theloniousbach

[theloniousbach]

COME BLOW YOUR HORNS!

JEREMY PELT with Champian Fulton and Peter Washington, MEZZROW, 9 AUGUST 2025

ITAMAR BOROCHOV with Edin Ladin, Rick Rosato, and Jay Sawyer, SMALLS JAZZ CLUB, 11 AUGUST 2025

I was due to break out of my heavy piano streak, but that it would be with trumpets is a slight surprise. Still, different as their approaches are, JEREMY PELT’s sophisticated engagement with the standards and ITAMAR BOROCHOV bringing the Middle East into the improvisations equally intrigued me.

JEREMY PELT is in fact a griot, a story teller, a wise elder. He’s not yet 50 but he takes on that kind of responsibility. His now seven volume series of interviews with generations of Black jazz musicians is an invaluable extension of Arthur Taylor’s Notes and Tones. As valuable as AT’s book is in capturing his generation, PELT reaches back and forward with an important agenda—to show the serious craft of this music and making explicit the irreplaceable role of African Americans in forging this high art in the face of their experience. There is a useful edge in the books, but his playing is elegant, driving without a drummer but fitting this revered piano bar. Thad Jones’ A Bitty Ditty opened bright and swinging and, as Pelt reminded us, intricate befitting “the craziest of the Jones brothers.” Frank Foster’s Shiny Stockings evoked the Count Basie Orchestra somehow with Champian Fulton soloing sparingly like Basie and comping, also like Basie come to think of it, to sketch the whole band. It fell to Peter Washington to be Sonny Payne and Freddie Green but that was all in a day’s work for this consummate professional. Our Day Will Come and Let’s Fall In Love were interesting, off the beaten track choices that could have been but weren’t a bit too sweet. Fulton also sang on The Boy Next Door and that doubling was, as Pelt put it, their secret weapon. They closed with an infectious blues.

In contrast, ITAMAR BOROCHOV stretched out four tunes, most strikingly a very Arabic bar, sustaining the rhythm and scale for most but not all of the duration. Edin Ladin though also Israeli was back in post bop ahead of Rick Rosato (thoughtful but not as dominating as he was with Marta Sanchez at the 92nd Y in July—Smalls catch as can sound in the room undoubtedly a huge factor) and especially Jay Sawyer who had a particularly good time on this tune adding layers and layers. Sawyer was strong throughout. The Bar was the most Middle Eastern tune but there was plenty of Moors and Morocco along the way. The tunes were expansive, perhaps too much so, but these were old friends reassembling over this material, material that is not, by nature, succinct. I’ll take the groove and the ambiance of solos tracking these different scales.

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RETIREMENT CHRONICLES 2.4

The premise of this series is that the semester is a good unit for anyone to measure time in. It’s long enough to set achievable goals for and short enough to measure them and adjust. In two weeks, I will have been away from my office job for two years though my retirement has been with an asterisk as I continue to teach and work with a rewarding group of honors students. Away from the office, I know have real Winter (one month) and Summer (three) Breaks where the asterisk recedes.

So, here’s what I did on my Summer Vacation (groan):

FICTION WRITING was the retirement project I preciously took up over the last years in the office even. It’s what I started to do when my last Edgar Anderson paper was published. I am in the third collection of novellas, pastiches of Sherlock Holmes’ world with Charles Darwin’s. Imagining that world is huge fun and I’d rather do that than try to get them published, whatever that means anymore. I think they’re capable enough, as good things I read; if I were a musician at a comparable level, I’d rent some studio time, make a recording, and have, what?, some CDs?, some sound files?, something. The writing, the imagining is fun, so I do it when I have bandwidth. Summers are good for that and I added 13,482 words, about a third again as much for this installment. No more than a like amount will bring it to a close. I am not drawn to mystery plots, so the puzzles I set for myself are ones how to plausibly inject Holmes et al into historical events. It’s fun. Even if I don’t have the patience to turn it into “books,” I do like to be read. If you want to, send me a message. Let’s see if I can make progress during the school year when students have a serious and legitimate claim to my creative bandwidth.

I will keep up FICTION READING, that is mysteries mostly. I have re/read a few PG Wodehouse stories which have their own conventions and are good impetus to write with a nice fizz. I am similarly dipping into Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories and was glad to discover what shouldn’t be a surprise, that they admired one another. But, Wodehouse and Stout are about as classy as I get and that my resolution to read 19th century British—Eliot and Trollope—and French—Zola, Balzac, Stendahl—fiction are solely aspirational. I do like good writing, but not all of my series (two set in Door County, one in Freud’s Vienna, a WW2 English Village version of the Thursday Murder Club) are that polished. I refound Lindsey Davis and her second Roman series where the detective is the daughter in the first series. I read most but not all of the first series, so I’ll get some way into the second one to figure out where I should go to get back into the old one. And, there’s a series where Giordano Bruno of all people is the detective in Elizabethan England.

The MBG’s Ethnobiology Journal Club was on summer hiatus, but I went to the Library often enough during E’s work hours. It’s a pleasant place and the new librarian, as was her predecessor, is an old friend. It’s been fun to see the potential she sees and to offer ways to help. It is far from the things she needs to do first, but I’ve revived an old idea, an anthology of Edgar Anderson’s popular writing. As I teach less, just one course a semester starting next Spring, the Garden may claim more of my time.

