I’ve been play­ing the sax­o­phone for nigh 38 years (damn, that looks like a big num­ber when I write it down). For about 36 ½ of ‘em I told myself that I was unable to han­dle more than one horn at a time. I started on alto at ten. It was basi­cally my only horn for the next 18 years. In 1989, a serendip­i­tous (although I didn’t rec­og­nize it as such at the time) con­flu­ence of events led to my switch­ing to soprano, which I played  for the next 18-plus.

My rela­tion­ship with each horn was emo­tion­ally exclu­sive, yet I occa­sion­ally flirted with another. I played my first pro­fes­sional gigs on a bor­rowed bari sax. In col­lege I was com­pelled by cir­cum­stance to play bari and tenor (and even some clar­inet and flute). Later, after switch­ing to soprano, I would occa­sion­ally make half-hearted attempts to incor­po­rate alto and tenor. Such spo­radic cou­plings were flings, how­ever. I always remained faith­ful to my main squeeze, what­ever it was at any given time.

About a year ago, I decided that I’d had it with the one-horn-fits-all approach. I had my vin­tage Mar­tin alto rebuilt, and bought a like-new Yamaha tenor on eBay. Both were a lot of fun to prac­tice. The fun dou­bled when I re-discovered my old Mar­tin tenor, which had lan­guished in the base­ment for years. Before long, I was spend­ing more time on alto and tenor than I was soprano.

I’d been a soprano player for a long time, yet I had reached a point where I needed to add some­thing new or I’d go nuts. The rel­a­tively nar­row tonal com­pass of the soprano was start­ing to grate. Phillip John­ston — another soprano spe­cial­ist — once posited to me that the horn is too high-pitched to be abided by any­one for long. Yet I con­tin­ued to play it. I sup­pose it was only a mat­ter of time before I caught up with those who find it annoying.

Why did I stick to one horn all those years – first alto, then soprano? As much as I hate to admit it, I think it was lazi­ness, mainly, com­bined with a huge, unhealthy dose of gen­eral pes­simism. It started when I was asked to play tenor in col­lege. I didn’t like it. It was big­ger than I was used to and I wasn’t com­fort­able with it. Rather than put in the work to become com­fort­able, how­ever, I copped out. I told myself (and any­one who asked) that going back and forth between horns hurt my chops on all of them; I needed to give my undi­vided atten­tion to just one.

In ret­ro­spect, that was  just a line of crap I was sell­ing — mainly to myself — to excuse myself from try­ing to mas­ter them all. The fact is, there was no legit­i­mate rea­son that I couldn’t play as many dif­fer­ent kinds as I wanted. The fin­ger­ings are the same. The basic means of tone pro­duc­tion are the same. It’s not like I was tak­ing tightrope-walking lessons while learn­ing to split the atom. It should have been a rel­a­tively easy thing, but in the begin­ning I was too lazy and neg­a­tive to get it done.

I say in the begin­ning I was lazy, because this horse­shit atti­tude started when I was in col­lege, and God knows I was lazy as hell in col­lege.  Oh, I thought I was hard-working — or at least a part of me did — but truth­fully, I spent way too many hours at the video arcade and pur­su­ing the com­pan­ion­ship of young ladies than I did work­ing on my music. That atti­tude changed after I moved to New York in ’86 … or rather, it changed after I started get­ting seri­ous as a player, which coin­cided with my adop­tion of the soprano as my one and only love. Still, while the lazi­ness dis­ap­peared, a resid­ual effect — the lie I told myself about only being able to play one horn at a time — remained. I had actu­ally come to believe it as an arti­cle of faith.

