The Night After Night Archives

NPR: "Nanci Griffith Has Died. The Texas Singer-Songwriter Was 68"

"Nanci Griffith Has Died. The Texas Singer-Songwriter Was 68"
NPR
August 13, 2021

NPR: "Peter Rehberg, Influential Electronic Musician And Label Head, Has Died At 53"

"Peter Rehberg, Influential Electronic Musician And Label Head, Has Died At 53"
NPR Music
August 10, 2021

Welcome (Back) to Night After Night.

Change is upon us once again, and with it a fresh start for Night After Night—elsewhere. As of Thursday, April 23, the primary focus of my work has shifted over to a newly launched Substack newsletter, also called Night After Night. That title has provided my online identity – my "brand" – for more than two decades; no reason I would change that now.

From the new site, my explanatory preamble:

As in all of my previous ventures – from blogging and freelancing through stints with Time Out New York, The New York Times, the Boston Globe, and National Sawdust Log – I’ll be covering music in its infinite richness and variety, emphasizing what’s happening here and now. I’ll interview composers and performers about their newest projects, as well as bigger, broader ideas. I’ll review current recordings… and concerts, too, when the opportunity returns. I’ll direct your attention toward pertinent news and reviews published elsewhere, too.

I plan to post twice a week, and some posts will be available to everyone. But paying subscribers will have access to premium content now in planning stages… stay tuned.

Following that preamble, the first real entry – a biographical prelude, an extensive interview with Quince Ensemble and composer David Lang, and a postlude to my New York Times obituary of Richard Teitelbaum – was sent out on April 23. You can read it now, for free.

You'll notice that subscriptions are available, and at some point soon I'll start to roll out features meant exclusively for those who subscribe. That said, I completely recognize that this is a difficult time, and I intend to keep a substantial portion of my work freely accessible to all.

As for this long-serving Typepad blog, well, it's staying right where it is, and shifting to serve, even more than it does already, as an archive for past writings—both my original posts and the work I make for others. The playlists will stay here, too, and I'll try to be diligent about them.

I'll continue to add more past content when I find time (ha!). But for now, the Substack newsletter is where I'll be moving forward.

I hope that you'll join me…

Jon Christensen (March 20, 1943–February 18, 2020).

Jon Christensen, a deft, sensitive drummer who embodied the "ECM Sound" and an enormously influential musician, has died at age 76. Read Ethan Iverson's tribute, here, for as beautiful a succinct summary of Christensen's contributions to music as you possibly could want, and then watch this live video of Christensen playing in Keith Jarrett's storied "European" Quartet, recorded in Oslo for Norwegian television in 1974.

Reinbert de Leeuw (Sept. 8, 1938–Feb. 14, 2020).

Reinbert de Leeuw, the great Dutch pianist, conductor, and composer, died on Feb. 14, 2020, at age 81. I've been wracking my brain this evening, trying to recall when I first encountered this brilliant artist, who I sadly never had an opportunity to encounter in live performance. He was closely associated with the music of Erik Satie, of course, and also made numerous important recordings of Louis Andriessen's works. In 1974 he founded the celebrated Schönberg Ensemble, which in time merged with another significant Dutch group, the ASKO Ensemble, becoming ASKO|Schönberg in 2009.

One part of my mind wants to situate discovering de Leeuw somewhere in the vicinity of the other formidable figures of the Dutch avant-garde, including Andriessen, Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink, and Willem Breuker. Another part insists that I came upon de Leeuw via Messiaen, which is plausible but doesn't seem correct. Still another links him indelibly to Satie, which seems so likely that it surely couldn't be that simple. (I very badly regret missing an opportunity to hear him play Satie with Barbara Hannigan at the Park Avenue Armory a few seasons ago, but at least there's a beautiful documentation of their partnership and project.)

Thinking back on the recordings involving de Leeuw that have meant the most to me, I'm impressed with the sheer variety. His benchmark recording of Lonely Child and other works by Claude Vivier comes to mind immediately; so, too, does the sober eloquence in his account of Harrison Birtwistle's Pulse Shadows. De Leeuw was involved in several volumes of a landmark György Ligeti series on the Teldec label; Volume I (with Pierre-Laurent Aimard in the Piano Concerto) and Volume III (Siegfried Palm in the Cello Concerto, Frank Peter Zimmermann in the Violin Concerto) seem especially essential. And in 2017, De Leeuw was the driving force behind an extraordinary collection of György Kurtág's complete works for ensemble and choir, issued on ECM New Series.

What's clear is that de Leeuw contained multitudes, and touched the lives of countless music lovers. It feels curiously correct, then, to celebrate his memory by turning to one of the more steadfast among his personal passions, the late music of Franz Liszt, via a VPRO video posted to YouTube in 2013.

