EyeShotJazz | Jazz Photography

At the Kirkland Performance Center, one of America’s greatest living composers, trailblazer Philip Glass performed last night, with African kora virtuoso Foday Musa Suso, and percussionist Adam Rudolph in an evening

of  wonderful and masterful music.

The 2012 Earshot Jazz festival continues. Click on the schedule here 2012 Earshot Jazz Festival 

Born in 1937, raised in Baltimore, Glass went on to study at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed for modern music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (who also taught Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones) and worked closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar.

He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble – seven musicians playing keyboards and a variety of woodwinds, amplified and fed through a mixer. Glass’ new music, eventually dubbed minimalism, worked with extended reiterations of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry.

n the last 25 years, through his operas, his symphonies, his compositions for his own ensemble and his collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen to David Bowie, Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times.

The 2012 Earshot Jazz festival continues. Click on the schedule here 2012 Earshot Jazz Festival 

So after a break at ILLSLEY BALL NORDSTROM RECITAL HALL AT BENAROYA HALL, Vijay Iyer came on with his trio and i was transported away on a journey I know not where but it was another Earshot Jazz monent.

Earshot Jazz Festival continues and tonight completes the first week. It goes on until Nov 4th.
Grammy-nominated composer-pianist Vijay Iyer’s recent accolades include the Jazz Journalists Association 2012 Pianist of the Year award and a sweep of the DownBeat International Critics Poll – Jazz Artist of the Year, Pianist of the Year, Jazz Album of the Year (Accelerando), Jazz Group of the Year (Vijay Iyer Trio) and Rising Star (Composer categories). No other artist in the sixty-year history of DownBeat’s poll has ever taken five titles simultaneously. Earlier in 2012, Iyer also received a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and the Greenfield Prize. The year has been remarkable for Iyer.

2012 Earshot Jazz Festival  continues. Click on the schedule.

Jazz Album of the Year Accelerando (ACT, 2012) is an intense, visceral and widely acclaimed follow-up to the multiple award-winning Historicity (ACT, 2009), both featuring Iyer on piano with Marcus Gilmore on drums and Stephan Crump on bass – the group featured in tonight’s performance.

The latest tide of honors is a result of Iyer’s remarkable seventeen-year track record as an artist. His sixteen albums as a leader have covered so much ground, at such a high level of acclaim, that it is easy to forget that they all belong to the same person. His work ranges from well-known collaborations with poet-performer Mike Ladd, innovations of experimental collective Fieldwork and the duo with Rudresh Mahanthappa to original compositions for the American Composers Orchestra, Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, Brentano String Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Brooklyn Rider and International Contemporary Ensemble.

Across this diverse output, Iyer’s artistic vision remains unmistakable. His powerful, cutting-edge music is rhythmically intricate and highly interactive, fluidly improvisational yet uncannily orchestrated. Its many points of reference include jazz piano titans such as Monk, Ellington and Tyner; the classical sonorities of composers such as Reich, Ligeti, Messiaen and Bartok; low-end sonics from hip-hop to electronica; and the vital, hypnotic music of Iyer’s Indian heritage.

DB

2012 Earshot Jazz Festival  continues. Click on the schedule.

Pianist Sunna Gunnlaugs performed with bassist Thorgrimur Jonsson and drummer Scott McLemore at Tula’s last month in an Earshot Jazz presentation that was sublime and delightful.

 Also the trio on Gunnlaugs’ latest release, Long Pair Bond (2011), the patient and measured group works in a sonic space redolent of familiar environments – dynamic and sometime dusky Reykjavik, Iceland, bordered by sea and mountains. On her first trio album since her debut in 1997, a now more mature Gunnlaugs presents this music with a humble awareness and connectedness.

Gunnlaugs writes about her recent experience at performance hall Sendesaal at the jazzahead! conference in Bremen, Germany: “It was humbling to sit down at the Steinway D in this beautiful room and think that this was where Keith Jarrett played his solo concert (the Bremen part at least) and that Thelonious Monk had played there and also Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Jan Garbarek with Bobo Stenson and the list goes on. Holy moley. Humbling? Yes sir! We all just loved the sound in there.”

