EyeShotJazz | Jazz Photography

The Earshot Jazz 2013 Spring Series continues and last night presented the Refuge Trio. John Hollenbeck, above, played at the Chapel Performance Space  with Theo Bleckmann on voice and Gary Versace on piano & keyboard in an amazing performance of various originals and covers.

Refuge Trio takes its name from the Joni Mitchell song “Refuge of the Roads”. The collaborative trio was formed to play at the 2002 Wall-to-Wall Joni Mitchell Marathon Concert at Symphony Space in NYC. Since then, they have continued to explore delicate and playful music with mystery and exuberance. Their unique voices also play an essential role in the ensembles of Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, Bob Brookmeyer, John Scofield and Maria Schneider. As the Refuge trio, they fashion a transformative experience for the audience with their music and spirit.

The Earshot Jazz Spring Series brought he ICPO live on Stage at the Seattle Art Museum on April 3rd to an almost full house. One of the most wonderful performances I can remember seeing in a long time. I always really enjoy seeing Han Bennink perform but the whole ensemble this time was memorable.

“Bit-by-bit zany and artistically and technically brilliant, the ICP Orchestra is likely the globe’s most startling and ear-stretching jazz ensembles. This lineup of the world’s greatest collaborative improvisers was minus it’s founding pianist Misha Mengelberg, now in his late seventies.

Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink, along with Willem Breuker, formed the group in Amsterdam in 1967, in the full throes of the free-jazz movement. The ICP Orchestra was then, and remains now, a marvel of instant composition driven by the spontaneity and idiosyncrasy of its members. In that lineup of maverick contributors: trombonist Wolter Wierbos, bassist Ernst Glerum, clarinetist and saxophonist Ab Baars, tenor saxophonist Tobias Delius, multi-reeds hornman Michael Moore, trumpeter Thomas Heberer, violist Mary Oliver, and cellist Tristan Honsinger.” – Peter Monaghan Read more on Earshot Jazz

I really enjoyed hearing the Jason Parker Trio on Wednesday night at Vito’s. He was playing really well and had a bunch of other folks sitting in on various numbers. One of them Sax player Brian Hartman I have know previously only as a photographer and was pleasantly surprised to hear how good he sounded with Jason’s group. Here are a few pictures from the late set. Brian is in the last shot below.

Last night at The Royal Room the Frode Gjerstad Trio put on a blistering set. The Trio features: Frode Gjerstad, Saxaphone, Jon Rune Strøm, Bass and Paal Nilssen-Love – Drums

Sixty-four-year-old alto saxophonist and clarinetist Frode Gjerstadis threw down with long-time collaborator Paal Nilssen-Love and new bass player Jon Rune Strom as Gjerstad’s all-Norwegian trio performed at the Royal Room in an Earshot Jazz presentation. The following commentary is  by Schraepfer Harvey from Earshot Jazz.

Nilssen-Love was 15 when he first started playing with Gjerstad. Since then, the drummer has continuously innovated and grown among a new generation of Norwegian and global improvisers. He’s performed with saxophonists Mats Gustafsson, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark and Peter Brotzmann.

In a blog update about recent duo release Side by Side (CIMP Records), with Nilssen-Love, Gjerstad writes, “Paal is a very natural player who is not dogmatic in any way. He is so much part of the moment and manages to grab it and process it in a very personal way. A great musician!”

The two have a handful of duo recordings, and Nilssen-Love is a central figure in the many other extensions of Gjerstad’s work, including his Circulasione Totale Orchestra, a collective of rotating improvisers first established in 1984.

Each iteration of that group is as distinct as the characters in it, and, like the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, started in mid-sixties London by Gjerstad’s friend, colleague and drummer John Stevens, the CTO is a threshold to the improvising life for many emerging free improvisation artists, as they cycle in with more experienced players. The acoustic-electric CTO that re-emerged in 1998, after a short hiatus, with Borealis (Cadence), is working in peak form for Gjerstad’s near-thirty-year project in scene building for Norway and the world.

The CTO came from Gjerstad’s direct experience performing with drummer Stevens and bassist Johnny Dyani (from Steve Lacy’s mid-sixties quartet including Enrico Rava): “I felt it was important to bring on some of the things I learned from playing with them, to younger musicians,” Gjerstad writes on his website.

Bassist Jon Rune Strøm recently joined Gjerstad’s trio and brings renewed energy for Gjerstad. “I feel very excited playing with Jon Rune, and I think we are moving into something else,” Gjerstad writes.

