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See the San Diego Record Store That Collapsed From Too Much Vinyl Pictures | Rolling Stone

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http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/see-the-san-diego-store-that-collapsed-from-too-many-records-20150623

** See the San Diego Record Store That Collapsed From Too Much Vinyl
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START (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/see-the-san-diego-store-that-collapsed-from-too-many-records-20150623/macklemores-nightmare-20150623)
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** Thrift Trader’s second floor gave way from being overstuffed with boxes of LPs
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By ROLLING STONE (http://www.rollingstone.com/contributor/rolling-stone) | June 23, 2015

Here’s proof that too many records may not always be a good thing. On Monday morning, the second floor of Thrift Trader, a shop in the Hillcrest suburb of San Diego collapsed under the weight of vinyl records, reported NBC (http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Thrift-Store-Records-Crash-Collapse-Building-Normal-University-309013091.html) . No one was injured and the fire department promptly cordoned off the area. Here’s photos of the aftermath.

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June 23, 2015 / No Comments / More

See the San Diego Record Store That Collapsed From Too Much Vinyl Pictures | Rolling Stone

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http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/see-the-san-diego-store-that-collapsed-from-too-many-records-20150623

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June 23, 2015 / No Comments / More

The Village Vanguard at 80: legendary New York jazz club is still setting the pace | The National

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http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/the-review/the-village-vanguard-at-80-legendary-new-york-jazz-club-is-still-setting-the-pace

By Andy Battaglia

** The Village Vanguard at 80: legendary New York jazz club is still setting the pace
————————————————————

There is no room more synonymous with a musical sound than the Village Vanguard. For many decades crucial to the history of jazz, the small basement hideaway has played home to nearly every major player in the genre, and unlike so much else in New York, it remains a classic — untouched by the forces that turn destinations into tourist traps and sap the character that made them favourites in the first place.

This year the Village Vanguard celebrates its 80th birthday — and it’s all the better for its age.

The club opened in New York’s downtown neighbourhood of Greenwich Village in 1935, originally as a place for poets and artists to convene. “There was always music – there was always jazz – but it was not the main event,” said Deborah Gordon, whose father Max started the Vanguard and ran it until his death in 1989. The balance tilted decidedly jazz-ward by the late 1950s, and the music has called the club home ever since.

There has been a lot of it. In addition to the nightly performance schedule – two sets per night, seven nights a week – the Vanguard has served as the setting for more than 100 live-album recordings, some of them keystone classics in the canon of jazz. Sonny Rollins’s A Night at the Village Vanguard, John Coltrane’s Live! at the Village Vanguard, Bill Evans’s Sunday at the Village Vanguard – the list of seminal recordings is legion and the rite of recording there continues in the present day.

“I call it the Carnegie Hall of jazz because most jazz clubs just don’t have the sound that place has,” pianist Jason Moran once said, echoing the sentiment of many.

Comparisons to Carnegie Hall end there, however. A big part of the Vanguard’s charm is how small it is – and how far removed from the realm of the glamorous and the fancy. After descending a set of stairs from the street level on Seventh Avenue, beneath a neon sign and an iconic red awning (temporarily removed but coming back after nearby construction work is complete), the club-goer takes a seat at one of many tightly packed tables and booths. Capacity is approximately 120, with room on the bandstand for just a few more.

Up there, only slightly raised above the floor with the audience, is heaven for a jazz musician, pianist Bill Charlap said before a show at the Vanguard last week.

“Because of some sort of freak of nature in the shape of the room, we as players hear each other incredibly well,” he explained. “Besides the ghosts and the vibes in the place, that is one of the reasons that performances are at a pinnacle. Jazz is all about reflexes – like boxing.” He was there, in the back corner at the bar, to watch a set by his wife, a fellow pianist named Renee Rosnes. She and her band ripped through a set of originals and old hallmarks like Jitterbug Waltz, a tune composed by Fats Waller in 1942. Little about the setting was different than it would have been decades ago.

Acoustic sounds wandered around the room, warm and full. A red curtain hung still behind the stage. Glasses clinked with ice keeping drinks cold.

The sound was traditional and well within convention but smart and searching too – by no means the kind of overly smooth schmaltz that stands in too often for all of contemporary jazz.
Page 2 of 2

Page 2 of 2

“Our modest vision of ourselves in that equation is that we don’t really dictate it: we just try to keep our ears to the ground, with a bottom line of integrity,” said Jed Eisenman, who books much of the performance schedule at the Vanguard. “The music changes. It’s gone back and forth since the Vanguard has been around. I hope we’re confusing people, in a good way. If you want to look for what is valid and exciting and real in jazz, you can’t just keep hashing out the same stuff.”

