slips from the all-too-real to the utterly surreal with effortless grace.

(Remaining performances of Angels in America will be held on Tuesday, June 20 and Saturday, June 24.)

Copyright © 2006, Musical America and MusicalAmerica.com

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My sincere thanks to Susan Elliott, my Musical America editor, for permitting me to reproduce this here so punctually. In addition, I urge you to check out Tom Meglioranza's site, where he's provided some candid and entertaining insight into the preparation and execution of his role.

Playlist:

The Bad Plus - Suspicious Activity? (Columbia)

Dr. Lonnie Smith - Jungle Soul (Palmetto)

Bill Dixon - Vade Mecum (Soul Note)

The good life.

I've lived in New York for 13 years now, and I've seen some mighty unexpected things in that time. But I can honestly say that among the many things I never expected to witness firsthand, a large Carnegie Hall crowd whooping it up over a violin solo by Ornette Coleman certainly ranks right up there. Wasn't this the same unschooled scraping that once was viewed as amateurish, unmusical, maybe even heretical?

Well, it was and it wasn't, actually. Technically speaking, Coleman stills holds the violin "wrong," still plays it "wrong," still gets "wrong" sounds out of it. But jazz -- or some jazz, anyway -- has become more accepting of idiosyncracy than it was in 1965, when he first scratched a fiddle onstage during a tour of Europe. And in his current working band -- a quartet that includes bassists Tony Falanga and Greg Cohen, with son Denardo on drums -- Coleman seems to have hit upon a context in which his violin playing sounds not merely acceptable, but appealing.

Of course, it's just possible that if you make it to a ripe old age without compromising your maverick principles, you'll get a rousing ovation just for showing up... even if your music still scares the bejeebers out of the masses. Especially, even.

Most of the music that Coleman played during his briskly paced set (90 minutes including the encore) on Friday night at Carnegie Hall was material that he's been working on with this band for the past several years. I hadn't heard any of these new pieces before; generally speaking, they consisted of an annunciatory head, a lengthy collective peroration (sometimes seemingly tightly arranged, sometimes more spontaneous) and a sudden return to the head at the conclusion. That these tunes felt more cohesive than what I'd heard the last two times I heard Coleman -- both times with Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins -- probably speaks to the fact that this band has actually spent considerably more time actually playing together in recent years, and has worked its book in accordingly.

Of course, this being Coleman, a wild card is never out of the question; in this case, it was the addition of electric bass guitarist Al McDowell, formerly of the saxophonist's electric band, Prime Time. My friend Pete was concerned in advance about the potential for trouble: Carnegie Hall is the city's finest room for acoustic music, but it can also be an unmitigated disaster for amplified performances. Unsurprisingly, Pete's concern was entirely warranted; in his New York Times review, Ben Ratliff rightly (and wittily) describes the sound at the opening of the show as "a dog's breakfast." Coleman's keening alto was audible enough, as was Denardo's steadily rippling pulse. But Cohen's low-end pizzicato was a massive, muddy blob, Falanga's arco playing had all the substance of a mosquito circling the backside of your ear, and while McDowell could be seen grabbing and repeating snatches of the leader's melodic line, there was little in the sonic mix to actually prove it was happening. Coleman's trumpet -- every bit as unorthodox as his violin playing -- seemed to be used as a device to signal a change of direction or to cue the conclusion, like the vibraphone in Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians.

Somewhere in the middle of "Sleep Talking" -- i.e., "Sleep Talk," the Rite of Spring-quoting opener from Coleman's Of Human Feelings -- the sound came into focus. And it was also here that this band's remarkable integrity was first and best revealed. Denardo, to put it bluntly, has never been a drummer known for clockwork precision; truth be told, his time flickers and wows like a light bulb during an electrical storm. But from the time that the 10-year-old drummer first sat down behind a kit on Coleman's 1966 album, The Empty Foxhole, it's been clear that Denardo does in fact possess an innate musicality that his father finds inspiring. Again, this band proves an ideal fit for Denardo's particular feel, Cohen's rock-solid time in particular freeing the drummer from metronomic entrapment. There's nothing unsteady or tentative about this quartet's feel, and Denardo's touch has grown more masterful over the years. So secure is Coleman with this group that, following a trumpet call to rally the troops, he re-entered on alto at an angle so oblique to the course of the band, you wondered how they'd possibly end up on the same page. Moments later, they did.