After two decades of trios with various international musicians, Gjerstad wass here with Paal Nilssen-Love and Jon Rune Strom, propelled by incredible creativity, rhythms and an astounding improvisational endurance and positive spirit. – Schraepfer Harvey

Murl Allen Sanders performed at Tula’s as part of the Earshot Jazz Festival on Saturday November 3rd along with  Seattle bassist Clipper Anderson, Tacoma drummer Mark Ivester and Portland saxophonist Warren Rand. “This is a high-energy ensemble combining modern and traditional aesthetics,” Sanders writes. Murl Allen Sanders describes his music as zyfusico – a fusion of jazz, pop and zydeco. He sings and performs on accordion, piano and harmonica.

 
Sanders’ accordion repertoire stretches across many musical genres – Latin, swing, funk, even orchestral. His Accordion Concerto No. 1 premiered in 2003 at University of Washington’s Meany Hall. A grant from Seattle’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs supported his Accordion Concerto No. 2 that premiered in 2007. The program for this festival performance doesn’t include an orchestra but does include original material, straight-ahead jazz and some blues.

As a student, Sanders played jazz piano at Nathan Hale High School and Seattle Community College. He earned a bachelor of arts in music education at the University of Washington. Now he teaches privately, performs, records movie soundtracks and has won awards for his compositions.

Sanders writes, “If you haven’t heard jazz accordion, come to this show!”

– SG

On the last weekend of the 2012 Earshot Jazz Festival at the  LLSLEY BALL NORDSTROM RECITAL HALL AT BENAROYA NEA Jazz Master and three-Grammy winner Branford Marsalis joined the all-star big band Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra  on a tour of the music of his hometown –New Orleans – from early brass bands to Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and King Oliver to modern interpretations of jazz classics such as “Basin Street Blues” and “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans.”

 
The Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra is co-directed by saxophonist and arranger Michael Brockman, long-time member of the UW School of Music and an authority on the music of Duke Ellington, and drummer Clarence Acox, award-winning conductor of the Garfield High School jazz bands. SRJO includes many of the region’s best-loved jazz soloists and bandleaders.

On Saturday Oct 27th at Town Hall, Earshot Jazz Festival presented a special concert of the group Staff Benda Bilili
Led by vocalist Ricky Likabu, Staff Benda Bilili is a band whose mesmerizing music and extraordinary story have been making an impression worldwide. Four in the group are elderly paraplegics, polio survivors, who play from customized tricycles. This group of street musicians from Kinshasa, DR Congo, is Coco Ngambali, composer, vocals, guitar; Theo Nsituvuidi, vocals, guitar; Djunana Tanga-Suele, vocals; Zadis Mbulu Nzungu, vocals; Kabamba Kabose Kasungo, vocals; Paulin ‘Cavalier’ Kiara-Maigi, bass; Cubain Kabeya, drums, vocals; Randy Buda, percussion; and Roger Landu, vocals and principal soloist, on an electrified satonge, a one-stringed lute he built out of a tin can.

Staff Benda Bilili makes music that mixes the pulse of Congolese rumba with voices that conjure the crooners of Havana, the toasters of Kingston and American bluesmen. This extraordinary band of astonishing power and beauty has been dazzling audiences and media the world over, on record, on stage and on the big screen. – SH

Seattle photographer Michael Craft filled in for me at this concert and I am sorry I could not have been there to hear  and see it. The Festival ended on Nov 4th 2012 Earshot Jazz Festival 

Last night at Town Hall, Earshot Jazz presented the Ballard and Roosevelt High School Jazz Bands as part of the 2012 Earshot Jazz festival. I missed the Ballard Band but made some pictures of the Roosevelt HS Jazz Band. Under Scott Brown, Roosevelt has been a perennial powerhouse at the national Essentially Ellington festival. It shared the stately Town Hall stage with its ever-strengthening Ballard HS counterpart, directed by Michael James.

The 2012 Earshot Jazz Festival continues in it’s  last week ending on Sunday with Robert Glasper. Click on the schedule here 2012 Earshot Jazz Festival 

Roosevelt returned from a two-week summer European festival tour and second place finish at New York’s Ellington contest last May. “With loads of new talent and a strong core of veteran leadership,” Brown writes, “this year’s band is sure to be swinging!”
Brown, a trombonist, loves his job. “As a director, I am blessed to have so many wonderful musicians attending Roosevelt High School. When everyone in the band is ‘on the same page’ musically and spiritually, there is nothing better than to hear them swinging their tails off!”

