I always feel a lit­tle sad when I walk past the cor­ner of 4th and Broad­way in Man­hat­tan, the for­mer loca­tion of the late, lamented (by some, pre­sum­ably includ­ing Matthew Shipp, who I’m pretty sure lived there in the 1990s) Tower Records – a musi­cal hub in the Vil­lage from well-before I started fre­quent­ing its aisles in 1986, until the chain went under a cou­ple of years ago. It’s a bit ironic to have walked past the old Tower yes­ter­day on my way to catch a sub­way to the coun­try – specif­i­cally, the L and G trains tak­ing me to 990 Bed­ford Avenue in Brook­lyn, where the leg­endary record label ESP-Disk’ was cel­e­brat­ing the open­ing of its in-house record store.

The sym­bol­ism is inescapable, if you’re the symbol-seeking type. The still-empty shell of the for­mer Tower store is evi­dence of a retail behe­moth brought low by epochal changes in the music biz. Mean­while, a bor­ough over, a plucky indie with a long his­tory of oper­at­ing on the mar­gins keeps on keepin’ on.

Of course, the for­mer Bed-Stuy laun­dro­mat that’s the ESP-Disk’ store, and the prime Green­wich Vil­lage real estate that once housed Tower, are worlds – not just bor­oughs – apart. Still, it says some­thing that the entity built largely on a pil­lar of ide­al­ism is today open­ing its first brick-and-mortar store, while the one that put mas­sive growth ahead of all else exists only on the inter­net, a shadow of its for­mer self.

ESP Gen­eral Man­ager Tom Abbs held an open house on Sun­day.  Artists, fans, and any­one else inter­ested in the past, present, and future of the ven­er­a­ble imprint could drop in for  a soda and chat with the ESP-Disk’ staff. The label’s offices have long been located at 990 Bed­ford Avenue, but the lit­tle bou­tique sell­ing CDs and LPs is brand new.

Talk­ing to Tom amidst the mild hub­bub of the sur­round­ings, it was easy to feel guard­edly opti­mistic about the label’s future. He seems to have a grasp of what’s pos­si­ble and what’s unre­al­is­tic, as well as a jazz musician’s cre­ative and eth­i­cal sense (Tom’s not just a record label guy, he’s also an accom­plished jazz bassist/tubaist).

Tom stressed that a cru­cial aspect of ESP’s mis­sion is to bring new artists to the fore. They’re doing so to  per­haps a greater extent than they have since the label’s 1960s hey­day. In addi­tion to re-releasing albums from its back cat­a­log (0f which about 50 or so are cur­rently avail­able, Tom says), ESP intends to release six to eight new albums a year. Recent issues include Gigan­tomachia by the Port­land, Ore­gon exper­i­men­tal­ists, Naked Future, and Col­or­field, a trio date led by gui­tarist Joe Morris.

ESP is also pur­su­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions with other like-minded  indie labels. One – Engine Stu­dios – recently teamed with ESP to release albums by sax­o­phon­ist Fred Ander­son, per­cus­sion­ist War­ren Smith’s Com­posers Work­shop Ensem­ble, and Tom’s own Fre­quency Response.

The label (e.g. Tom) also runs two per­for­mance series: one on the third Tues­day of every month at the Bow­ery Poetry Club on The Bow­ery between Hous­ton and Bleecker in Man­hat­tan; the other on the first Tues­day of every month at The Jazz Lounge, on DeKalb Avenue and Bed­ford Avenue, just around the cor­ner from the ESP-Disk’ offices. Both series fea­ture out-musicians, many though not all of whom are asso­ci­ated with the label (indeed, I arranged a ten­ta­tive book­ing for my band for after the first of the year). The Jazz Lounge series begins tomor­row night with sets by Eli Kes­zler and Ash­ley Paul at 8 pm, and Endan­gered Gui­tarist Hans Tam­men with per­cus­sion­ist Satoshi Takeishi at 9.

In addi­tion, on Novem­ber 8th comes 45 Years of ESP, “a Cel­e­bra­tion of the artists & music of ESP-Disk’,” a marathon con­cert from 2 to 9:30 at The Bow­ery Poetry Club that will fea­ture many of the label’s artists, includ­ing Guiseppi Logan, Sonny Sim­mons, Alan Sond­heim, Paul Thorn­ton of the Godz, Randy Burns, Kali Fasteau, War­ren Smith and Joe Mor­ris. All pro­ceeds from the event will be donated to The Jazz Foun­da­tion, a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion that helps elder jazz and blues musi­cians in cri­sis, and which has aided many ESP-Disk’ artists over the years.

After leav­ing the ESP store, I thought about how that twinge of regret I feel upon pass­ing the ghost of Tower is based on nos­tal­gia, not a true sense of loss. After all, great music is eas­ier to access than ever. More and more it seems pos­si­ble for the good guys to come out on top. Wouldn’t it be cool to see com­pa­nies like ESP-Disk’, whose pri­mary cap­i­tal resides in the realm of the spir­i­tual rather than the mate­r­ial, suc­ceed where the all Tow­ers and Sam Goodys and HMVs and Vir­gin Mega­s­tores  failed? Keep Man­hat­tan, just give me that  Bedford-Stuy. Duh-duht-da-duht-duht … DUHT DUHT!