Another thing that Pete had mentioned in advance (since he'd seen this band a few times before) is that Coleman is allowing himself the luxury of playing longer and slower these days. I figured he meant during the ballads, but I was mistaken. During the third tune, a tumbling head led to a percolating rhythm, yet once the bassists and drummer hit full boil, Coleman unspooled long, luxuriously floating melodies, like vines hung ripe with rich, succulent notes and dangling phrases. McDowell played the foil, tagging along after the leader and repeating his choicest phrases, while Falanga's bowing providing more of an environmental wash. A cascading figure from the bassist coaxed Coleman to take up his fiddle for the first time; a barn-burning dance macabre brought out Cohen's bow, as well.

A achingly gorgeous ballad (along the lines of "Kathelin Gray" ) was followed by a familiar-sounding tumble of wit and simultaneous motion. The evening's sixth tune was its most surprising: a long, droning rumble from the three bassists over a ripple of cymbals elicited a keening melody from the saxophonist -- business as usual until Denardo responded with a desolately pounding, plodding straight rock beat. The result was primal, parched and ritualistic. When Coleman interjected with a jaunty new melody, half the band seemed unwilling to follow; for long moments, the music hung suspended between the first theme and the second. Coleman finally shattered the impasse with a violin solo of monomaniacal intensity, culminating in a series of dramatic sweeps and Herrmann-esque stabs. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, Coleman proved himself more than capable of shock and perhaps even genuine discomfort.

A happily rocking hoedown, another langorous ballad and a bubbly calypso-esque tune (similar to "The Good Life") followed, the last taken at such a clip that Coleman and son practically danced alone while the bassists were left shuffling like elephants in tutus. A striking version of Coleman's 1959 chestnut "Turnaround" found the saxophonist sometimes playing his melodic lines well off the beat, reminiscent of great balladeers from Lester Young to Willie Nelson. "Song X" brought the set to a manic close; a torrid "Lonely Woman" was served up as an encore. The audience -- not a sold-out house, but not far off -- exploded in approval. Coleman accepted this with grace, every bit the quiet revolutionary he'd always been...if perhaps one of the very few revolutionaries lucky enough to be rewarded with such a response for simply remaining cussedly true to his own unique vision.

Phil Freeman has also posted his thoughts on the show, here.

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On Saturday night, I caught Peter Eötvös's Angels in America in Boston. But that's a tale for another time and another place. Suffice it to say that I found it a tremendously effective work and a deeply moving experience, and that Thomas Meglioranza is an exceptional performer. If you're in Boston (or can be), get yourself out to one of the two remaining performances, on Tuesday, June 20, or Saturday, June 24. I'll share more when I can; meanwhile, newly minted PhD Dr. Christina Linklater of St. Botolph's Town (who I met all too briefly, only later to discover a previously unsuspected connection between the two of us) has a report of that performance, and Vilaine Fille was surely check in before long.

Playlist:

Queensrÿche - Operation Mindcrime (EMI deluxe reissue)

Harry Miller's Isipingo - Which Way Now (Cuneiform)

John Cage - Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano - John Tilbury (Explore)

Miles Davis - Live Around the World (Warner Bros.)

Slight return.

And so we're back from a brilliant working vacation in Morocco. The trip began with a June 1 flight into Casablanca, where our little party -- myself, Dr. LP, Anastasia Tsioulcas (of Billboard, Gramophone, Weekend America and Café Aman renown) and her husband Joshua Sherman, classical scribe Robert Hilferty and world music maven Peter Margasak -- paid a lengthy visit to the breathtaking Hassan II mosque, then proceeded overland in a hired van to Fès for the 12th annual Festival of World Sacred Music. There, we were joined by other friendly faces -- Tom Pryor of National Geographic's marvelous, highly recommended new online world music directory and news site (and Weekend America, as well) and Rene Goiffon of Harmonia Mundi USA, to name but two.

I'm still processing all of the sounds that I heard, for a review that will appear in an upcoming issue of Signal to Noise. But I'm also still rather blissed out by the sheer experience of spending so much time in a place that seems to have one foot planted in the 20th century and the other in the 14th, perhaps. So much gorgeous architecture, rich history, fine food and fabulous weather, not to mention an altogether warm reception from the local population. (A ripple of nervousness that arose the morning the Zarqawi news broke proved unwarranted.) A small group of us also hired a driver one beautiful, hot morning for a road trip to nearby Mekenes and Moulay Idriss, before ending the day in the scenic Roman ruins of Volubilis. (Photos will be forthcoming, although I will not vouch for their quality.)