MUSIC remains central and I was pretty consistent with simply playing guitar. I have a few flat picked fiddle tunes in steady rotation which gives me a developing fluency with some scales which in turn helps with finger picking embellishments which have been employed on songs, folk and those of my youth, more than blues. On the whole, my repertoire—material and licks—is a little bigger. As for writing, I see that I have seen 70 performances—mostly streams—since school was out and written 45 of my souvenirs. This will only continue as I benefit both from the extended concentration/meditation of seeing the music made and from turning them into writing prompts. I may not write fiction for days on end, but I will inevitably have music to write about.

SELF CARE is equally well-established with going to the gym three times a week a habit, including some of the recovery practices that also have a meditative element. There are fine gyms in Door County, but in Marquette I leaned into yoga and was reminded how useful that is as a habit, a practice.

There’s another side to self care that I found myself developing over this summer, how to independently organize my time. Being Up North four weeks in 2025, not the nearly 11 of 2024 meant that there were things to discover about St Louis and things to prioritize Up North with “only” two weeks in Door and in Marquette for the last time for the foreseeable future. This exercise in homing in on what’s important will pay off as I start acting my age and continue to transition into retirement.

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VINCENT HERRING/ERIC ALEXANDER with Mike Ledonne, John Webber, and Lewis Nash: SPLIT DECISION RELEASE PARTY, SMOKE JAZZ CLUB, 15 AUGUST 2025, 9 pm set

I first saw VINCENT HERRING as part of a Cannonball Adderley tribute jet. He’d brought a bluesy swagger to brother Nat Adderley’s band that worked particularly well with that repertoire. My enthusiasm for his playing fell off some after a couple of other Smoke gigs; he just didn’t have enough oomph as the primary horn. On the other hand, ERIC ALEXANDER has always been good to see on Smalls gigs and part of top notch ensembles here at SMOKE JAZZ CLUB. I have found his dry medium sound increasingly appealing, so I might have bought a stream of a gig of his from SMOKE. But All About Jazz made this set available for free to make it automatic. HERRING has a useful foil in ALEXANDER with this a celebration of their third recording together and more than occasional tours.

Midset they did Nat Adderley’s The Chant which was crisp and driving and showed them, particularly HERRING in his element. The closer was ALEXANDER’s Eddie Harris which was appropriately riffy and drove home both HERRING’s strengths and an important side of ALEXANDER’s. The drummer was Lewis Nash whose brilliance was compelling as always, though not quite as stunning as he was with Terrell Stafford at Jazz St Louis earlier in the summer. Mike Ledonne is sometimes, like HERRING, a bit much, though I’ve seen him often enough to like him a good percentage of the time. He contributed importantly to the soulful swagger of the proceedings.

They opened with McCoy Tyner’s Changes which had the muscularity I expected, but they did ballads/standards too. Both horns were tasty on I’ve Never Been In Love Before and HERRING took all of You Leave Me Breathless with a welcome delicacy.

It was a welcome surprise, but it probably helped that it was free. I might well have talked myself out of it. There are no streams the rest of the weekend but George Cables is tonight’s pianist and Cyrus Chestnut is on Sunday. With either of those, I would have definitely signed up

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THE GRATEFUL DEAD MOVIE: MEET UP AT THE MOVIES, 14 AUGUST 2025

Gawd, everybody was so young in the Grateful Dead universe and no one knew how it would turn out. They made the movie because they were heading into an open-ended hiatus. This could have been it, so, for example, Mickey Hart came back to play the last set just in case.

Obviously, they did get back together. Though, to play “they were never as good after” game, my answer isn’t “when Pigpen/Ron McKernan died” but after this point. Each vintage 1967 through 1974 is distinctive and unique.

But everybody was so young. Jerry Garcia was 32, lean, active, and alert, but would be dead in 21 years. Phil Lesh was 34, bearded and bespectacled; he lived another 50 years, long enough to see son Grahame, now older than he was then, be bearded and bespectacled. Keith Godchaux, not even interviewed as briefly as Billy Kreutzmann, would be dead in five years. Bobby Weir has been bearded and weather beaten now longer than he was the fresh faced, slightly maniacal little brother who morphed into polo shirts and cutoffs.

There’s a scene where a disgruntled fan thinks the moviemaking is an intrusion and the film a rip off, that he should get royalties. He is engaged by a slightly pretentious (or maybe just not nearly as stoned) fellow who says that we’ll all be glad and first in line in the five years or so when the movie comes out.

50 years later, I’m glad this document of (mostly) innocent times exists. The music is great, but it’s about the whole scene.

—the crew—building up and tearing down the Wall of Sound, doing nitrous (in ‘74?) backstage, and being called on stage by Bill Graham;

—the Deadheads—dreamy twirlers and menacing Hell’s Angels, but also folks shooting angles to get in, others lost to varying degrees. I wonder how many in the movie are still around, now gray (or bald), heavier, but, with the more ethereal images, epitomizing the meme that shows us in our glory, saying “your grandparents were cooler than you are.”