With min­i­mal prompt­ing, any work­ing musi­cian will gladly recite a per­sonal litany of bad gigs. Until or unless you get so big that you don’t have to worry about play­ing hell holes (or get so dis­gusted with the musician’s lot that you give up music for your “dream” job – sell­ing GPS sys­tems at Radio Shack … which I did once,  for one soul-sapping month), the list never stops grow­ing. While it’s true that good can be found in almost any sit­u­a­tion — that no gig is a bad gig as long as you’re doing what you love — the con­verse is also true: there’s no gig so good that some­thing can’t go ter­ri­bly wrong.

I’ve played too many gigs in venues where the pre­dom­i­nant aroma was of industrial-strength bath­room dis­in­fec­tant in mor­tal com­bat with stale urine. I’m not sure I’d know the ideal gig if it grabbed me by the ‘nads. But I’ve got no com­plaints. I pre­fer my dives hon­est, not tarted-up. Fancy doesn’t equal good, not by a long shot. I found that out early.

My own worst gig was my first as a leader. It was also one I was hap­pi­est to get, in a nice (or what passes for nice in jazz cir­cles), respectable (or what passes for respectable in jazz cir­cles), non-disinfectant-smelling night club.

I can even remem­ber the date: Feb­ru­ary 14, 1985.

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The joint was called Bianca’s. It was sup­pos­edly Okla­homa City’s only jazz club. (In ret­ro­spect, I doubt the verac­ity of that claim. There were prob­a­bly jazz bars in the city’s black neigh­bor­hoods, although they remained unknown to the likes of post-collegiate, lily-white me. But I digress …) When it first opened, Bianca’s was run by the brother of a local jazz pianist, so it was at least some­what accom­mo­dat­ing to musi­cians. The jazz biz being what it is, how­ever, it soon passed into the hands of a man­age­ment that was markedly less talent-friendly.

That management’s face was a guy named Larry. Larry’s per­sona was that of a cowboy/gangster, an unholy mix­ture of Lee Van Cleef and Edward G. Robin­son. Rumors of unsa­vory busi­ness deal­ings buzzed around him like flies in Beaver at cow-chip-throwin’ time (Google that, you non-Okies out there). Larry’s income was reput­edly aug­mented by cer­tain extrale­gal activ­i­ties, although that could’ve been idle talk by jazz musi­cians, a noto­ri­ously conspiracy-minded ilk. In any case, he was a creepy guy, best avoided.

I worked at Bianca’s as a side­man dur­ing the pro-musician admin­is­tra­tion — indeed, my first real gig was with the club’s res­i­dent big band. After Larry’s ascen­sion, I played there on week­ends in a group led by a gui­tarist. One night after we’d fin­ished, Larry approached me. He needed some­one to play Thurs­day nights. I checked my busy cal­en­dar and informed him of my avail­abil­ity. He assented.

The pay would be neg­li­gi­ble. Thurs­day was one of the least-busy nights and there­fore one where the club would pro­vide min­i­mum rec­om­pense. Still, Bianca’s was seen as a pres­ti­gious gig by OKC’s minor­ity of local young white jazz geeks. I was frankly thrilled at the oppor­tu­nity. Larry offered half the money from the liquor sales, which I took gladly.

I have almost no mem­ory of how the evening went, musi­cally. I had put together a quar­tet for the occa­sion. Our reper­toire came from the Real Book. In addi­tion to alto, my usual horn, I remem­ber I played a bit of soprano – a fact that would be burnt into my con­scious­ness at evening’s end.

Ordi­nar­ily, the place would’ve been a tomb on a Thurs­day night. Bianca’s was located on the upper level of a second-rate shop­ping mall. It didn’t get much walk-in traf­fic, and any­way, Thurs­day was the calm before the week­end storm.

This wasn’t an ordi­nary Thurs­day, how­ever. It was Valentine’s Day.

It doesn’t mat­ter what day of the week Valentine’s Day falls on. Cou­ples go out – often to night clubs – and cel­e­brate. On this night, many cou­ples went to Bianca’s.

My good friend Larry obvi­ously hadn’t counted on a packed house when he promised me half of the liquor sales. Indeed, I sus­pect he (being a car­toon­ish exploiter of musi­cians) secretly cher­ished the thought of the bands in his employ mak­ing chump change.

But this night Larry had messed up. He had for­got­ten about the hol­i­day. The unex­pected non-stop flow of cus­tomers had his inter­nal cash reg­is­ter work­ing over­time. Also run­ning over­time was his twisted lit­tle club-manager’s mind.

How, he won­dered, am I going to get out of pay­ing these guys?