These band directors draw on the pool of professional freelance regional artists to mentor their students. Brown hired saxophonist Stuart MacDonald as assistant director. MacDonald graduated from Roosevelt in 1991. James enlisted saxophonist Gary Hammon to help develop his band. Hammon emerged from the Seattle funk and free jazz scene, studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, toured with organist Big John Patton, returned to Seattle and recorded Fangs in 2005 with saxophonist Hadley Caliman.

Evan Flory-Barnes led his group Folks a new project with drummer D’vonne Lewis, pianist Darrius Willrich and multi-instrumentalist Bernie Jacobs last night at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center as Earshot Jazz Festival continues.

The 2012 Earshot Jazz Festival continues in it’s  last week ending on Sunday with Robert Glasper. Click on the schedule here 2012 Earshot Jazz Festival 

A Seattle original, the young Lewis is a multi-award winning drummer yet soft spoken about his accomplishments. He has worked steadily since before even graduating high school – with saxophonist Hadley Caliman’s band, for a short time with Willrich and Flory-Barnes; with Joe Doria’s McTuff; with Ethiopian singer Meklit Hadero; in Bandalabra; and in the house band at Teatro Zinzanni.

Pianist Willrich is the co-founder of Critical Sun Recordings, where he’s released urban soul albums Darrius, Love Will Visit and Can’t Get Enough. He’s a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts and is a private piano teacher and at Seattle Central Community College.

n his near-forty-year career, saxophonist, flautist, vocalist Bernie Jacobs is a personality completely at-ease in his craft. He’s worked with drummer Billy Drummond and saxophonists Steve Wilson and Sam Newsome, and the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra. He regularly performs with Andre Thomas’ Quiet Fire and as a guest at the New Orleans Creole Restaurant and in drummer Greg Williamson’s groups.

This amazing band, assembled by festival bassist Flory-Barnes, performs at the freshly retrofit-renovated Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, which celebrates African American performing arts and cultural legacies for all of Seattle. Langston Hughes PAC holds an African American Film Festival each spring and many other events during the year. – SH

Mundell Lowe and Mike Magnelli performing at Tulas as part of the Earshot Jazz Festival on Thursday night.

The 2012 Earshot Jazz Festival continues in it’s  last week ending on Sunday with Robert Glasper. Click on the schedule here 2012 Earshot Jazz Festival 

Mundell Lowe is perhaps one of the most seasoned artists performing at this year’s festival. Born in 1922, Lowe worked as a young musician on Basin Street in New Orleans. Upon moving to New York he performed, recorded and toured with saxophonists Charlie Parker, Lester Young and Ben Webster, singers Billy Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett, pianist Mary Lou Williams and bassist Charles Mingus. He picked up a gig on the Today Show band with bassist George Duvivier and drummer Ed Shaughnessy and worked with pianist Hank Jones in the NBC and CBS orchestras. Eventually he composed for News and Special Events at NBC.

After a move to California in 1965, Lowe wrote music for movies and television. He developed projects with singers Sarah Vaughn and Carmen McRae. Recently he toured with pianist Andre Previn and collaborated with several notable guitarists – Charlie Byrd, Herb Ellis and Tal Farlow. The Monterey Jazz Festival hired him as music director in 1983. Like his first influences – Charlie Christian and Jimmy Raney – his sound blends with the sound of a tenor saxophone.

For the festival, Lowe is joined by Boston guitarist Mike Magnelli – a 1970 graduate of the Boston Conservatory. Magnelli studied with Joe Pass and eventually became his agent and manager. Magnelli also recorded on Burt Bacharach’s “Promises, Promises” and was assistant conductor for the Broadway musical Grease, starring John Travolta.

Accompanying this highly credentialed duo are two accomplished Seattle guitarists: Milo Petersen – guitarist on recordings with drummers Billy Hart, Victor Lewis and Elvin Jones – picks up the sticks for these performances. On drums, Petersen has recorded five CDs and accompanied Eartha Kitt, Mose Allison and traveling Broadway shows at Seattle’s Jazz Alley.

Chuck Kistler began by playing guitar as an avid Frank Zappa disciple and switched to bass in 1998. He’s performed with Kurt Elling, Kevin Mahogany and Peter Bernstein. His strong sense of pitch and facile left hand produce solo lines as light and lithe as a bebop saxophonist.

This combo is sure to produce a guitar feast for every ear.

– SG