—Winterland—huge in legend, but really an ice rink that held just over 5,000 people. Quite intimate, allowing some people to just dance or shoot off smoke or hang out on stage.

When I saw the movie when it came out and later on VHS, I wished it was more of a concert film as jams got cut off. Lots of footage but it really was as much soundtrack to the broader documentary. I still think that and really value the five CD set of the jams from these nights.

But there’s lots of wonderful music. Seeing Garcia not just engaged but really locked in and pushing himself; having the visuals of Godchaux to really hear what the piano was contributing; realizing that Ned Lagin, who’d done some Seastones interludes with Lesh during this run, is sitting in during the Morning Dew. I’m drawn to the jams so Eyes of the World, the outthereness of this particular 1974 Playing in the Band, and the jam that dissolved into the Dew captivated me.

It’s a historical document to the point that there is but one effects pedal on stage, a wah wah for Weir for Sugar Magnolia. It’s rather oddly placed, nowhere near his vocal microphone. Today everyone has multiple pedals right there, but all their magic in 1974 came from hands on instruments through the Wall of Sound.

It was enough.

https://youtu.be/rcJo_q6nBvs?si=YKlv6mKKlF15n7YO

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ON HARRY PARTCH

14+/- me saw this ad in Rolling Stone and said, “Sure, I’ll try that.”

I got my chance shortly thereafter when the Columbia Record Club made that a way to fulfill that month’s obligation.

There were initially hard albums that I stuck with and relatively quickly absorbed into my listening DNA. Anthem of the Sun and Bitches Brew were in that category. Ornette Coleman took more than a decade but I kept puzzling at him to great benefit. Others like Cecil Taylor and even late Coltrane I recognized as important but that didn’t mean I had to listen to them. Sometimes things shifted as with Taj Mahal’s Giant Steps/Old Folks at Home where the solo country blues sides were merely quaint and the real stuff was Giant Steps, when it turned out that Old Folks type material came to be where I lived.

Harry Partch was an experiment, one closer to the Taylor than electric Miles. The actual music—Daphne of the Dunes, Barstow, Castor and Pollux, and a later one, Delusion of the Fury—was weird but not Cecil Taylor in your face. The pictures of his instruments were a better key to figuring out just intonation and his 43 tone scale than his stentorian ramblings about them. In any case, two or three times through those were enough.

Partch was weird but not compelling like Ornette.

For some reason, he bubbled to the surface again from quite deep in my subconscious. With 50 plus more years of listening, including many a Drums/Space from Grateful Dead concerts and an exposure to other musical traditions (Greek/Balkan seem especially relevant here, but I also hear some Chinese) makes it way more interesting.

As I understand it (but hope Bob Chamberlin among others will correct me and offer even more insights), just intonation is what Bach sought to resolve in European music by well tempering his clavier. Greeks and others around the world and especially peasants (including enslaved ones in the US and the Americas) didn’t care. In any case, the microtones aren’t nearly as daunting as they were in 1969.

This is through composed music so it’s not like Drums/Space, in fact there’s a theatrical element and, being a more experienced listener, I can sense the longer sweep of the music. This is also fundamental music—percussive, including with marimbas as key melodic instruments, and rhythmic (not quite the same thing).

Partch was early in my exposure to mad geniuses. So I’m better able to suss that out and recognize the coping mechanisms. But, 56 years later, I can imagine putting some of these compositions in my ears and getting to absorb their textures.

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THE REST OF THE RUN: GEORGE CABLES AT MEZZROW, 20-21 JUNE 2025

With Sean Conly and Jerome Jennings

I saw the 20 June 2025 6 pm set in real time and even then said to myself that I’d get the next three too, but it took this settling in week to indulge what passes for comfort food for my ears. Like the Rosnes/Charlap set before it, here was a favorite player to revel in. GEORGE CABLES is such a wonderful combination of infectious drive (complemented perfectly by Jerome Jennings), catchy melodies, and rich harmonization, all tinged with a wistful vulnerability. He’s tough and has persevered without losing a fundamental sweetness.

To wit,

—he closed both first sets with Arcoris Sandoval’s Journey to Agartha, calling attention to a rising talent. I’ve seen her in both trio and solo settings and will go back on Cables’ endorsement.

—the second set closers were for a reed player in a West Coast Latin band he was in which had a catchy melody to go with his own rhythmic attack and Jennings exploring rims and cymbals.

—he gave bassist Sean Conly breaks in both second sets while he did Round Midnight solo and the Traveling Lady duet with Jennings but then have him a generous showcase for a melodic solo in A Valentine for You, a fitting vehicle for such tenderness.

—both first sets opened with an evocation of the pointedly angry painting by David Alfaro Siqueros at MOMA, Echoes of a Scream, followed by Cedar Walton’s Clockwise which was at once distinctively Walton and more lyrical than he often is. But the opening runs each culminated with the lush, exquisite Helen’s Song.

—the one off standards were I Should Care, You’d Be So Nice To Come Home Too, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and the even more surprising and thankfully unkitschy The Way We Were (a tacit nod to Alan Bergman who died recently?).

—the one off orginals were My Muse, Looking for the Light, and Circle of Love which reflect Cables’ resilient romanticism. He also did his faux Monk pastiche Melodious Funk which, sorry to say, was kitschy.