There is no way to misconstrue the heritage, though. Photographs on the walls serve as a gallery of the greatest of the form: Thelonious Monk, Pharoah Sanders, Charlie Haden. A poster from the 1970s evangelises for Thad Jones and Mel Lewis in Russian, from a tour of the Soviet Union organised as a matter of cultural diplomacy by the US State Department.

In the office, grimmer mementos hang in the form of newspaper obituaries of recently deceased jazz greats and regulars at the club. Last week, conversation turned to the need to make more space for Ornette Coleman, a jazz master who died at the age of 85.

“I certainly value the history,” said Gordon, who works with her 92-year-old mother Lorraine to keep the Vanguard alive in its ageless state. “Part of what I do is to guard that in a city that changes constantly. But we’re not a museum, and we don’t want to be. It’s a real living place that responds and tries to keep up the name ‘Vanguard’.”

The next night, as the lights went down for the first set by Rosnes and her band, the atmosphere felt transported through time. Spectres of the past were unmistakable — this is a room where Miles Davis hung out! — but appreciation of them could only happen in a present as active and alive as any time ever. Piano keys started tinkling. A bass line lit up. There was a rumble from the drums. It was time for another night of jazz in a venue more important to the form than anywhere else.

Questioned about the potential for changes that could stand to ruin all of that, Gordon was collected and cool. “I’m enjoying myself,” she said. “The Vanguard is thriving. We’re having a good time. We’re thankful that people still like to come here. What more can you ask for?”

Andy Battaglia is a New York-based writer whose work appears in The Wall Street Journal, Frieze, The Paris Review and more.

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June 23, 2015 / No Comments / More

The Village Vanguard at 80: legendary New York jazz club is still setting the pace | The National

http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/the-review/the-village-vanguard-at-80-legendary-new-york-jazz-club-is-still-setting-the-pace

By Andy Battaglia

** The Village Vanguard at 80: legendary New York jazz club is still setting the pace
————————————————————

This year the Village Vanguard celebrates its 80th birthday — and it’s all the better for its age.

“I call it the Carnegie Hall of jazz because most jazz clubs just don’t have the sound that place has,” pianist Jason Moran once said, echoing the sentiment of many.

Up there, only slightly raised above the floor with the audience, is heaven for a jazz musician, pianist Bill Charlap said before a show at the Vanguard last week.

Acoustic sounds wandered around the room, warm and full. A red curtain hung still behind the stage. Glasses clinked with ice keeping drinks cold.

The sound was traditional and well within convention but smart and searching too – by no means the kind of overly smooth schmaltz that stands in too often for all of contemporary jazz.
Page 2 of 2

Page 2 of 2

Andy Battaglia is a New York-based writer whose work appears in The Wall Street Journal, Frieze, The Paris Review and more.

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)

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June 23, 2015 / No Comments / More

The Village Vanguard at 80: legendary New York jazz club is still setting the pace | The National

http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/the-review/the-village-vanguard-at-80-legendary-new-york-jazz-club-is-still-setting-the-pace

By Andy Battaglia

** The Village Vanguard at 80: legendary New York jazz club is still setting the pace
————————————————————

This year the Village Vanguard celebrates its 80th birthday — and it’s all the better for its age.

“I call it the Carnegie Hall of jazz because most jazz clubs just don’t have the sound that place has,” pianist Jason Moran once said, echoing the sentiment of many.

Up there, only slightly raised above the floor with the audience, is heaven for a jazz musician, pianist Bill Charlap said before a show at the Vanguard last week.

Acoustic sounds wandered around the room, warm and full. A red curtain hung still behind the stage. Glasses clinked with ice keeping drinks cold.

The sound was traditional and well within convention but smart and searching too – by no means the kind of overly smooth schmaltz that stands in too often for all of contemporary jazz.
Page 2 of 2

Page 2 of 2

Andy Battaglia is a New York-based writer whose work appears in The Wall Street Journal, Frieze, The Paris Review and more.

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

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June 23, 2015 / No Comments / More

Drummer Shannon Powell’s Brilliance Shines in Louis Armstrong’s Light | Blu Notes | BLOUIN ARTINFO Blogs

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http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/2015/06/drummer-shannon-powells-brilliance-shines-in-louis-armstrongs-light/

** Drummer Shannon Powell’s Brilliance Shines in Louis Armstrong’s Light
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By Larry Blumenfeld
http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/files/2015/06/Shannonband.jpg

Shannon Powell’s Traditional All-Star Band (with trumpeter Leon Brown, clarineist Evan Christopher and bassist Peter Harris) at Corona Park, Queens/photo by April Renae

At any given moment, there are sounds of New Orleans in New York City’s air—lately, a little more than usual.