It was a thoroughly brilliant trip, and one that I highly recommend to music lovers of virtually any inclination -- save, perhaps, mainstream rock. Even lovers of Western classical music were well served with fine performances by William Christie's Les Art Florissants, Jordi Savall's Hesperion XXI and especially the Spanish ensembles Capella de Ministrers and Cor de la Generalitat Valenciana, whose performance of the 14th century codex El Llibre Vermell brought the house down at the Bab Makina on June 5.

That's a CD I still have to track down -- it wasn't available on site, unfortunately. But I did come home with more than two dozen discs of mostly Moroccan music (with a Syrian and a Tunisian added in for good measure) -- predominantly music of the Sufi brotherhoods whose devotional concerts ended most nights, but also a good sampling of gnawa and more contemporary hybrids.

With all of that buzzing through my head, I've little new with which to titillate at the moment (but it was very kind of you to inquire, Henry). Things should be rolling again by Friday night. In the mean time, a few items bear mention:

Like every other music lover, I was saddened to learn of György Ligeti's passing. Many lovely tributes have been posted; in addition to his own eloquent words, Alex Ross has rounded up many of the best essays and articles, including Ethan Iverson's terrific point-by-point tally of Ligeti's significance on the Bad Plus blog, Do the Math.

Among my favorite live encounters with Ligeti's music: Pierre-Laurent Aimard in a selection of the Etudes at Carnegie Hall in 2001 (preserved on this CD, which you might want to acquire soon if the buzz about the demise of Warner Classics is accurate); Jenny Lin in the three final Etudes at Galapagos in 2003 (newly available on a Koch International Classics CD, The Eleventh Finger, which I'll write about in TONY quite soon); Tasmin Little in the Violin Concerto with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, later that same year at Carnegie Hall; Michael Wendeberg in the Piano Concerto with Jonathan Nott and the Ensemble InterContemporain at the Rose Theater in 2005; and later that year, the all-Ligeti concert by Tim Weiss and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, with the Violin Concerto once again, this time played by Jennifer Koh.

+ Speaking of Koh, my own latest spin on Weekend America aired the Saturday before last: a glowing review of her outstanding new Cedille release, on which she's joined by conductor Carlos Kalmar and Chicago's Grant Park Orchestra in works by Szymanowski, Martinů and Bartók. You can listen to the review here; more importantly, you should hear the CD.

+ Since I've become somewhat superstitious about announcing in advance what performances I'll be attending (after a few random mishaps, usually work-related), I'll simply state that I very much hope to hear the ageless Ornette Coleman at Carnegie Hall this Friday night -- especially since his fine recent quartet with drummer Denardo Coleman and bassists Greg Cohen and Tony Falanga has now become an intriguing quintet (despite what the Carnegie Hall website says), thanks to the addition of electric bassist Al McDowell, a veteran of Ornette's Prime Time band.

+ Like Vilaine Fille, I'll be heading up to Boston this Saturday to catch Peter Eötvös’s new opera, Angels in America, which I'll be reviewing for Musical America. I look forward to hearing Tom Meglioranza again, and to my first live encounter with conductor Gil Rose and his noble Boston Modern Orchestra Project, whose work I've admired on numerous discs (especially this one).

+ Prog rock fans in New York City have ample cause to rejoice: Hatfield and the North, a Canterbury band as musically accomplished as it was puckishly clever, has reunited. Keyboardist Dave Stewart, who supplied the group's most ornate charts (and went on to work with Bill Bruford, not Annie Lennox), is a no-show, as he was for an earlier reunion in 1990. But the remaining members -- bassist-vocalist Richard Sinclair, guitarist Phil Miller and drummer Pip Pyle -- have taken on keyboardist Alex Maguire, seasoned by work in bands led by Pyle and the late Soft Machine saxophonist Elton Dean. With a year's worth of gigs under its collective belt, the group makes its long-overdue New York City debut on Sunday, June 25 at the Bowery Poetry Club, presented by the valiant souls of Downtown Music Gallery.

Playlist:

Tariqa Aissaouia - title unknown (but I'm working on it...) (Fassiphone)

Hatfield and the North - Hatfield and the North and The Rotters Club (Virgin)

Jenny Lin - The Eleventh Finger (Koch International Classics)