I remem­ber watch­ing out of the cor­ner of my eye as the crowd grew ever-larger, and think­ing that this was my lucky night. Bianca’s was a good-sized joint. There were prob­a­bly 200 peo­ple there, maybe more, and they were dig­ging the music. Fig­ure two drinks per sat­is­fied cus­tomer, at three bucks a pop (est. 1985 prices), and you’re talk­ing at least $1200 in booze sales. A con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate of the band’s take would’ve amounted to $150 bucks apiece – not a king’s ran­som, but a decent haul for a night’s work in those days. By the end of the last set, I was already plan­ning how I was going to spend my jazz-gotten gains.

Not so fast there, Kimo Sabe.  Lit­tle Cae­sar Larry was in the house.

The last set ends, we pack up our instru­ments. Next item on the agenda: get­ting paid. Talk­ing to strangers has never been a strength of mine, and Larry was plenty strange. Plus, there was money involved. Fuhgetaboutit. I started feel­ing like there was a tiny lit­tle con­struc­tion worker build­ing a Wal Mart in my colon. Such is the life of a band­leader and this was my first stab at it. I ven­tured to the back of the club and knocked on the door to Larry’s office.

“Come in,” says Larry.

“So, pretty good turnout tonight, huh?” I say.

“God­damit, what the fuck were you doin’ up there tonight?” Larry snarls.

“Wha’ … what d’ ya mean?” I stam­mer, shocked at his hos­tile tone.

“I mean, god­dammit, that you sounded like shit up there tonight. That was the worst god­dam thing I ever heard in my life. It was ok when you played the sax­o­phone, but when you picked up that lit­tle gold clar­inet, it was fuckin’ awful.” Larry was refer­ring to my soprano. Larry ran a jazz club, yet God help him, he couldn’t ID a freakin’ soprano sax.

“Here’s your god­dam money. You’re lucky I’m pay­ing you a god­dam thing.” He stuck a damp wad of crum­pled bills in my hand.  “Now get the fuck outta here before I throw you out.”

I stum­bled out of the office almost in tears. I wan­dered back to the band­stand, where my guys were wait­ing for their bread. In a daze, I counted the money. It came out to $120. Not $120 per man. $120 total. I remem­ber think­ing how that was odd, con­sid­er­ing all the peo­ple who came into the club. But my senses had been dulled by Larry’s hos­til­ity. My mind was on his attack, not on the pal­try sum I’d been handed. Which was, of course, as Larry intended.

Later, I real­ized what had hap­pened. I’d been ripped-off.  A vet­eran musi­cian would’ve got­ten it imme­di­ately and fought for what was right­fully his, but I was a cal­low youth, inex­pe­ri­enced in the hard ways of the world. Larry knew that. He pulled the ol’ mis­di­rec­tion play – berat­ing me so I’d either not notice or not care that he was steal­ing from me – and I fell for it, big time. Did I feel stu­pid? Oh yeah, I felt stu­pid. Angry? Homi­ci­dal, in fact. Did I do any­thing about it? Well, kinda.

Hard as it is to believe, we were sched­uled to play again the next Thurs­day. Screw that, I thought. I told the guys to keep it under their hat, not to tell any­one, but when next Thurs­day came around, Bianca’s was gonna be one jazz-less jazz club. We wouldn’t show up. That’d show that hillbilly-mobster piece of shit.

The next Thurs­day after­noon, I get a call. “Chris, this is Larry,” the voice said. “I heard from [he named a musi­cian acquain­tance of mine] that you’re not show­ing up to play tonight. Is that true?” Undone, I could only man­age a fee­ble “Yes.” “Awright, that’s all I wanted to know. See ya.” Click.

It seems that word of my plan had leaked to Musi­cian Acquain­tance, who – jazz gigs being scarce – saw it as a chance to play. Evi­dently, he called the club, told Larry of my scheme, and offered his ser­vices. Larry assented.

To be fair to Musi­cian Acquain­tance, I should point out that he was – like me – prob­a­bly imma­ture, eager to play, and not ter­ri­bly hip to the real­i­ties of the jazz biz. Add the fact that I had once wronged him in an affair of the heart (replaced him as the object of a young lady’s affec­tions), and I must admit, he didn’t owe me a dang thing. Indeed, from that per­spec­tive, it’s easy to see the entire episode as a kind of karmic payback.

The real vil­lain is Larry Van-Cleef-and-Arpels … but I might as well let him off the hook, too. Hell,  he was old even then. He’s prob­a­bly dead by now, either of gen­eral decrepi­tude, or whacked by some mem­ber of the Clam­pett crime fam­ily, pissed-off  ‘cuz Larry wouldn’t serve Granny’s “Ten­nesee Tran­quil­izer.” I’m sure his rea­sons for cheat­ing me were far from altru­is­tic, but hey, I learned a lesson.

And he gave me at least one life­long chuckle. These many years later, there are still times when I look at my soprano sit­ting on its stand and think of it as “that lit­tle gold clarinet.”