To be fair to myself, I did fall hard for the soprano. I loved the sound, and the way the horn felt in my hands. It seemed the ideal instru­ment with which to express my every musi­cal thought. And God knows it took per­spi­cac­ity to tame the bas­tard. Today I can’t even lis­ten to my early record­ings on soprano. The shaky into­na­tion, the flimsy reeds I fell in with at one point, the exces­sive artic­u­la­tion which the soprano seemed to demand (lis­ten­ing to Wayne Shorter screwed me up big time; the man has the most var­ied and pre­cise man­ner of artic­u­la­tion, and I uncon­sciously tried to imi­tate it, to unfor­tu­nate ends) — they add up to a learning-curve that I was slow to rec­og­nize as daunt­ingly steep. That said, the horn was my voice for a long time, and I did some nice things with it over the years. It was easy to con­vince myself that I didn’t need another.

But it was a lie – a lie I told myself, that hurt nobody but myself.

How does a per­son believe a lie he tells him­self? You’d think it impos­si­ble, but it’s not. Begin­ning about a year ago, I put the lie to rest by start­ing to play alto and tenor on a reg­u­lar basis. This sum­mer I went into the stu­dio with my quar­tet and recorded Not Cool, my lat­est album (which will be released soon … very soon). For the first time I recorded on alto and tenor, in addi­tion to soprano. And it turned out great. Not only is my play­ing every bit as inter­est­ing on alto and tenor as on soprano, but the dif­fer­ent horns give the music more col­ors and added per­son­al­ity. Musi­cally – not just sax­o­phon­i­cally – it’s the best work I’ve done, and it never would’ve hap­pened had I per­sisted in a self-deception in which I’d wal­lowed for most of my adult life.

I’m an hon­est guy, at least in my deal­ings with other peo­ple. I would never have tried to pull the wool over the eyes of  some­one I cared about. Yet I did it to myself.  It took me awhile – 36 ½ years, to be pre­cise – but I finally dis­cov­ered the error of my ways. Bet­ter late than never, right?

ChrisKelsey.com wel­comes back as guest com­men­ta­tors the res­i­dent jazz crit­ics for the mag­a­zine Lowlifes: The Mag­a­zine for Reg­is­tered Sex Offend­ers–that insu­per­a­ble insur­rec­tion­ist Loony, and his antipode in per­son­al­ity and pref­er­ence, the oblig­ing yes-man Lick­spit­tle. In cel­e­bra­tion of Bud Powell’s recent birth­day, The Dia­met­ric Duo will cri­tique a trio of recent releases by jazz pianists.

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First up is When the Heart Dances, by pianist Lau­rence Hob­good, with bassist Char­lie Haden and vocal­ist Kurt Elling.

Loony: “Hey Lick, if you want to put me to sleep, no need to play this gushy crap. Just give me a bot­tle of NyQuil and a turkey leg. At least I’ll wake up from that.”

Lick­spit­tle: “Oh dear, dear, Loony, surely you jest! It is incon­ceiv­able to me that you would per­ceive the heart­felt romance expressed by Messrs. Hob­good, Haden, and Elling as a nar­cotic to blunt the senses. Rather, it is the stuff of which dreams are made! Mr. Hobgood’s empyrean stylings stir the heart and enno­ble the spirit in the man­ner of the great pianist, the immor­tal William John Evans. In team­ing with his long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Mr. Elling and the supremely expres­sive dou­ble bassist Mr. Haden, Mr. Hob­good has con­vened an ensem­ble of unsur­passed sen­si­tiv­ity and lyri­cal acu­men. Mere kudos will not suf­fice, yet, sadly, they are all I have to offer!”

Next is Since For­ever, by pianist Fred Simon, whose quar­tet includes reedist Paul McCan­d­less, bassist Steve Rodby, and drummer/percussionist Mark Walker.

Loony: “Jesus H. Christ! If you’re try­ing to send me into a dia­betic coma, mis­sion freakin’ accom­plished! This guy Simon bet­ter be ready to get sued for pla­gia­rism, ‘cuz this sicky sweet crap sounds like a car­bon copy of Jarrett’s stuff with Gar­barek. At least Jar­rett even­tu­ally shit-canned the style and grew a pair.”