Last week, pianist Jon Batiste, who will lead the band for Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” come September, had melodica in hand as he led something like a second-line parade out of Union Square Park (see my account and an interview here (https://id.wsj.com/auth/proxy/refresh?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fjon-batiste-bri) .) He’ll hold court during what he calls a “social music residency” at Manhattan’s NoMad Hotel June 23-26.

On Saturday, June 20, the Rebirth Brass Band, who pretty much authored present-day brass-band style, brought their parade-honed sound to the mainstage of a festival called “Louis Armstrong’s Wonderful World” in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Around that same time Saturday, the New Breed Brass Band, full of bright young upstarts, performed on Governor’s Island, within the Nalofunk Crawfish and Music Festival. On Friday, June 26, the Soul Rebels, who’ve slid brass-band tradition comfortably into Afro Latin and hip-hop territory during the past two decades, make their debut at the Blue Note jazz club with a late set featuring rappers Rakim and Slick Rick.

For those who didn’t let Saturday’s persistent spray of light rain dampen their enthusiasm, the “Wonderful World” festival brought Armstrong’s spirit and legacy to life in several ways not far from the legendary trumpeter’s former home, which is now a terrific landmark, the Louis Armstrong House Museum (https://www.louisarmstronghouse.org/) . Ricky Riccardi, that museum’s archivist and the author of an essential book on Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years,” was over at the nearby Queens Museum, sharing insights and pleasures from his research.

The day’s highlight, the essential heartbeat of the event, was a set from drummer Shannon Powell’s Traditional All-Star Jazz Band. Powell, who headlines too infrequently in New York City, is rightly revered in his hometown, where he’s known as “The King of Tremé” for his prominence in a neighborhood that has nurtured traditional jazz culture and which he still calls home. In some ways, Powell’s Saturday set reminded me of those he led at New Orleans now–defunct Donna’s Bar and Grill, in late 2005, when the city was still gripped by the aftermath of the flood that resulted from levee breaks following Hurricane Katrina; these were transformative gigs, in part for the deep beauty and easy camaraderie Powell’s drumming, singing and presence generated despite the surroundings.

Wearing a backward black Kangol hat emblazoned with a fleur-de-lis on Saturday, Powell stood up at his drum kit twice—first to coax some melody from a ride cymbal during a Sidney Bechet tune, “Blues in the Air,” and next to build (and then slyly cross up) a galloping beat on tom-toms for “Skokiaan.” Mostly though, Powell stood out while sitting back, smiling and making the authority, taste and humor with which he deploys New Orleans rhythms, which he learned as a child and has refined over a lifetime, look easy; and by coaxing the best from his sidemen.

On Saturday, these included musicians who don’t need much coaxing; his rhythm section mates, keyboardist Kyle Roussel and bassist Peter Harris, along with clarinetist Evan Christopher and trumpeter Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown. Christopher and Brown in particular are both serious students of and accomplished voices in the tradition Powell upholds. Christopher has mastered not just his difficult instrument but also the complex process of articulating the legacy of early Creole clarinetists such as Sidney Bechet, Omer Simeon, and Barney Bigard without mimicry and in a contemporary vein; on that Bechet tune, he moved smoothly from reverence to innovation.

Brown has the sound and tone of a New Orleans traditionalist, the harmonic savvy of a jazz modernist; his singing style and stage presence display a grasp of Armstrong’s blend of ebullience and humility. In Powell’s band, Brown dropped some bebop riffs into an Armstrong favorite, “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue”; he studied such things in depth while a teenager attending the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA). Yet, on “Sleepytime Down South” and elsewhere, he seemed very much to channel Armstrong’s approach.

No wonder. Hours earlier, he had played that same tune on Armstrong’s horn. He and Christopher had visited the Louis Armstrong Archive at Queens College (http://www.queenslibrary.org/research/special-collections/louis-armstrong) , hosted by Riccardi.
http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/files/2015/06/aprilrenae20150620armstrongfest03.jpg

photo: April Renae

Christopher was taken by just how much writing by Armstrong the archive contained about Armstrong’s days in his native New Orleans—“well beyond what we have in published volumes,” he said. Brown marveled at the meticulousness of Armstrong’s penmanship, even in casual notes. Both appreciated his compendium of dirty jokes.