My nom­i­nee for the most annoy­ing type of human is the per­son who thinks you’re so stu­pid you’ll fall for any­thing. Case in point: Don­ald Trump.

Today I got an invi­ta­tion from a Face­book “friend” (in quotes because 95% of my Face­book friends are not my actual friends) to join “The Trump Net­work Group.” Accord­ing to the per­son who sent me the info (who also hap­pens to be the only “friend” of “The Trump Net­work Group”):

The Trump Net­work launches on Nov. 14th in Miami. Mr. Trump will announce the BIGGEST NETWORK MARKKEITNG [sic] COMPANY in his­tory. Our Goal [sic] is to aid the HEALTH of all Amer­i­cans. By join­ing this group — mem­bers help other mem­bers FIND MARKETING SOLUTIONS to build YOUR down­line [sic].

That’s just sick.

Ok, so now Don­ald Trump is gonna fix this sticky health care mess we’re in. Never mind the fact that there are more gram­mat­i­cal mis­takes in that para­graph than there are per­verts at a Jonas Broth­ers con­cert. Appar­ently, Mr. Trump’s plan is some pyra­mid scheme wherein I buy a bunch of crazy crap no one cares about and try to sell it to other suck­ers, who are pre­sum­ably at least slightly stu­pider than me. Or con­vince them to buy the same crazy crap “whole­sale” and sell it to weirdos fur­ther down the evo­lu­tion­ary lad­der. Or something.

To quote that that great human­i­tar­ian, Don King: Only in Amer­ica! (I actu­ally saw Don King out­side Rock­e­feller Cen­ter about 20 years ago. Some guy yelled at him “Only in Amer­ica!,” where­upon Don yelled “Only in Amer­ica!” right back. True story. To quote yet another hack enter­tainer, the immor­tal Yakov Smirnov: “What a country!”)

What was once a bless­ing is now a curse.

I’m refer­ring to the immi­nently obso­lete (and not a moment too soon) com­pact audio disc. Once an object of great import in my life, it is now sim­ply a nuisance.

I got my first CD the day I got my first CD player. Of course, the lat­ter was essen­tial if the for­mer was to be of any use. My future wife gifted me with both on Christ­mas of ’89. The CD was Sonny Rollins’ Way Out West (a favorite in any for­mat, be it LP, eight-track, reel-to-reel, cas­sette, or wax cylin­der) and the player was a Sharp, one of the first to sink in price below $100.

Since then, in my capac­ity as a critic, I’ve accu­mu­lated hun­dreds, maybe thou­sands of CDs, most of them free, rel­a­tively few of which I’ve lis­tened to more than a cou­ple of times. Such is the life of a record reviewer: you spin the CD, lis­ten as many times as it takes (usu­ally no more than two or three), write the review, and move on to the next. For every Way Out West that I lis­ten to 100 times, there are a dozen I wish I hadn’t had to lis­ten to even once.

Of course, I have been turned-on to some won­der­ful music that I wouldn’t have heard oth­er­wise. In the long run I do not lament the accu­mu­la­tion of the stacks and stacks of plas­tic plat­ters — many in mis­matched, bro­ken jewel boxes, or lying about as orphans, bereft of cover — that clut­ter my work­space, bed­room, base­ment, and auto­mo­bile. But in this day when I can store hun­dreds of dig­i­tized albums on a sin­gle com­puter — my main 500 GB exter­nal hard drive holds upwards of 700 albums, and that doesn’t count the hun­dreds more stored on var­i­ous other dri­ves — the CD is merely a tem­po­rary con­veyance, a way of trans­port­ing music from its source to my lap­top and even­tu­ally my iPod, after which it’s no more valu­able than the plas­tic from which it’s made. It’s time is nearly over, and the sooner, the better.

I’m still get­ting CDs in the mail, and that’s a good thing, because it means the ter­ror­ists haven’t won … I mean, musi­cians are still mak­ing music — much of a very high qual­ity. Yet with every disc I add to the pile next to my desk, I become more anx­ious for the day when the phys­i­cal object becomes a thing of the past. Not only do they muck-up my office, they help muck-up the planet. There’s enough stuff clog­ging this planet’s arter­ies. If by going the all-digital dis­tri­b­u­tion route, music cuts down on the waste — CDs are, after all, made of plas­tic, and plas­tic is a petro­leum prod­uct — their extinc­tion will be a thing to celebrate.

Now, if some alchemist out there could find a way to turn my CDs into gold, I’d be in great shape.

At a time when hard ques­tions are being asked about its intrin­sic worth, Con­nie Crothers gives jazz edu­ca­tion a good name. She’s been at it as long as I can remem­ber, and prob­a­bly for some time before that. She’s a player who teaches and a teacher who plays, and she does both so man­i­festly well as to make the order of pri­or­ity irrelevant.