Lick­spit­tle: “Kind sir, your inabil­ity to appre­ci­ate this music’s ten­der affec­tions truly sad­dens me. For what is life with­out beauty, and what is beauty if not the 12 exquis­ite musi­cal essays con­tained herein? The incor­po­real ele­gance expressed by Mr. Simon – the sub­tle mix­ture of gospel earth­i­ness and pas­toral sub­lim­ity – reflect the soul of a poet. As for any debt he may owe to Mr. Jar­rett, I beg you not to con­fuse inspi­ra­tion with imi­ta­tion! Mr. Simon is a ves­sel for the expres­sion of time­less val­ues and emo­tions, and if his lin­gua franca resem­bles that of Mr. Jarrett’s … well, one could hardly con­ceive of a model more wor­thy of emu­la­tion. May the light that illu­mines Mr. Simon shine upon us all!”

Finally, we have the epony­mously titled Groder & Greene co-led by the trum­peter Brian Groder and pianist Bur­ton Greene, with a quin­tet that also includes alto sax­o­phon­ist Rob Brown, bassist Adam Lane, and drum­mer Ray Sage.

Loony: “Those guys weren’t even in the same room when they recorded this, were they? Each guy recorded his own part in his own bedbug-infested East Vil­lage hovel, and some guy with Pro Tools mashed it all together, right? Please just tell me this is some half-assed exper­i­ment and take it off, ‘cuz I’d rather have a cork shoved up my butt and be force-fed Ex-Lax brown­ies than lis­ten to any more of this.”

Lick­spit­tle: “My aptly-monikered part­ner in pseudo crit­i­cism, the sheer breadth and depth of your igno­rance is truly extra­or­di­nary. Surely you real­ize that when lis­ten­ing to the dis­tin­guished Mr. Bur­ton Greene, you are hear­ing one of the liv­ing leg­ends of extem­po­ra­ne­ously per­formed, jazz-derived free impro­vi­sa­tion, and that Mr. Brown is one of the finest expo­nents of the alto sax­o­phone in said idiom? Uncer­tainty is a guid­ing prin­ci­ple of this music, reflect­ing a phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing entirely in the moment that is expounded by the great East­ern spir­i­tual tra­di­tions. Far from being a fault, it’s the music’s crown­ing virtue! Were but it pos­si­ble for me to reward these con­tem­po­rary sages with mate­r­ial wealth. Alas, my eter­nal grat­i­tude for hav­ing helped me on the path to enlight­en­ment must serve!”

To be continued …

We hope you enjoyed our lat­est edi­tion of Rate the Records With Loony and Lick­spit­tle! Until next time, stay jazzy, World Wide Web!

[Dis­claimer: Loony and Lick­spit­tle are not actual jazz crit­ics, nor do they exist.]

Matt over at Twenty Dol­lars writes a well-reasoned and doc­u­mented piece about how main­stream cul­ture por­trays jazz in a nerdish light. A few of the respon­dents to the piece seemed to want to “Tea­chout” poor Matt (i.e. Kill the Mes­sen­ger), but he makes some good points that hit rather too close to home.

By coin­ci­dence, I came upon this video. Even though it skew­ers smooth jazz, it’s nev­er­the­less another exam­ple of the per­cep­tion that jazz is the province of the less-than-hip. (The video is embed­ded in a Face­book page, so you’ll need FB to view it.)

Wow, what a spec­tac­u­larly gor­geous day it is here in Dutchess County, NY! The trees are just start­ing to turn and the slightly chilly air is trans­formed by the warmth of the sun. The moun­tain behind my house is call­ing … “Chris, climb me! Climb me!” I just might do it.

That’s it. No jazz today, just beauty of another sort.

Enjoy it wher­ever you are!

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.

My first fire­side chat …

Miles in Tokyo is one of my favorite Miles Davis albums, not least because of the pres­ence of the great Sam Rivers.

