#what a gorgeous thoughtful and evocative tribute to a beautiful show

[churrotowns]

It’s a marvelous thing, to actually get to bask in the unfolding of a story like this. It’s queerness, for queers… The show itself actually feels like a queer space: we know we’re safe in it, our desire is safe in it, and all the jokes are for us, not at our expense. When queerness is publicly under threat and the pandemic has taken away so many opportunities for community—this show feels like a gift.

from this gorgeous tribute to our flag means death

[sfjazz]

Joshua Redman Still Dreaming quartet

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/21/joshua-redman-to-play-six-gigs-with-still-dreaming-quartet/

Group pays tribute to Ornette Coleman foursome Old and New Dreams

By ANDREW GILBERT, CORRESPONDENT | Correspondent

PUBLISHED: March 21, 2017 at 10:00 am | UPDATED: March 21, 2017 at 10:12 am

Joshua Redman is hardly the first jazz musician to wrestle with the legacy of an illustrious parent. But the Berkeley saxophone star’s sudden rise to prominence in the early 1990s and the abiding respect for his late father, Dewey Redman, a confederate of Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett, has led many jazz critics to use the elder Redman’s oeuvre as a measuring stick for his son’s.

Understandably, ever since his 1993 national tour with Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden, who made classic recordings with Dewey, Joshua has largely avoided situations directly connected to his father’s music. That’s one reason why his new project, Still Dreaming, comes freighted with such intense expectations.

Redman half-jokes that the all-star collective is “a tribute to a tribute band,” as the quartet expands on the music of Old and New Dreams, a beloved group of Ornette Coleman collaborators that recorded four albums between 1976 and 1987 featuring Dewey, Haden, drummer Eddie Blackwell and trumpeter Don Cherry (sadly all now gone).

Still Dreaming brings together four artists deeply connected to their Old and New instrumental counterparts, with cornetist Ron Miles, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade. The all-star quartet makes its Bay Area debut with a four-night run at the SFJazz Center March 23-26, and plays two shows at Kuumbwa in Santa Cruz March 27.

After so many years of treading carefully around his father’s music “this is a major step, because it’s so explicit,” Redman said during a recent conversation at a West Berkeley cafe. “His influence has always been there. I learned so much listening to him. For so long everybody talked about how different we sounded. That always kind of bothered me.”

Redman isn’t interested in channeling his father’s thick, cutting tenor tone. (Dewey also played a good deal of alto sax and occasional suona, a keening Chinese wooden oboe.) While Still Dreaming’s open-ended forms usher Redman into free-jazz territory long associated with his father, he always has drawn on other, often overlooked facets of Dewey’s music.

“People had a conception of the kind of player he was, and I know that he was bothered by being pigeonholed as the free guy,” Redman said. “He could always play changes and bebop, super soulful and bluesy.”

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The idea for Still Dreaming emerged in the aftermath of the New York City memorial concert for Haden in January 2015, where Colley, a Haden protégé who studied with him at Cal Arts, was the only bassist on a program studded with jazz royalty. As it dawned on Redman that Haden had been the last living member of Old and New Dreams, he thought the time was right to celebrate that music.

“I immediately had a sense of who I’d ask to be in the band, and everyone got back to me that day,” Redman said. “The first time we played, the chemistry really clicked. Of course that had something to do with those guys, just incredible musicians, but it’s also that Old and New Dreams was very important for all of us. Each of us has had some deep sort of connection with it and the corresponding player.”

He had never worked with Ron Miles before, but for Redman, loving Miles’ sound and knowing of his passion for Don Cherry’s music, the cornetist was an obvious choice. Blade spent years on the road with Redman as a member of his quartet and, like Blackwell, grew up in Louisiana. (Blade returns to SFJazz April 27-30 with Wayne Shorter’s pyrotechnic quartet.)

Still Dreaming played one of its first gigs at the Monterey Jazz Festival last summer, and it was a jaw-dropping highlight on a very strong roster. Part of what makes the band so compelling is the rhythmic freedom it embraces in pieces by Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, a freedom that swings on the axis of Blade and Colley.

“We’ve been playing together for 20-some years now,” Colley wrote in an email. “For me, there is a level of love and trust and focus that’s hard to describe. We share a goal to serve the specific moment in music, to make the most powerful statement for the group in whatever material we are exploring. With Brian, no moment is to be taken for granted, and a beautiful surprise is always possible.”

The tunes are relatively simple, with sturdy, evocative melodies. Redman and Miles often provide accompaniment for Blade and Colley, erasing the distinction between frontline horns and supporting rhythm section. Colley provided several gorgeous originals written specifically for the group, and he’s got more on the way. “I just think of the spirit and the lineage,” he wrote. “Then I imagine Josh, Ron and Brian, and the songs just flow out.”

Still Dreaming

When: 7:30 p.m. March 23-25, 7 p.m. March 26

Where: SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin St., San Francisco

Tickets: $35-$75; 866-920-5299, www.sfjazz.org

Also: 7 and 9 p.m. March 27, Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz; $40, $45; 831-427-2227, www.kuumbwajazz.org