Lyle Mays (Nov. 27, 1953–Feb. 10, 2020).

Word has come that Lyle Mays – an extraordinary pianist, composer, bandleader, and a longtime member of the Pat Metheny Group – has died after a recurring illness. Nate Chinen, in an obituary written for WBGO, gets to the heart of Mays's creative persona:

Mays was a musician of clear, analytical temperament, but within the dimensions of his style — a personal amalgam of post-bop pianism, classical impressionism, Brazilian music, electronic music, rock ‘n’ roll and much else besides — there was always a core of emotional expression. The radiant, affirmative character of The Pat Metheny Group can only be understood as a byproduct of Mays’ distinctive chemistry with Metheny, his fellow Midwesterner, musical omnivore and tireless technophile.

Metheny, too, had words to share:

R.I.P. Lyle Mays (1953-2020)
It is with great sadness that we have to report the passing of our friend and brother, Lyle Mays (1953-2020). He passed today in Los Angeles after a long battle with a recurring illness, surrounded by loved ones.https://t.co/goeTusSnpC pic.twitter.com/2SOYIXUw84

— Pat Metheny (@PatMetheny) February 11, 2020

I consider myself fortunate to have seen Mays play a few times with Metheny: both in a "classic" PMG lineup with Steve Rodby, Paul Wertico, Pedro Aznar, and Armando Marcal, and later in the context of the large ensemble that toured Metheny's Secret Story album. By some strange fluke, I sat in the front row at both of those concerts, a proximity that offered unusual insight into the intensity, sympathy, and joy that went into these performances, and the deep, deep connection Metheny and Mays shared.

I've thought about Mays many times over the years, as Metheny has carried on with a wide variety of projects without Mays since their final collaboration in 2005. I hadn't heard about his illness, but am glad to hear that his suffering has ended. His music, without question, will live on.

RIP Leandro "Gato" Barbieri (Nov. 28, 1932-April 2, 2016)

Stories proliferate when a figure of some stature passes, but I hope you won't mind if I share a tale I've never told before. What follows is not an obituary by any stretch; for that you'll want to read the very fine Associated Press obit. This is nothing more than a personal memory I hadn't recalled in many years, until tonight.

Sometime between 1997 and 1999, when I was working for Third Floor Media on behalf of Branford Marsalis's Columbia Jazz stable, I was tasked with escorting Gato Barbieri, his band, and a small crew from New York City to Washington, D.C., for a BET on Jazz taping to herald his latest release, Qué Pasa.

Almost from the start, things were rough. The weather turned miserable, resulting in our flight from La Guardia being canceled. I managed to get everyone back to Manhattan and we caught a train to D.C. Barbieri kept his distance, but seemed concerned about something. Eventually, someone whispered to me that he'd accidentally forgotten a prescription medication, and it was shaking his confidence. My stress level went off the chart then and there, and I redoubled my efforts to make the quiet, aloof star comfortable.

We got through the taping - the players were all pros, no concern there, and once Barbieri stood up at the microphone, he was fabulous. The music was his latter-day idiom, all smooth cruising and low heat, but it was really moving that day.

Here, as always, he had That Gorgeous Sound.

Aside from an initial greeting, I never exchanged any words with Barbieri. But after we all got back to New York and the band disappeared into the night, his handler (a manager? an agent? I can't recall) took me aside and said that Gato had been very pleased with how I'd handled everything - and had authorized him to invite me to become his tour manager.

Even in declining, I tried to express how truly honored I felt. For a while I even wondered what it might have been like.

So tonight, on hearing of his passing, I salute Leandro Barbieri, the Argentine Cat in the Hat, by sharing my one true story - and by listening to what's still my favorite of his albums: The Third World, his 1970 Flying Dutchman debut, recorded with Roswell Rudd, Lonnie Liston Smith, Charlie Haden, Beaver Harris, and Richard Landrum. Listening to this - and to the early Jazz Composer's Orchestra stuff and Escalator Over the Hill and Don Cherry's Complete Communion - I hear the passionate young firebrand I'd read about in Chasin' the Trane, the early Coltrane biography that had such a huge influence on me, years ago.

Vaya con Dios, Mr. Barbieri.

RIP Chris Squire (4 March 1948 – 28 June 2015)

Chris Squire, by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images

 

Utterly devastated beyond words to have to report the sad news of the passing of my dear friend, bandmate and inspiration Chris Squire. #yes

— Geoffrey Downes (@asiageoff) June 28, 2015

Farewell, Chris Squire. I came to Yes late, but made up for lost time, and I wished fervently for your recovery. I'll be spinning "Würm" and "The Fish" in your honor later today, no question.