His music is charming and appealing, good anytime but a nice way now to settle in.

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RENEE ROSNES/BILL CHARLAP, BIRDLAND, 24 JULY 2025, 7 pm set

In his Jazz Wax newsletter, Marc Myers recommend this set and undoubtedly other readers acted on it. These are two of my favorite pianists. BILL CHARLAP has been top tier in my book, first for being the premier practitioner of the Great American Songbook, never ever a cocktail pianist but ostensibly very straightahead. Over the time I’ve been watching him though he’s gotten increasingly, well, weird, wonderfully so, but weird. Stabbing notes, glissandi, abstracted chords. RENEE ROSNES just maybe the source as she has Joe Henderson and JJ Johnson on her resume and mixes it up on the bandstand, including as the leader of the marvelous band Artemis.

Spouses illuminate one another and, in this musical case, it is particularly true. They are seemingly different players—and yet they pull and push one another in interesting directions. Among HIS standards were Rogers and Hart’s With a Song In My Heart and the Legrand/Bergman’s collaboration I Was Born in Love with You plus an Ellington, probably Mood Indigo. But it was, probably at her bidding, a showcase for jazz compositions, things that CHARLAP wouldn’t likely play left to his own devices: Chick Corea’s early Tones for Joan’s Bones? Eronel? She plays Monk, he doesn’t. Benny Golson’s Stablemates? In that spirit, I suspect he asked if they could play Gerry Mulligan’s Little Glory as I learned that he played in Mulligan’s band at one point. Also Dick Hyman’s Baby Boom was likely his suggestion. Bill Evans’ Show Type Tune and ROSNES’ Spellbound, affectionately for her husband who performed magical illusions as a boy prefiguring the musical magic he now practices.

Two pianos can be tricky and can get in each other’s way. They avoided those pitfalls quite well. The lids were removed so they could be in constant eye contact and could cue who was soloing and who wasn’t. But the piano’s richness for accompaniment and solos usually means one is enough. Certainly one piano, in the right hands, can be an entire musical universe. Even when players don’t have this level of intimacy, there is value in hearing the juxtapositions. That was certainly the case with this gig, juxtapositions which in turn broaden my appreciation of each of them. On top of that, the playing was spectacular.

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WORKING TRIOS AT 6 PM

ARI HOENIG with Gadi Lehavi and Ben Tiberio, SMALLS JAZZ CLUB, 4 AUGUST 2025

GLENN ZALESKI with Dave Baron and Adam Arruda, MEZZROW, 5 AUGUST 2025

ARI HOENIG has long been on my list to catch whenever I can. I am at the point where there is much that is familiar in general that I can go hunting for details. GLENN ZALESKI is getting on that list for an appealing Mehldau/Evans approach that finds a way to heat up too. And it’s always good to see the ways this prototypical ensemble can configure itself.

I have gone from shrugging and thinking of his own trio as a mere shadow of Pilc/Moutin/Hoenig to grudging appreciation of Gadi Lehavi’s lyricism to, this time around, finding moments where Lehavi and Ben Tiberio roared right back at their hyperactive leader and put everything up for grabs. At the same time, they are not P/M/H lite and, in fact, HOENIG needs this band as an outlet. P/M/H plays standards whereas HOENIG has some nifty compositions. The Lines of Oppression opener was familar by now and haunting, better that the recorded versions from a guitar/piano/bass/drums quartet and a big band. Lehavi explored around the tune for several minutes before backing into the appealing theme. The other Hoenig compositions were Nominor and For Alana, both daughter related, and Child’s Prey for Billy Childs and Chick Corea. Another fairly regular part of the set was an arrangement of George Shearing’s Conception which Helen Sung also does with John Ellis. Time to check out Shearing.

GLENN ZALESKI cocks his left ear to the piano like Brad Mehldau but does not stick out his right leg. His compositions are nice spare vehicles inviting his right hand to find lines in the upper register. Some unknown algorithm quirk makes his BK Bossa Nova disproportionately popular to the point he doesn’t play it much, but it and the others are quite nice. The covers were Sullivan Fortner’s Ballade which he also did in June and Horace Silver’s Opus Da Funk which proves that he and they can swing hard. Adam Arruda certainly can and he was chock full of wonderful rhythmic embellishments on cymbals, rims, and, yes, drumheads. Zaleski noted the early hour but also his own jet lag. No matter a worthy set and another nudge onto my list.

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A NIGHT—28 JULY 2025–WITH SMALLS LIVE

ALAN BROADBENT with Harvie S and Billy Mintz, MEZZROW, 6 pm set

MIKI YAMANAKA with Desmond White and Jimmy Macbride, SMALLS JAZZ CLUB, 7:30 pm set

EDIN LADIN with John Ellis, Massimo Biolcati, and JK Kim, SMALLS JAZZ CLUB, 9 pm set

Each of these shows appealed to me as I make a point to catch ALAN BROADBENT and MIKI YAMANAKA at every opportunity and I keep my eye out for John Ellis too. But to make a point to see them together to make one of these souvenirs is admittedly a bit contrived. Still, I have no regrets and some insights about set construction out of the surprises.