Con­nie doesn’t have a sinecure at some uni­ver­sity, but instead teaches out of her Brook­lyn loft. As dis­tinc­tive a pianist as she is, she doesn’t turn out lit­tle car­bon copies of her­self, or a skein of idiomatic-correct rules-followers. Rather, she men­tors gen­uinely cre­ative artists and helps them to best express them­selves in myr­iad ways. Indeed, Connie’s ped­a­gogy doesn’t pro­duce dis­ci­ples so much as peers – and in many cases, cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tors. You’d be hard-pressed to find one of her stu­dents who doesn’t describe her in the most glow­ing terms.

Con­nie was invited to curate The Stone in New York for the sec­ond half of Sep­tem­ber. She used the oppor­tu­nity to show­case not only her own con­sid­er­able artistry, but also that of some of her gifted stu­dents, past and present. They include clar­inetist Bill Payne, with whom Con­nie recently recorded a beau­ti­ful album of free impro­vi­sa­tions; alto sax­o­phon­ist Richard Tab­nik, who’s been ply­ing his idio­syn­cratic lyri­cism around New York for years (to a great deal less acclaim than he deserves); sax­o­phon­ist Nick Lyons, a young impro­vis­ing alto sax­o­phon­ist of great promise; and many more. I can’t make many of the hits, liv­ing as I do a good 60 miles from the near­est sub­way sta­tion. How­ever, I was able to make it into the city this past Sun­day to catch two sets — the first a solo con­cert by pianist Carol Liebowitz, the sec­ond fea­tur­ing Trance­For­ma­tion, a trio com­pris­ing Con­nie on piano, her for­mer stu­dent Andrea Wolper on vocals, and  Ken Fil­iano on bass.

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I didn’t think to ask Carol Liebowitz whether she’s stud­ied with Con­nie, but I assume she has. Liebowitz cer­tainly exhibits the kind of free-thinking indi­vid­u­al­ity Con­nie seems to fos­ter in all her stu­dents – in other words, she doesn’t sound much like any­one but her­self. Her set con­sisted of a dozen-or-so short, freely impro­vised vignettes. She took care to con­trast each move­ment from the one before it, fol­low­ing loud with soft, busy with laconic. She made good use of par­al­lel har­monies; most of her play­ing was chordal, mak­ing her infre­quent use of sin­gle lines all the more strik­ing. Liebowitz’s con­so­nances were touched with dis­so­nance, and her dis­so­nances pos­sessed the clar­ity of a major triad. The indi­vid­ual pieces, as well as the con­cert itself, were mod­els of con­ci­sion. After each, Liebowitz would look up shyly, as if to cue the capac­ity audi­ence that she had fin­ished, though there was sel­dom any doubt, so well-constructed were her improvisations.

Know­ing Ken and Con­nie (and by rep­u­ta­tion, Andrea) as I do, the night’s sec­ond set could have con­sisted of prac­ti­cally any­thing. Although they’re adept at every aspect of jazz per­for­mance – “From Rag­time to No Time” (to quote the title of an album by the late Beaver Harris) – when left to their own devices they tend not to com­part­men­tal­ize, but rather treat jazz as a seam­less con­tin­uum wherein any­thing is pos­si­ble. This night, they dwelt mostly on the outer fringe, a place where con­ven­tion is politely asked to sit down and shut the hell up.

Like Liebowitz before them, the trio impro­vised freely, although they divided their per­for­mance into fewer and longer episodes. The three musi­cians both ful­filled and sub­verted expected roles. Wolper played the melodic lead, but was as often inclined to evanesce, her non-verbal vocals grace­fully merg­ing with the whole, espe­cially Filiano’s bass. Given the human voice’s unlim­ited capac­ity to make strange sounds, the temp­ta­tion exists for a vocal impro­viser to indulge his or her most out­ra­geous urges. I’ve heard some do just that, and it’s sel­dom pretty. Wolper resists the impulse. She incor­po­rates such tech­niques as glos­so­lalia and melisma spar­ingly and effec­tively. She’s not a bit afraid to play it straight and sim­ple. Nei­ther is Fil­iano. Although a pro­foundly intense impro­viser and prodi­giously gifted bassist, he’s in such com­plete con­trol of his resources as to let the music flow nat­u­rally. When it’s time to play the bassist’s cus­tom­ary role, he plays it. When it’s time to take the melodic lead, he takes it. When it’s time to act the per­cus­sion­ist, he acts it. Crothers – a world-class pianist of remark­able skill and imag­i­na­tion and appar­ently lit­tle, if any, ego – is just as sen­si­tive to the music’s needs. Her touch varies from hard as nails to smooth as but­ter. Her energy is as lim­it­less as her imag­i­na­tion, her com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing in the moment com­plete. Com­bined, the trio cre­ated music that veered from lean min­i­mal­ism to extreme max­i­mal­ism, from 20th-century “new music” strate­gies to the unruli­est free jazz. Like all the best impro­vised music, the per­for­mance was end­lessly var­ied and supremely, joy­ously evoca­tive of its sin­gu­lar time and place.