 

RIP Steve Backer, June 3, 1937 - April 10, 2014

As America takes stock of itself in this complex time-cycle, it is important to understand that one person can still make a difference. That not everyone has to follow the tried-and-true traditional path—to get tried-and-true traditional results. Steve Backer opened a door for a generation of creative artists to connect to the greater culture (and planet). He is as much of an American pioneer as the creative artists he has championed. As for the idea of one person being able to change another person’s life, I can say this: Steve Backer’s decision to work with me would change my life on every level, and there are no words to properly thank him for that decision—except thank you sir.—Anthony Braxton

Among the many privileges involved with my brief but heady tenure in the jazz and world music division of BMG Classics—together with working alongside David Neidhart, Josh Sherman and the late, great Steven Gates—was the chance to get to know Steve Backer, one of a handful of record producers and industry executives I wouldn't hesitate to call visionary. The first time I spent any real quality time talking to Steve, I told him with breathless zeal that his name was surely on more albums in my personal collection than any other, artists included.

Countless significant albums exist now because of Steve's work, from Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington collections to classic LPs by Cecil Taylor, the Brecker Brothers and Roy Hargrove. More than anything, though, music lovers owe Steve a debt of bottomless gratitude for championing Anthony Braxton, whose work he documented most notably with a string of classic sets on the Arista label.

It seems fitting, then, that as Steve was taken from this world on April 10 after a brief fight with double pneumonia, just as Braxton's new Tri-Centric Festival was getting underway at Roulette in Brooklyn, the first word on the subject belongs to that masterly beneficiary of Steve's concerted efforts. I know that a part of me will always regret having been too busy to collaborate with Steve on an official memoir, a project we discussed in passing several times up until a few years ago, when we both realized we were just too contrarily busy to make it happen.

Thankfully, another writer, David Sokol, has been working on that very welcome project, and he is quoted at length in a press release circulated this morning by industry expert Kim Smith. The complete text follows the jump, if you'd like to know more about an unsung American master.

Kenny Kirkland's Unanswered Promise.

Kenny Kirkland

 

Jazziz
February 1999

Word leaked over the Internet before any official sources were heard. But in the end, the stories were the same: Pianist Kenny Kirkland was found dead in his Queens home on Friday, November 13. He was 43. At press time, no apparent cause of death was revealed.*

Kirkland came of age in the 1980s in Wynton Marsalis' band. He played on Marsalis's first four albums, up through the electrifying Black Codes from the Underground, an album that powerfully evokes the storm with which Marsalis and his bandmates took the jazz world. Black Codes set the popular standard for mainstream jazz in the mid-’80s, and Kirkland's contributions as pianist and composer were sizable and eloquent.

"When I first got to Juilliard," Marsalis remembers, "vibraphonist Mark Sherman played these really difficult chords for me, these complex bi-tonal chords. I was about 17 at the time. He said, 'You dig these chords? These are Kirkland's chords. You've got to hear Kirkland.' So when I met Kenny later, I already knew I wanted to play with him. We would rehearse at his house. He had great ears, he could really hear. And he had a truly deep grasp of theoretical knowledge, a great sense of harmony, a sophisticated sense of rhythm. You only had to play something for him one time and he got it right away. And he was the best soloist in the band; each note had a vector, its own direction, all leading somewhere, and everything swinging. We learned a lot from him, my brother and I."

Kirkland recorded and toured with Branford Marsalis throughout the ’80s. When the saxophonist joined Sting for his Dream of the Blue Turtles album in 1985, Kirkland accompanied him and went on to continue working with Sting for some eight years and four further albums.

Kirkland made only one album as a leader, an eponymously titled release for GRP in 1991. It was as a versatile and dependable sideman that he left his mark on music. When Branford became musical director of the Tonight Show in 1992, Kirkland joined the band. In 1997, he returned to Branford's quartet (with drummer Jeff Watts and bassist Eric Revis) for well-received live performances and for the recording of Branford's next album, due for release in March.**

Tonight Show bandmate and current musical director Kevin Eubanks summed up the esteem in which Kirkland was held by his peers: "In my heart, I've always felt that Kenny Kirkland really embodied the essence of a generation of musicians, bridging the past and the future while taking no bows. He always left us wanting more."

=====

My first article for Jazziz, from 1999. Not the most pleasant subject with which to start a new career path, but a serious assignment – and the only time to date that I've interviewed Wynton Marsalis. The official cause of Kenny Kirkland's death was congestive heart failure, though some obituaries reported that drug paraphernalia was found when his body was discovered. Requiem, the final Branford Marsalis album to feature Kirkland, came out in March 1999.