It was BROADBENT and associates in real time thinking they would be reliable, and they were. There were surprises though, including Broadbent sheepishly saying “that’s jazz” about a “mishap” among the standards. I missed the specifics but it was not their usual set. Starting with Charlie Haden’s Hello My Lovely is part of their book as Broadbent was in Haden’s Quartet West. It took Harvie S’s solo to lean into its bluesy character and he was strong all night, also offering a Latin tinged original No Sadness Today which gave Billy Mintz percussion ideas including playing his solo with his hands. They followed and closed the set with Broadbent’s First Try which was bright and swinging. I don’t think the mishap was during Alone Together, if so they covered it as those standards are their bread and butter. So maybe it was on the more deliberate We’ll Be Together Again. Only five tunes, but a full and somewhat varied set.

MIKI YAMANAKA paired her own compositions with similar works by others. So her Indigo’s intricacies were echoed in Sam Rivers’ Cyclic Episodes where she synced up her left hand with the others before letting loose on her solo. Then she turned reflective and wistful without sacrificing energy and drive for her Leftover Ride and Harish Raghavan’s Anjou. The back end of the set was Body and Soul, Charlie Parker’s Cheryl where the classic line met her fresh parallel lines (like diminished thirds or something). She did a chorus or two of the theme, not rushing into the finale but not making it a full rhythm changes exercise.

I’ve seen EDEN LADIN inconsistently but with pleasure, probably mostly with trios. But here he had John Ellis who, similarly to Steve Wilson, intrigues me with a fluid linear approach. He served Ladin’s compositions, both fixing them in the first chorus and then improvising often after Ladin took the first solo. He opened on soprano for the very new, title subject to change, Intrusive Thoughts which was by turns deliberate and moody. Though more upbeat Grandma still had a wistfulness and, even better, bits of Ladin’s Israeli background though it was Ellis who delivered it. I think the standard came from Gordon Jenkins and it too was pensive. Ellis opened in a lower register than his usual but he remained spare. Bobby Hutcherson’s Head Start shook things up as a Blue Note romp. Ladin’s closer pulled back just a little from that energy but was a fitting closer.

A younger version of me, more resourced than I was at the requisite age, might have made an evening of it and bounced from gig to gig and had a blast. Current me is glad to be able to spread it out. But I can write about it as if I was there straight through.

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JAZZ IN JULY: MARTA SANCHEZ with Greg Ward, Jeremy Viner, Rick Rosato, and Savannah Harris with guests Emma Frank, Adam O’Farrill, and Vuyo Sotashe, 92nd STREET Y, 23 JULY 2025

For this JAZZ IN JULY show, Artistic Director Aaron Diehl (AD AD?) booked MARTA SANCHEZ’s working band. So, unlike the tenor saxophone showcase Saturday or Tuesday’s tribute, here was a show devoted to a leader, her vision, and her band. I had seen SÁNCHEZ with a trio at Mezzrow in the past year and found her compositional more than virtuosic, more The Jazz Gallery than a Smalls jam session. Given that side of things, it was good to hear her have horns to expand the palette. She’s also in David Murray’s current band and so a contributor to his wild abandon. It was also good to hear her own, less heated approach.

There was new material in the middle of the set for which the guests, two vocalists and a trumpeter, each added in turn to the sounds she could evoke. But the set opened and closed with selections from her Spanish American Art Museum. But it all cohered around intriguing piano figures solidified by Rick Rosato’s bass (he was the rock and the essential player). The horns played charts and/or improvised in parallel far more than multi-chorus solos. Altoist Greg Ward was more interesting—melodically linear, more striking tone—than Jeremy Viner on tenor. Savannah Harris contributed sympathetically and effectively but wasn’t showcased.

Emma Frank and then Vuyo Sotashe added vocals with lyrics that evoked art songs/post Sondheim Broadway and then joining the horns as, quite literally, another horn. In the middle, Adam O’Farrill added trumpet, including a bit more punch as a soloist.

Obviously, it was SANCHEZ’s gig and she was effective within the her aims as a composer and arranger. The material was evocative and appealing in the moment, spare and breathing. Her piano worked well in the service of the tunes and her solos were as interesting as Ward’s on alto. But, again, it was Rosato who rumbled powerfully, adding essential flavors and shadings to the music with a rich woody tone. It’s a two edged testament that he stood out—positively, the music had such spaces for him but odd that he was the most interesting player. But I hit this conundrum all the time with my preference for virtuosity over arrangement. Keeping my attention on the likes of MARTA SÁNCHEZ from time to time enhances my listening.

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JAZZ IN JULY—TENORS OF OUR TIME: Melissa Aldana, Chris Lewis, Walter Smith III and Lew Tabackin with AARON DIEHL, Yasushi Nakamura, and Kush Abadey, 92ND STREET Y, 19 JULY 2025

I missed AARON DIEHL’s first season as Bill Charlap’s replacement as artistic director of this venerable series, but this is the first of three shows this year that caught my eye. Such curation is a curious business and the shows can look better on paper than they come off. That’s often how Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic efforts often came off; the people you want to hear only play a bit and solos sometimes end just as they are beginning. But, there are serendipitous juxtapositions and surprises.