I’d long been aware that Rivers toured briefly with Miles in 1964 (keep­ing the tenor sax chair warm for Wayne Shorter, who was serv­ing out his time with Art Blakey), yet it was only a few years ago that I first heard Tokyo, the only album doc­u­ment­ing his tenure with the group. I knew and dug Rivers’ music pri­mar­ily from his leftward-leaning clas­sic Blue Note albums, as well as his later work fea­tur­ing younger gen­er­a­tions of cre­ative musi­cians. I also knew of him as the force behind the famed per­for­mance space, Stu­dio RivBea, in the ‘70s, and as the Florida-based free jazz leg­end of the ‘80s and ‘90s who ven­tured north all too sel­dom. Over the years I’d grown to greatly admire his extra­or­di­nary body of work. Still, the Sam Rivers of Con­tours and the Miles Davis of Seven Steps to Heaven seemed to me an unlikely match.

Of course, what seems and what is are often at odds, as Miles in Tokyo demon­strates. Rivers is bril­liant on the album, per­fectly at-home within the group’s loose (and get­ting looser) post-bop con­cept. Rivers gave Miles’ music an edge it hadn’t had since Coltrane left. Rivers treated Miles’ stan­dard reper­toire—If I Were a Bell, My Funny Valen­tine, So What, Walkin’, and All of You—with unusual melodic and rhyth­mic inde­pen­dence while main­tain­ing fealty to both the changes and Williams’ infi­nitely elas­tic groove. He’s not as “free” here as he would be on his own Fuch­sia Swing Song on Blue Note, recorded five months later in Decem­ber of 1964. In fact, he doesn’t play as free as Shorter later would with the Davis group [as Duck Baker reminds me, the tunes Shorter wrote for the band had a lot to do with that]. But Rivers plays with a sear­ing inten­sity equaled but not sur­passed by Coltrane, Shorter, or any other sax­o­phon­ist who played with Miles. Per­haps it’s just as well that Shorter replaced him soon after. Davis never totally divested his music of cool. Rivers oblit­er­ated cool as a mat­ter of course.

Rivers turned 41 in ’64, a fairly advanced age for a jazz musi­cian just gain­ing a large audi­ence. As it turned out, the best was yet to come: his next 40 years saw the Blue Notes, RivBea, ground-breaking ses­sions with Andrew Hill and Larry Young, tenures with inno­va­tors as dis­parate as Cecil Tay­lor, B.B. King, and Dizzy Gille­spie, and two Grammy-nominated big band discs. Lest you think he relo­cated to Florida those many years ago aim­ing to kick back and play golf, think again. He’s remained active musi­cally well past retire­ment age. For evi­dence, go no far­ther than his Web site, which lists recent and upcom­ing gigs in his adopted home­town of Orlando.

Rivers turns 86 on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 25, hav­ing out­lived most of his con­tem­po­raries, includ­ing Coltrane, who was actu­ally three years younger almost to the day. He’s had an extra­or­di­nar­ily long and pro­duc­tive career, yet I’ve never been lucky enough to have heard him play live. My streak’s unlikely to end soon. I doubt I’ll be able to make it down to The Col­lege Park Jazz Fes­ti­val on Octo­ber 10th to catch the free con­cert by his RivBea Orches­tra, but if you hap­pen to be in the neigh­bor­hood that day, you’d be doing your­self a favor by stop­ping by.

For con­nois­seurs of great music, Sep­tem­ber 23rd is a spe­cial date: our Fourth of July, Christ­mas, Thanks­giv­ing, and Arbor Day all rolled into one. It’s the day we cel­e­brate the birth of a man who for­ever changed the way we hear and think about music – a true genius, whose work trans­formed his idiom, and in the process affected our lives in the most pro­found man­ner. On this spe­cial day, as we go about our lives, let us stop and say a silent prayer of thanks for the gift of his music.

Of course, I’m speak­ing of Julio Igle­sias.  Enjoy!   

I under­stand it’s also John Coltrane’s birthday.

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.

The 2009 John D. and Cather­ine T. MacArthur Foun­da­tion announced the 2009 recip­i­ents of their $500,000 “genius” grants today, with nary a jazz or jazz-like musi­cian among them. Let’s hope this isn’t the begin­ning of a trend.

Could it be that Stephen Col­bert has sub­verted the process?