Brown recalled how, as a young trumpeter, he was first drawn to Dizzy Gillespie’s music. But he’d sometimes cut school while at NOCCA, head for Jackson Square, and sit right next to Anthony “Tuba Fats” Lacen, mentor to many, who’d sing him traditional jazz melodies.

“That’s a different dialect,” Brown said, “and it eventually led me back to Armstrong. When I was 19, I started understanding just how deep Armstrong’s music really was, by transcribing the solos and seeing how complex even the simplest sounding thing was.”

At the Armstrong Archive, Brown was struck by how shallow Amrstrong’s mouthpieces were. He got to try out four different trumpets. He played a few tunes, including “Sleepytime Down South,” and, in duet with Christopher, “West End Blues.”
http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/files/2015/06/mouthpieces-copy.jpg

photo: April Renae

“Each one had a different personality,” Brown said. The one he liked best was, according to Riccardi, a Selmer horn from 1964, and the one that Armstrong brought to New Orleans when he returned in 1965 and ’68. “That one really popped,” said Brown, “it really spoke. For a second or two, I thought I understood a little more about how Armstrong might have felt.”

That’s the beauty of what’s contained in the Queens College archive and at the Louis Armstrong House Museum—embedded in these artifacts are feelings and ideas best experienced firsthand. (Here (http://www.nola.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2009/08/visit_to_louis_armstrongs_home.html) ’s a link to a New Orleans Times-Picayune piece I did after visiting the Armstrong House with trumpeter Kermit Ruffins.)

New Orleans will get a better and lasting taste of all that through “Satchmo: His Life in New Orleans,” an exhibit mounted through a partnership between the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York City and the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans.

The exhibit will open at Old U.S. Mint in New Orleans on July 29 as part of the annual Satchmo Summerfest (http://fqfi.org/satchmo) and will remain on exhibit through January 2017. The exhibit will also coincide with the 100th anniversary of his first professional gig at Henry Ponce’s in New Orleans in 1915.

The following, from the Armstrong House press release about the exhibit:

According to Armstrong’s autobiography, the young cornetist was offered the job by his friend “Cocaine” Buddy Martin, who asked, “You play the cornet don’t you?” Armstrong responded, “Yes, I play the cornet, Buddy. But I don’t know if I am good enough to play in a regular band.” Martin assured him, “All you have to do is put on long pants at night, play the blues for the whores that hustle all night until ‘fo’ day in the morning.” That was good enough for Armstrong, who fronted a trio of cornet, piano and drums and ended up playing the blues nightly for the next six months in 1915 (while hauling loads of coal from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. during the daytime ). Armstrong’s career as a professional musician was underway….

Louis Armstrong led an almost impossible-to-believe life, especially during his younger days. Satchmo: His Life in New Orleans will celebrate all of his early influences, including his mother Mayann, who raised young Armstrong by herself; the Russian-Jewish Karnofsky family, who instilled in Armstrong lessons about “singing from the heart”; his first music instructor at the Colored Waif’s Home, Peter Davis, who made Armstrong the leader of the institution’s brass band after only six months; and cornet legend Joe “King” Oliver, who became Armstrong’s mentor and biggest influence.

From the time he was born in 1901 until the time Armstrong headed to Chicago to join Oliver—and change the world of music forever—in 1922, he never stopped absorbing key lessons about music, food, people, race and work. Although Armstrong traveled the world and eventually made New York City his home, rarely a day went by where he didn’t spend a part of it talking about his hometown. He published an entire autobiography on the subject, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans, wrote letters about it, discussed it in interviews and recorded his thoughts on private reel-to-reel tapes and in unpublished manuscripts. As he told Life magazine in 1966, “Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans.”

The exhibit will showcase over 70 different artifacts, including Armstrong’s first cornet from the Colored Waif’s Home, which will sit side-by-side with the last Selmer trumpet he brought for his final visit home in 1968. Most of the materials on display are from the research collections of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, with the great majority never having been previously exhibited in New Orleans. Armstrong’s great love of New Orleans cooking, and especially red beans and rice, will also feature prominently.

