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Jazz Listings from the New York Times

Steven Bernstein live at Saalfelden 2009
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From NYTimes.com:

STEVEN BERNSTEIN’S MILLENNIAL TERRITORY ORCHESTRA (Thursday) This brashly exuberant little big band, led by the slide trumpeter and arranger Steven Bernstein, dusts off assorted vintages, with an emphasis on dirty swing. The band’s ranks include serious improvisers, including the clarinetist Doug Wieselman, the saxophonist Peter Apfelbaum, the trombonist Clark Gayton and the drummer Ben Perowsky. At 10 p.m., 55 Bar, 55 Christopher Street, West Village , (212) 929-9883, 55bar.com; cover, $10. (Chinen)20100128

ELEVATION (Friday) This reflective ensemble, conceived by the pianist Lucian Ban and organized around the playing of the tenor saxophonist Abraham Burton, further includes an adaptable rhythm section, with John Hébert on bass and Eric McPherson on drums. At 9 and 10:30 p.m., Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, West Village , (212) 989-9319, corneliastreetcafe.com; cover, $12, with a $6 minimum. (Chinen)20100128

CHAD TAYLOR AND CIRCLE DOWN (Friday) Mr. Taylor, a versatile and texture-aware drummer, functions as the first of equals in this exploratory trio, which also features the lyrical pianist Angelica Sanchez and the responsive bassist Chris Lightcap. At 8 p.m., the Stone, Avenue C and Second Street, East Village , thestonenyc.com; $10. (Chinen)

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Ingrid Laubrock – Saxophone Is Her Only Constant

From NYTimes.com:

For the last several years Ms. Laubrock has been visiting the United States now and then to study and perform, and on Wednesday night at the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village she led a New York-based quartet — Mary Halvorson on guitar, John Hébert on bass, Tom Rainey on drums — with Kris Davis on piano occasionally as a fifth member. It was her own composed music, but sometimes as free as it could get within parameters.

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Where Pat Metheny and Nachtmystium Overlap

Tomas Haake warming up before a Meshuggah gig ...
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From NYTimes.com, a comparison of the similarities of jazz and metal.

Jazz stages and metal stages are places where a certain kind of experimentation happens: brainy and cabalistic, with a hint of a smile. Both increasingly depend on educated virtuosos. In both genres you can develop curious harmonic worlds, warp the tempos, brush against folkloric or conservatory music, play many notes very speedily and engage sturdy American grooves or a more studied system of fitting odd-number beats into even-number meters. Pat Metheny, jazz guitarist, meet Paul Masvidal of Cynic; Jeff (Tain) Watts, jazz drummer, meet Tomas Haake of Meshuggah. Both forms seem to have a neatly divided audience: maybe two-thirds respectfully fixated on the music’s past, one-third concerned about building paradigms for the future.

Both have become increasingly local and international at the same time; they depend on the scenes of certain communities — whether Brooklyn; Chicago; or Savannah, Ga. — but their audiences are everywhere. As of the late ’00s both have been the subject of serious academic conferences. And aside from a few tanklike, old-favorite examples — Metallica and Keith Jarrett, say — if you want to keep up with either, you have to listen to cuts on MySpace pages and go to gigs.

Jazz and metal are both diversifying at a fantastic rate, feeding on their old modes and languages, combining them and breaking them down. (In both, the fans have become more suspicious of genre heresy than the musicians.) An album by a typically ambitious ’00s metal group — like Baroness, Isis, Krallice or Nachtmystium — might put a dozen kinds of metal in a supercollider, as well as kinds that lie outside the genre, spewing them all out in complicated, episodic song structures. So too with some of the better current jazz groups, including Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Marcus Strickland’s Twi-Life, Stefon Harris’s Blackout, Mostly Other People Do the Killing and the similarly named groups Bad Touch and the Bad Plus.

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Jazz Listings From the New York Times

John Zorn (cropped version)
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From NYTimes.com:

THE BAD PLUS (Tuesday through Thursday) The pianist Ethan Iverson, the bassist Reid Anderson and the drummer David King constitute the Bad Plus, a delivery system for smartly sweeping original songs, as well as wryly affectionate renditions of pop tunes. (Through Jan. 3.) At 9 and 11 p.m., Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village , (212) 255-4037, villagevanguard.com; cover, $25, with a $10 minimum. Special New Year’s Eve packages on Thursday. (Chinen)

ERI YAMAMOTO TRIO (Sunday) On a good portion of her new album, “In Each Day, Something Good” (AUM Fidelity), the pianist Eri Yamamoto presents music inspired by the cinematic wizardry of Yasujiro Ozu. She revisits some of that evocative terrain here, with regular partners: David Ambrosio on bass and Ikuo Takeuchi on drums. At 8:30 p.m., Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, West Village , (212) 989-9319, corneliastreetcafe.com; cover, $10, with a one-drink minimum. (Chinen)

? JOHN ZORN’S ANNUAL END OF THE YEAR IMPROV (Wednesday) Noise is the currency at a John Zorn improv party, which can feature any number of audacious and open-minded musicians. This jampacked edition — a benefit for Mr. Zorn’s nonprofit performance space, the Stone — will include the trombonists Jim Staley and Sam Kulik, the violinist Mark Feldman, the pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and the multireedist Ned Rothenberg. Arrive early, and be prepared to wait in the cold. At 8 and 10 p.m., the Stone, Avenue C and Second Street, East Village , thestonenyc.com; cover, $25. (Chinen)

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Performances Reviews

American Contemporary Music Ensemble – Kindred Spirits in John Cage and Phil Kline, at Tank

From NYTimes.com:

Finding connections between John Cage and Phil Kline, experimental composers from different generations and backgrounds, is not very hard. Cage, the Zen master whose chance operations loosened the strictures of contemporary music, surely provided an early model for the random serendipities of Mr. Kline’s subsequent boombox compositions like “Unsilent Night,” a seasonal processional that wound through Greenwich Village streets just over a week ago.