AARON DIEHL, if not a surprise, was good to get to know better, both through his curation and his flexible, varied support to a range of players. Both jobs require deep knowledge and broad chops. He has ‘em and I’d like to hear him stretch out. Equally, I have so far not taken a significant dive into Walter Smith III’s music, but he’s got a robust straight ahead tone and approach with the right amount of edge. Melissa Aldana is, of course, very familiar, but here she both growled and showed the creative leaps that make her so worthwhile. Chris Lewis is young and already part of Wynton Marsalis’ Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Undoubtedly, he will mature but for now he was the most conventional of the four. The true rebel of the night was 85 year old Lew Tabackin who out Aldana-ed Aldana in terms of growl and sweep.

He also was at the center of the format wherein everyone got a solo tune (he went last with Don Byas’ Gloria) and then there were duets. He played with each of the other three, a bluesy and not THAT out there Turnaround by Ornette Coleman with Smith, My Ideal with Aldana, and a properly big band-ish version of Coleman Hawkin’s Hamid with Lewis. Tabackin and Aldana played the more out there version of the head to the closer Rogers and Hart’s Lover while Smith and Lewis gave the grounded version of the melody. He also took an off mic solo obligato at the end that had to have been off the leash.

Aldana had her own A Story as her solo piece and duetted with Tabackin on the standard and with Smith on his Contra. All those interactions reminded me of her grittier side. Lewis’s showcase was Sonny Rollins’ Kids Know as a duet with drummer Kush Abadey with plenty of Newk in there but lots of promise and he evoked Hawkins with Tabackin. Smith’s showcase was mostly a tasty duet with Yasushi Nakamura on Gigi Gryce’s Social Call before strong interactions with Aldana dancing over his Contra and with the ever present Tabackin for the Ornette tune.

DIEHL was generous in giving solo space to the rest of the strong rhythm section and for being damnably but properly succinct with his own solos. I’m sure the setlist was a collaboration, but he undoubtedly played a big role. Still to open with everyone on Al Cohn’s arrangement Hank Mobley’s Tenor Conclave and then to include bits of Byas, Hawkins, Rollins, and Coleman served to remind us of where these TENORS OF OUR TIME come from.

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JANE MONHEIT with Michael Kanan, Neal Miner, and Joe Strasser, SMOKE JAZZ CLUB, 18 JULY 2025, 9 pm

While I don’t go out of my way to see singers, the presence of new additions to my favorite list, Michael Kanan and Neal Miner, was enough for me to swallow my pride and overcome my prejudice. Their trio with Greg Ruggiero is, despite this past Tuesday night at Mezzrow, mostly plays standards. Kanan certainly is a tasty and elegant player, well suited to the kind of sensitive accompaniment he gave JANE MONHEIT. Miner, who is prominent in the Mezzrow mixes, was oddly quiet in this usually better one, standing out only in solos on Detour Ahead and Twisted. Otherwise, I couldn’t hear him. Joe Strasser’s drums were well suited to these proceedings which means precise but unobtrusive, important flavors on a samba-fied version of My Foolish Heart and the two Jobim tunes.

But it was JANE MONHEIT’s show and she chose to recreate her first album Never Never Land on its 25th anniversary. She was 22, just graduated from the Manhattan School of Music and the jam sessions at Augie’s (the previous name of the club in Smoke’s space), and in the studio with Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, Lewis Nash, Bucky Pizarelli, Hank Crawford, and David Fathead Newman. She was full of stories—of how welcoming they all were, of how they let her sing songs (Nancy Wilson’s Save Your Love For Me in particular) that she really wasn’t ready for, of how Augie’s was her real school, of winning second place in the Thelonious Monk competition. Those stories were as important as the fine performances of a strong set of tunes. She’s got a strong, supple instrument and is ready to improvise. For all the technical proficiency (and that’s the challenge/opportunity of vocalizing), I didn’t fully buy into the musicality. She’s telling stories with and about the songs and she emotes, particularly on Disney/“Broadway” songs (Never Never Land and Never Let Me Go). The stories are winning, though there’s a prickliness in that she knew that some critic didn’t like My Foolish Heart as a samba and that the NYTimes thought she might ruin jazz from around the time of the Monk competition. That diva-ishness goes with the territory, but that’s maybe why it’s a territory I don’t choose to visit very often. She did interesting, but only interesting, things with some great tunes—Detour Ahead, Never Let Me Go, and the only non-Never Never Land tune Jobim’s Waters of March as a closer in particular.

It was smart and at least a little brave to revisit that breakthrough album. She’s been playing with Kanan and Miner for years (the drummer is usually Rick Montalbano to whom she is married). They aren’t Kenny Barron and Ron Carter (who is?), but I like them very very much. Indeed Kanan was the hero of the night—impeccable in touch and taste. He was always inside the songs in a way that I was never sure Monheit was.

[theloniousbach]

MIKE LEDONNE with Steve Davis, John Webber, and Willie Jones III, SMALLS JAZZ CLUB, 14 JULY 2025, 6 pm set

I last saw MIKE LEDONNE with Eric Alexander and now Steve Davis fits with that cohort of swinging jazzers who are probably under 60. Count Joe Farnsworth among them. They have occasional bands in common and gig and record together in various combinations.