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to hear Con­nie Crothers in a con­text such as this, know­ing that she’s also as fine and as dis­tinc­tive a straight-ahead jazz pianist as you’ll ever find. Her art lit­er­ally knows no bound­aries. That she shares that open­ness so freely with such a wide range of tal­ented stu­dents gives me hope for the future of jazz edu­ca­tion – not in the insti­tu­tional sense, but in the person-to-person, wisdom-handed-down-from-one-generation-to-the-next sense. That’s where the most effec­tive jazz teach­ing has always been done, and, I sus­pect, where it will con­tinue to be done, long after over­priced uni­ver­sity jazz pro­grams run out of teenagers to fleece. On a day when the 2009 MacArthur Grants were announced with­out the inclu­sion of a jazz musi­cian, I’m think­ing, for 2010, the selec­tion of Con­nie Crothers would be a great way for the Foun­da­tion to get back into the groove.

I heard ter­rific sets at The Stone last night by pianist Carol Liebowitz (play­ing solo) and Trance­For­ma­tion, a trio com­pris­ing pianist Con­nie Crothers, vocal­ist Andrea Wolper, and bassist Ken Fil­iano and the music was ter­rific but I had to take the last train outta Grand Cen­tral and it didn’t get me home until 2:00 am and I had to get up at 6:00 to get the kids off to school and they were ter­rific but I was so tired, so very tired. Plus, I thought I had a doctor’s appoint­ment at 8:45 this morn­ing that required me to fast from 8 pm last night (and I last ate two hours before that), so in addi­tion to being a zom­bie, I was a hun­gry zom­bie, only I couldn’t snack on brains. The doctor’s appoint­ment was a mis­take, which was ter­rific, but after eat­ing a break­fast of fat-free potato chips and french onion dip (very Zen), I went back to bed for a few hours, which wasn’t enough to make me feel the slight­est bit bet­ter even though it’s now 1:30 in the after­noon. So no review of  the con­cert today, but I’ll get on it tomor­row morn­ing, hope­fully after restor­ing my life’s equi­lib­rium by sup­ping and sleep­ing and liv­ing and lov­ing and … hey, where’s the remote? … oh great, the dog has it …

Blood­less­ness is the enemy.

Jazz began life as a folk music, and therein lay much of its appeal – an appeal totally absent from most of the jazz pro­duced by today’s lum­ber­ing insti­tu­tions and uni­ver­si­ties. Acad­e­m­iz­ing brings about an alien­ation of the  music’s folk roots, pro­duc­ing a type of jazz that, values-wise, more closely resem­bles Euro­pean clas­si­cal music than the music of Arm­strong, Parker, and Coltrane. That clas­si­cal mind-set pro­duces musi­cians who avoid gut­bucket expres­sion­ism like they would some crazy uncle who lives in the bomb shel­ter he built dur­ing the JFK administration.

A cer­tain con­tem­po­rary sax­o­phon­ist comes to mind. (We’ll call him “Name­less,” since there are count­less oth­ers exactly like him. What’s the point in pick­ing on just one?) I first heard Name­less in the con­text of a well-known big band, where he struck me as a musi­cian of con­sid­er­able tech­ni­cal skill and not much orig­i­nal­ity. He could play in what­ever styl­is­tic bag the arrange­ments required, from early New Orleans to ‘50s hard bop. Every note was authen­tic to the period the music was meant to evoke. As a sax­o­phon­ist myself, I must con­fess that – for a moment – I got caught up in the vir­tu­osic aspect of his work. There will always be a part of me that admires and even thrills to some­one who can play so fast and pre­cise. Indeed, if tech­ni­cal abil­ity is the main cri­te­ria, this cat was one of the “best” sax­o­phon­ists I’d ever heard. So why did his play­ing ulti­mately leave me cold?

Because tech­ni­cal abil­ity is not the main cri­te­ria. Jazz isn’t track & field. Accom­plish­ment can’t be mea­sured empir­i­cally. If it could be, we’d have to rate Name­less as a supe­rior sax­o­phon­ist to say, Dex­ter Gor­don. After all, Name­less can play faster and cleaner than Dex­ter ever did.

Of course, such a notion is pre­pos­ter­ous. Gor­don had some­thing else. It isn’t only that he was a more orig­i­nal player than Name­less, although he surely was. As impor­tant, how­ever, is some­thing less quan­tifi­able – some­thing that can’t be explained by a solo tran­scrip­tion or a the­sis on impro­vi­sa­tional strategies.

It’s called “soul,” a term not much used in jazz crit­i­cism any­more, per­haps because of its sub­jec­tive nature; per­haps because crit­ics (most of whom are white) are squea­mish about pre­sum­ing to apply it (or a lack thereof) to the work of black artists. Soul is a real part of jazz, though. Dex­ter had it; Name­less, not so much.

Name­less is a very fine musi­cian in many respects. His play­ing is smooth, ele­gant, and obvi­ously tech­ni­cally bril­liant. In the end, how­ever, it’s glib. And glib­ness is the antithe­sis of soul.