As a child on the small Seltjarnarnes peninsula not far from Reykjavik, Gunnlaugs began taking lessons on the organ. It was the gift of a Bill Evans trio record, You’re Gonna Hear from Me, that brought her to modern jazz. Not long after, in Brooklyn, fresh from the William Patterson University jazz program in New Jersey, Gunnlaugs featured connections with Tony Malaby, Drew Gress and drummer-cum-husband McLemore on the 1999 recordings Mindful and Songs from Iceland. Mindful was chosen as one of the top ten CDs of the year by the Virginian Pilot; Songs from Iceland, released a decade later, features Gunnlaugs’ special relationship with the material – five Icelandic folk songs that Gunnlaugs grew up with. “These were tunes that we were playing on concerts … it seemed important to document,” she says.

Gunnlaugs enjoys touring and has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. Seven releases as a leader have consistently met critical praise. Now living in Iceland, she frequently performs with her Iceland trio featuring bassist Jonsson and drummer McLemore. More about Sunna Gunnlaugs at sunnagunnlaugs.com and sunnagunnlaugs.bandcamp.com.

Performing at Tula’s tonight as the 2011 Earshot Jazz Festival continues in its first weekend was Emi Meyer and her Japan Trio. I was taken aback with how wonderful she played and sang. The Kyoto-born, Seattle-raised pianist and vocalist, who won the Seattle-Kobe Jazz Vocalist Competition in 2007 and has topped Japanese jazz charts, appeared with Motoki Yamaguchi (drums) and Masanori Hattori (bass). In addition she had local guitarist MILO PETERSEN sit in and join them. Emi and Milo met last spring at a benefit performance raising funds for Japanese victims of the earthquake and hit it off. I wish I could have stayed for the entire set but I had to cover Eric Vloeimans’ Gatecrash at SAM. See the rest of the Earshot Jazz Festival Schedule

Born in Kyoto, Japan, and raised in Seattle, Emi Meyer’s culturally rich heritage has shaped the unique jazz-inspired pop sound heard on her three albums to date, including one recorded entirely in Japanese. Meyer began her musical career early in life, starting with classical piano at the age of 6 and eventually expanding to jazz “for the spontaneity it offered.”

It was her jazz background that paved the way for her win at the 2007 Seattle-Kobe Jazz Vocalist Competition – a contest between residents of Seattle and its sister city of Kobe, Japan. Following her win, Meyer had the first of many performances in Japan, where she has subsequently enjoyed a great deal of success, and she credits the competition with giving her the courage to ultimately pursue her musical ambitions. With the release of her first album, Curious Creature, Emi was invited to perform at the legendary Sundance Film Festival and shot to the very top of the Japanese jazz charts after her single “Room Blue” was chosen Single of the Week on iTunes.

She continues to evolve as an artist, and her latest work, Suitcase of Stones, is a refreshingly unique blend of jazz, pop and soul, using powerful lyrics carried effortlessly along by her signature melodies. The record was mixed and mastered by Husky Huskolds, who has worked with the likes of Norah Jones and Yael Naim. Japan Times praised Meyer’s performance on Suitcase of Stones, citing Meyer’s “gift for belting out warm, wistful songs with a hint of nostalgia.”

Fresh from a string of charity concerts to support the country that has given her so much, Meyer is joined for this Earshot Jazz Festival performance by Motoki Yamaguchi (drums) and Masanori Hattori (bass).It was her jazz background that paved the way for her win at the 2007 Seattle-Kobe Jazz Vocalist Competition – a contest between residents of Seattle and its sister city of Kobe, Japan. Following her win, Meyer had the first of many performances in Japan, where she has subsequently enjoyed a great deal of success, and she credits the competition with giving her the courage to ultimately pursue her musical ambitions. With the release of her first album, Curious Creature, Emi was invited to perform at the legendary Sundance Film Festival and shot to the very top of the Japanese jazz charts after her single “Room Blue” was chosen Single of the Week on iTunes.

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