As with Alexander last time, LEDONNE had a swinging accompanist, robust enough to stand up to his power and lyrical enough to nudge him in that direction. I tell myself he lays it on too thick, but I’ve been proven wrong now two times in a row. He is a full player, but the best things were quieter. Prelude to a Kiss was the ballad and all leaned into the lushness of the harmonies, especially the leader. He also writes sensitively with his You’ll Never Know What You Mean To Me for his family was quieter at medium tempo. He namechecked well with a contrafact of a Cedar Walton tune and opened typically big with For Mabes (Harold Mabern) which first appeared as a duet with Alexander. Since Steve Davis was on perhaps a last, very informal recording with Mabern and Peter Washington, he had his own tribute to spin.

It’s fun to hear the trombone, particularly as the only horn. Its rich sonorities are well suited to helping a sextet sound qualitatively bigger than a quintet plus I’ve seen Davis in such situations and then see him take his share of the solos. Here it was all on him and of course he acquitted himself well; he and Ledonne would converse, swapping ideas a couple of measures at at time. I wish I knew other trombonists (and that they played more often) not to rank but to have a point of reference. In any case, Davis swings nicely and fits in. He notches up the gigs he’s on.

John Webber is a regular both on the scene and with Ledonne. Like Davis, he’s big enough to not be cowed by his leader but also able to remind him of his lyrical side. Willie Jones III is another regular and did all the right drummer-magician tricks one would want.

This cohort rarely disappoints. I may not see Ledonne everytime, but I will keep an eye out for whom he brings to gigs. And he usually brings good bandmates. So I’ll see him again soon.

[theloniousbach]

RACHEL Z with Steve Wilson, Dann Zinn, Jonathan Toscano, and Alvester Garnett, SMOKE JAZZ CLUB, 11 JULY 2025, 6 pm set

After a day in the car and nothing much better to do before dinner at the hotel, I was encouraged to watch a set I figured I’d keep my eye out for when it showed up in the Archive. But it was rewarding to continue my run of interesting reed players (Marcus/Macdonald, Zenon, and Ellis) with Steve Wilson’s alto. RACHEL Z brought Dann Zinn on tenor from the West Coast for an interesting match up. Zinn has a rougher sound, though Wilson has an edge as part of a broader palette. They served their bandleader’s purpose nicely.

RACHEL Z was a protege of Wayne Shorter, playing keyboards on his 1995 album High Life. I can’t help but hear the maestro in her own compositions and, by extension, to think how much Shorter there is in Wilson’s playing which has always been not quite Parker, not quite Konitz on alto. He does atypically for an altoist double on soprano on which he is still quite linear and not in what a friend calls snake charmer territory. Maybe that’s Shorteresque. Z is glad to tell interesting stories about the tunes but figured the actual Shorter tune needed no introduction. But I’ll be damned if I know which one it was safe that it has to be from the Blue Note years but not any of the huge Speak No Evil compositions. Her tunes have that sweep and richness. I was going to say complexity but my stumbles through the lead sheets on piano continually surprise me how sleek and economically made are so many jazz compositions are. Suffice to say, that the tunes gave everyone more than enough to chew on, the main lines appealing but giving way to complex improvisations.

RACHEL Z’s own solos not surprisingly hewed closer to the compositions and were compositional more than virtuosic—more Andrew Hill than Oscar Peterson. That’s all I mean. The moments where Wilson and Zinn improvised together were very rewarding. Alvester Garnett’s drums were tasty and punchy, well serving the tunes, hardly restrained but nicely modulated.

It was a rewarding show, replenishing after the day on the road.

[theloniousbach]

BRYN ROBERTS with John Ellis and Alexander Claffy, MEZZROW, 10 JULY 2025, 6 pm set

I must have seen BRYN ROBERTS at a previous trio gig with top notch players like David Wong and Joechen Rueckert, probably. Tonight he explained that his tune Amarylis was for his wife who is a plant biologist. That’s a detail I would rerecognize. I then looked him up, as I did last time, and found interesting gigs with singer songwriters like Shawn Colvin and Roseanne Cash. Again, the kind of detail that, while I don’t remember remember and file away, sticks.

In any case, Amarylis, a tune for Portland drummer Ron Steen, New Standards, and an unnamed closer were appealing vehicles, straight ahead, melodic, yet meaty. The standard was Darn That Dream. All were medium tempo, only the closer maybe a tic faster. So ideas could develop in an unrushed way which suited Roberts and John Ellis on tenor.

It was Ellis who caught my eye. He is a clever melodist with a light dry tone in the traditions players like Lester Young and Stan Getz. But, given the relaxed tempos tonight, it was Paul Desmond who I want to listen to and compare. Desmond played alto and Ellis gets to the full range of the bigger horn while keeping the same clarity of tone. It was a nice association. Roberts matched him in approach—and they were his melodies to begin with. His solos developed nicely but the real treat was, absent a drummer, the trades (fours, twos, even ones) were between Roberts and Ellis.

Alexander Claffy had the interesting task of being the timekeeper in this drummerless band. He handled that well while not being fettered in either his supporting lines or his solos and even bowing in the last measures of several tunes.