Soul isn’t about black and white or blues and swing.  It’s some­thing that you might not be able to ade­quately describe, but you know it when you hear it. To ignore or down­play its exis­tence helps us under­stand jazz not a whit.

Soul is what Char­lie Parker was talk­ing about when he said, “If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”

Soul is the rea­son that if offered the choice of a limo and tick­ets to hear Name­less at Carnegie Hall, or a Metro Card and a chance to pay to hear John Zorn at The Stone, I’d take Zorn every time.

Soul is some­thing you can’t learn at Jul­liard or the New School. It’s not about notes and the­o­ries. It’s sure as hell not about rote history.

Soul is liv­ing, lov­ing, and los­ing. It’s life’s tri­umphs and dis­ap­point­ments – the joy, the despair, and every­thing in-between – chan­neled through your music.

It’s the sound of blood pump­ing through your veins.

Peo­ple who dig jazz, good lib­er­als they mostly be (if you’re not, you may want to skip the rest of this arti­cle — you might pre­fer this), usu­ally have the empa­thy thing down.  We empathize with the poor, the polit­i­cally oppressed … the musi­cally oppressed. We adopt shel­ter dogs and stray cats, give money (when we have it) to Feed the Whales and Save Ebbets Field, vote for Obama (again, Wing Nuts can go here), and root for the Mets. We’re empa­thetic by nature, quick to feel the pain of the down­trod­den, eager to spare the feel­ings of the eas­ily offended.

That’s all won­der­ful, really it is. But I can think of one area where our empa­thy comes back and bites us on the ass — when we try to shield the un-hip (let’s reach into jazz’s proto-beatnik past and call them “The Squares”) from the hor­rors of our music.

You know The Squares. They’re the peo­ple you encounter in your non-jazz life – your Barry Manilow-loving aunt, for instance. Your co-workers: the woman at the Help Desk who thinks Char­lie Parker is some fella who parks char­lies (“What is a ‘char­lie,’ any­way?”); the guy in the stock room who, when told that you play jazz gui­tar, says “Oh, you mean like Ste­vie Ray Vaughan?;” the woman in Human Resources who tells you as she hands you your pink slip, “Maybe you can get a job with that Wyn­ton Marsalis. I just loved his iPod com­mer­cial!” We’re talk­ing about mem­bers of Con­gress who decided to replace smooth jazz with Sousa marches for callers on hold, since Boney James is appar­ently too mind-bendingly rad­i­cal for ordi­nary folks peti­tion­ing their gov­ern­ment [“Pres­i­dent Garfield’s Inau­gu­ra­tion March (Opus 131), that’s what the good cit­i­zens want!”].

Now, you might say, “No way, man, I don’t shield any­one, I love jazz and want to share it with every­one,” and maybe you do, but tell me you’ve never felt a twinge of irri­ta­tion when some Square asks you, um … shall we say, an unin­formed ques­tion about jazz, and rather than embar­rass him, you’ve mum­bled a few mealy-mouthed words and tried to change the sub­ject. Espe­cially you Free jazz peo­ple; I know all too well how hard it is to explain the appeal of Ornette Cole­man to some­one who wouldn’t know Don Cherry from Cher­ries Jubilee. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve man­aged to avoid talk­ing about jazz to some­one who knows noth­ing about it but expressed an inter­est–how­ever naive – I could buy a full set of Selmer Mark VI sax­o­phones, soprano to bari, with money left over for a new crack pipe.

Who am I help­ing? Not myself, and cer­tainly not the per­son ask­ing hon­est ques­tions. By stum­bling and stut­ter­ing and equiv­o­cat­ing, I’m not sav­ing them from a hor­ri­ble fate, but rather depriv­ing them of an entirely new and uplift­ing expe­ri­ence. Sure, some of them will think me weird, but who cares? Oth­ers might feel appre­ci­a­tion, or even some­thing more pro­found. Maybe one or two of ‘em will feel the same way I felt the first time I heard Eric Dol­phy (“Hot House” from The Berlin Con­certs on the Inner City label; it blew my mind). In that case I will have given them one of the great­est gifts imaginable.

Empathy’s cool, but not at the cost of your psy­che. As for me, I think it’s been the last refuge of a weeny. I’m gonna try to do better.

One of my favorite Simp­sons moments (there are many) explains Springfield’s cre­ation myth. A vignette in “Lemon of Troy” tells the story of Jebe­diah Spring­field and Shel­byville Man­hat­tan, two 19^th cen­tury pio­neers lead­ing a group of set­tlers Westward-Ho in search of “New Sodom.” Upon reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion, the fol­low­ing exchange …

Jebe­diah Spring­field: “Peo­ple, our search is over! On this site we shall build a new town where we can wor­ship freely, gov­ern justly, and grow vast fields of hemp for mak­ing rope and blan­kets.”
Shel­byville Man­hat­tan: “Yes! And marry our cousins.”
Jebe­diah Spring­field: “I was– wha … what are you talk­ing about, Shel­byville? Why would we want to marry our cousins?”
Shel­byville Man­hat­tan: Because they’re so attrac­tive. I … I thought that was the whole point of this jour­ney. ”
Jebe­diah Spring­field: “Absolutely not!”
Shel­byville Man­hat­tan: “I tell you, I won’t live in a town that robs men of the right to marry their cousins!”