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In Brooklyn, Yesterday’s Avant-Garde as Today’s Durable Works

From NYTimes.com, a review of recent Darmstadt shows.

Precious little linked most of the composers who participated in New Music, New York, a nine-evening concert series presented by the Kitchen in June 1979. Then located in SoHo, the Kitchen was a home for a wide range of musical doings: Fluxus happenings, the nascent Minimalism of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, experiments by rock refugees like Robert Fripp and performance artists in the process of defining themselves.

What New Music, New York provided for its disparate participants was a sense of unity and purpose, a rallying cry that proposed that the creative urges expressed at the Kitchen were worthy of the attention paid to “uptown” composers — modernists like Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt — and worthy of critical evaluation and financial patronage too.

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John Hollenbeck – At Le Poisson Rouge, a Big Band Reaches for Bold Sounds

From NYTimes.com:

People forget that big bands have been places of real aesthetic boldness. Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Bill Finegan, Bill Russo, Gil Evans, Bob Brookmeyer, Gerald Wilson, Muhal Richard Abrams, Maria Schneider: these were and are no slouches, and there are clear signs that a few younger composer-arrangers will join that list. Let’s start with John Hollenbeck, whose 20-piece Large Ensemble played a superior show at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village Monday night. His music was playful, profound, attentive to the soloists’ strengths and pretty much continuously imaginative — even though the band hadn’t had a gig since March.

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Cornelius Dufallo Sings the Fiddle Electric at the Stone

From NYTimes.com:

As a member of the enterprising new-music ensembles Ne(x)tworks and Ethel, the violinist Cornelius Dufallo runs into plenty of composers. He has coaxed new solo works from some and taken up older scores by others. He is also a composer himself: “Dream Streets,” his new CD (for Innova), is devoted to his own imaginative works for violin and electronics.

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Jazz Listings from the New York Times

In the NYTimes.com:

VIJAY IYER TRIO (Friday through Sunday) “Historicity” (ACT), likely to rank among this year’s most inventively purposeful jazz releases, finds the pianist and composer Vijay Iyer investigating the very premise of a repertory album, with restive versions of songs by (among others) M.I.A. and Andrew Hill. He celebrates the album’s release here, with the same bassist, Stephan Crump, and a worthy substitute drummer, Justin Brown. At 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., with an 11:30 set on Friday and Saturday, Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan , (212) 576-2232, jazzstandard.net; $30; $25 on Sunday. (Chinen)20091105

NUBLU JAZZ FESTIVAL (Friday through Thursday) For the last seven years the East Village club Nublu has promulgated a downtown mix of jazz, club music and international groove. For much of this month a similar sound prevails at its first annual jazz festival, with artists like the Inbetweens, led by the bassist Noah Jarrett (Saturday); the Seamus Blake Trio, led by its namesake saxophonist (Sunday); the drummer Ben Perowsky and his Moodswing Orchestra (Monday); and the trumpeters Eddie Henderson and Kirk Knuffke (both Thursday). At 9 and 10:30 p.m. and midnight, Nublu, 62 Avenue C, between Fourth and Fifth Streets, East Village , nublu.net; cover, $10. (Chinen)20091105

JESSICA PAVONE/CURHA-CHESTRA/SCOPA TRIO (Thursday) Ms. Pavone, playing violin as well as viola, presents “wordless songs inspired by life’s cast of characters,” a project with the guitarist Brandon Seabrook, the bassist Jonti Siman and the drummer Harris Eisenstadt. Also on the bill are the Curha-chestra, a boisterous ensemble led by the trombonist Curtis Hasselbring; and Scopa Trio, an improvising group led by the trombonist Brian Drye. At 8:30 p.m., Zebulon, 258 Wythe Avenue, near Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn , (718) 218-6934, myspace.com/zebuloncafeconcert; free. (Chinen)

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New Haven Improvisers Collective Harks Back to ’70s Avant-Garde

From NYTimes.com:

The workshop focused on melodic fragments, metric patterns and the like as the basis for group improvisations that, to the casual listener, might have seemed subversive. But the collective, which welcomed 14 comers on this late-September night, was operating well within a tradition of free improvisation and open access that has a storied history in New Haven, and may have a future as well.

“It’s a very local expression of a certain type of jazz that I have a fondness for, and is in some ways underrepresented in the jazz mainstream,” said Nick Lloyd, a leading impresario in New Haven and the owner of Firehouse 12, a multiuse space where the collective will be appearing on Nov. 7.

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