It was a nicely unusual gig that was quite rewarding. I guess there were a few people in the room, but Roberts remarked on the 6 pm starting time and playing when it’s light out in the summer. He said friend Joechen Rueckert called it the after school set. It’s 5 pm for me, so I watch before dinner. I wondered how it was working out in terms of audience and artists. Here’s just one clue.

[theloniousbach]

EMMET COHEN with MIGUEL ZENON, Matt Penman, and Kyle Poole, LIVE FROM EMMET’S PLACE #93, 6 JUNE 2022

As I scouted the LIVE FROM EMMET’S PLACE archive, MIGUEL ZENON’s set was high on the list. Following on the heels of the Todd Marcus/Virginia Macdonald set earlier week and the chance to see John Ellis too this evening (as I write), I’m on a run of different reed sounds. Bass clarinet/clarinet then this master alto player ahead of a tenor man on the Stan Getz/Lester Young end of the spectrum for that instrument.

But Zenon truly is a master, both just anyway but for the way the rhythms of Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly his native Puerto Rico, are so thoroughly part of his vocabulary. The “just anyway” is problematic, in that I just mean that he holds his own with Cannonball Adderly, Arthur Blythe, Jackie Maclean, and Sonny Stitt if not quite the god/demigod of the horn, Charlie Parker and Lee Konitz. All of them, including Zenon, absorbed and extended the tradition that was handed to them. Zenon is not only Puerto Rican but a real student of the subtle rhythmic forms of the whole region. They are palpably in there without a heavy layer of congas or hand percussion. They are a part of his language naturally.

But they are at least part of everyone’s language from at least Juan Tizol contributing Caravan and Perdido to the Duke Ellington book in 1936 and 1941. And Dizzy Gillespie, though more than Parker’s “worthy constituent,” perhaps made an even bigger contribution than bebop by bringing Chano Pozo into his band and driving through the Afro-Cuban connection. Zenon and Cohen played both Tizol compositions and two Gillespie compositions, Con Alma and Blue’n’Boogie. The other major composer of the night was Zenon whose Oyelo was from a project on Latin American music, perhaps it was the one funded by the MacArthur Foundation, if not the Guggenheim and a very mellow Amor, as well as an arrangement of a favorite tune of his mother’s, Sylvia Rexaca’s Alma Adentro. The Cuban singer Melvis Santa did Que Te Pedi very well, quite jazzy, and yet “straight,” as this started syncopated and sensual in ways that, wonderful as they are, the original versions of the Great American Songbook are not.

EMMET COHEN is such an enthusiastic and generous host. He has so much fun and plays up a storm. Only Anat Cohen has a bigger grin. Here, it was maybe a way to cope with the pressure of sightreading this new and different material. But he more than passed Zenon’s muster and that’s good enough for me. Most tunes had glorious choruses of the two of them in sync/in harmony in step to Zenon’s rhythms

I first saw Matt Penman as part of the SF Jazz Collective that also included Zenon and David Sanchez. He too has these rhythms down and so was naturally robust as he is no matter what band he’s in on the streams. Kyle Poole had fun exploring the layers of rhythm.

I didn’t watch this straight through as it was an hour and three quarters and I am not usually able to devote that chunk of time. (That, I realize, is as big a reason as any that I don’t watch movies). It’s an open house more than a concert, but they play straight through. Still I was able to have the kind of meditative experience all of these streams allow me. Unlike other, later?, Emmet’s Place episodes, this one didn’t have advertisement interruptions and that’s an even bigger distraction. Still there are several more episodes and players to catch up on, that I should have seen in real time in appreciation of Cohen’s keeping performances going in Lockdown and beyond.

[theloniousbach]

TODD MARCUS with VIRGINIA MACDONALD, Silvano Monasterios, Blake Meister, and Eric Kennedy, SMALLS JAZZ CLUB, 8 JULY 2025, 6 pm set

I saw this band (Bruce Barth on piano) last year and was very impressed. Of course, I was smitten with a bass clarinet/clarinet front line taking on adventurous material. There was just a hint, then but not this year, of TODD MARCUS’ Egyptian heritage for which clarinets would serve Moorish/North African/Arabic flavors. Last year had the joy of discovery that made the gig special. This one was simply very good.

I kept going back and forth on whether it was MARCUS or VIRGINIA MACDONALD who was the more outside player. The one cover was My Romance near the end of the set and both gave it respect and fire. The opener was a Macdonald composition and her solo was always around the tricky melody whereas Marcus took it out, albeit it was her puzzle he was offering answers to. Later, on Marcus’ tribute to Yusuf Lateef which explored an interval from an exercise book, she took flight. The ultimate answer is that they are well suited and seem to get together every July for a run of gigs that include Smalls.

Bruce Barth last year was his usual presence, steady and, in this case, avuncular and authoritative. Marcus, Meister, and Kennedy are big fish in the Baltimore jazz scene’s pond. While they could easily hold their own in New York, that jazz thrives in other cities is important. Macdonald is from Toronto and sees herself as always on the road, but clearly this is a valuable and regular collaboration. While I will always gladly see Barth, Silvano Monasterios was equally important this year with thoughtful, grounding solos that swung without forcing anything. I’ve begun to notice him getting gigs and have been curious about his playing.

I want to hear more—of him in the months ahead and MARCUS/MACDONALD when they come back next year.