The group thereby splits in two, the pious future weed-smokers found­ing Spring­field, the pious genetic dice-rollers, neigh­bor­ing Shel­byville. Never again shall the twain meet.

Jazz folk are like that.

Since most of the world sees us all as yel­low car­toon freaks any­way,  why should we each have our own town?

John Blum had the mis­for­tune to play music with me. I say that, not because play­ing with me is some­thing to be avoided (actu­ally, maybe it is), but because some­one out there might think that the cheers I’m about to lay on John are prompted by friend­ship. That ain’t so. I like John, but I don’t know him well. We played together a few times, ten-or-so years ago. I thought he was a bril­liant free jazz pianist at the time and still do. Play­ing with him only con­firmed my good judgment.

Of course, if this were a mag­a­zine arti­cle, I’d never have got­ten even this far, dis­claimer or no. But this is a blog, and I just checked with my edi­tor – basi­cally just a head in a box (“S’ awright?” “S’ awright!”) – who says my acquain­tance with John means squat. So praise him I shall. Specif­i­cally, I’ll praise his two recent CD releases: Who begat Eye on the Ger­man Kon­nex label, and in the shade of sun, on Ecsta­tic Peace!.

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Who begat Eye is a col­lec­tion of nine rel­a­tively short solo piano impro­vi­sa­tions that presents a cor­us­cat­ing por­trait of a hella good musi­cian. On dis­play are most of John’s virtues: the quicker-than-Bud-Powell scalar lines, hyper-percussive stride bass, and infi­nitely diverse rhyth­mic inflec­tions and artic­u­la­tions, to name a few.

John comes out of Cecil Tay­lor, no doubt about that, but his play­ing is really a com­pendium of jazz piano refracted through Taylor’s exam­ple. Like Tay­lor, Blum has a demon­i­cally swift tech­nique, and phys­i­cal resources bor­der­ing on the super­hu­man. John leaves it all on the field. This album’s short track lengths don’t do his phys­i­cal and intel­lec­tual sta­mina jus­tice, yet their rel­a­tive brevity seems to enhance the music’s meta­mor­phic qual­i­ties, result­ing in indi­vid­ual pieces as rugged and unique as slabs of finely-grained marble.

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John slows down a bit to begin in the shade of  sun, a trio date fea­tur­ing the leg­endary free jazz drum­mer Sunny Mur­ray and Down­town NYC main­stay, bassist William Parker. The open­ing title track dis­tances itself imme­di­ately from the con­cen­trated activ­ity of the solo album. John begins softly and delib­er­ately, wor­ry­ing over small sequen­tial motives, before even­tu­ally ascend­ing into the sort of tex­tural, high-energy blow­ing at which he excels.

Of course, with a trio like this, the Cecil con­nec­tion is bound to be pro­nounced, not only because of the way John plays, but also the com­pany he keeps. Both Mur­ray and Parker worked with Tay­lor – Mur­ray dur­ing the most paradigm-shifting period of Cecil’s career. Yet there’s no sign of John lift­ing any­thing from Cecil besides Taylor’s gen­eral approach to the piano trio, some­thing untold num­bers of free jazz pianists have done to good ends over the years. John does it bet­ter than most, pos­sess­ing as he does a bot­tom­less well of energy, vivid imag­i­na­tion, and unbe­liev­able chops. He gives him­self more time to stretch than on the solo disc, and it pays nice div­i­dends, reveal­ing a more var­ied land­scape dur­ing the course of any given performance.

Blum’s rhythm sec­tion sup­ports him well. Mur­ray has been doing his thing so long, he some­times gets taken for granted. He vir­tu­ally invented the free-time, col­oris­tic style of jazz drum­ming some 50 years ago, and still does it at a supremely high level. As for Parker, his pur­ported great­ness as a bass player – like Ornette’s Har­molodic the­ory – has never been explained to my sat­is­fac­tion. Nor has it been demon­strated, as far as I’m con­cerned. Still, in a con­text such as this, his out-of-time, between-the-cracks style is per­fectly fine.

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John hasn’t exactly got­ten tons of ink over the years, in part the vic­tim of an incu­ri­ous jazz press. Or maybe they just don’t get him. His music def­i­nitely ain’t easy; it’s dense, dis­so­nant, and infi­nitely com­plex, and the con­cen­trated inten­sity with which he plays is nearly fright­en­ing. But he’s too good a player to ignore – a force of nature, really – and if it takes a sax-player-moonlighting-as-a-critic-sidelining-as-a-blogger-who-played-a-few-informal-sessions-with-him-in-a-haunted-gymnasium-on-the-Lower-East-Side-ten-years-ago to call atten­tion to him, then that’s how we’ll roll.