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June 22, 2015 / No Comments / More

Drummer Shannon Powell’s Brilliance Shines in Louis Armstrong’s Light | Blu Notes | BLOUIN ARTINFO Blogs

http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/2015/06/drummer-shannon-powells-brilliance-shines-in-louis-armstrongs-light/

** Drummer Shannon Powell’s Brilliance Shines in Louis Armstrong’s Light
————————————————————

By Larry Blumenfeld
http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/files/2015/06/Shannonband.jpg

Shannon Powell’s Traditional All-Star Band (with trumpeter Leon Brown, clarineist Evan Christopher and bassist Peter Harris) at Corona Park, Queens/photo by April Renae

At any given moment, there are sounds of New Orleans in New York City’s air—lately, a little more than usual.

photo: April Renae

The following, from the Armstrong House press release about the exhibit:

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)

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June 22, 2015 / No Comments / More

Drummer Shannon Powell’s Brilliance Shines in Louis Armstrong’s Light | Blu Notes | BLOUIN ARTINFO Blogs

http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/2015/06/drummer-shannon-powells-brilliance-shines-in-louis-armstrongs-light/

** Drummer Shannon Powell’s Brilliance Shines in Louis Armstrong’s Light
————————————————————

By Larry Blumenfeld
http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/files/2015/06/Shannonband.jpg

Shannon Powell’s Traditional All-Star Band (with trumpeter Leon Brown, clarineist Evan Christopher and bassist Peter Harris) at Corona Park, Queens/photo by April Renae

At any given moment, there are sounds of New Orleans in New York City’s air—lately, a little more than usual.

photo: April Renae

The following, from the Armstrong House press release about the exhibit:

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)

Jazz Promo Services
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Warwick, Ny 10990
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June 22, 2015 / No Comments / More

Gunther Schuller Dies at 89; Composer Synthesized Classical and Jazz – The New York Times

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/arts/music/gunther-schuller-composer-who-synthesized-classical-and-jazz-dies-at-89.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150621

** Gunther Schuller Dies at 89; Composer Synthesized Classical and Jazz
————————————————————
By ALLAN KOZINN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/allan_kozinn/index.html)
Gunther Schuller in 1989 at the St. Thomas Church Choir School where he studied music and sang as a boy soprano. Credit William E. Sauro/The New York Times

Gunther Schuller, a composer, conductor, author and teacher who coined the term Third Stream to describe music that drew on the forms and resources of both classical and jazz, and who was its most important composer, died on Sunday in Boston. He was 89.

The cause was complications of leukemia, said his personal assistant, Jennique Horrigan.

Mr. Schuller, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his orchestral work “Of Reminiscences and Reflections” in 1994, was partial to the 12-tone methods of the Second Viennese School, but he was not inextricably bound to them. Always fascinated by jazz, he wrote arrangements as well as compositions for several jazz artists, most notably the Modern Jazz Quartet. Several of his scores — among them the Concertino (1958) for jazz quartet and orchestra, the “Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee” (1959) and an opera, “The Visitation” (1966) — used aspects of his Third Stream aesthetic, though usually with contemporary classical influences dominating.

Much of Mr. Schuller’s best music is scored for unusual instrumental combinations. In the Symphony for Brass and Percussion (1950), one of his most widely performed early works, he sent the strings and woodwinds to the sidelines. In “Spectra,” a study in orchestral color composed for the New York Philharmonic in 1960, he split the orchestra into seven distinct groups, deployed separately on the stage so that each could be heard independently or in combination with the others. He also composed “Five Pieces for Five Horns” (1952) and quartets for four double basses (1947) and four cellos (1958). His more than 20 concertos include showpieces for the double bass (1968), the contrabassoon (1978) and the alto saxophone (1983), as well as a Grand Concerto for Percussion and Keyboards (2005), for eight percussionists, a harpist and two keyboardists.

Some of his works were thorny and brash. But they could also be poetic and evocative. “Of Reminiscences and Reflections,” a rich, emotionally direct orchestral score, was composed as an elegy for Mr. Schuller’s wife, Marjorie, who died in November 1992. In his “Impromptus and Cadenzas” (1990), a chamber work, harmonic spikiness was offset by currents of lyricism and unpredictable shifts of mood and tone color.

As a composer, Mr. Schuller was self-taught. Although his career took him from the horn section of the Cincinnati Symphony and the pit of the Metropolitan Opera to a handful of influential positions — among them the presidency of the New England Conservatory and the artistic directorship of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood — he once described himself as “a high school dropout without a single earned degree.”
Photo

Mr. Schuller in 1964. Credit Lew Merrim from Monkmeyer

That he made this comment in a speech before the American Society of University Composers, in March 1980, was typical of Mr. Schuller. In addition to being fiercely proud of his self-taught status, he had an iconoclastic streak, and had a busy sideline delivering jeremiads in which he railed against either his listeners’ approach to music making or the musical world in general.

He told the university composers, for example, that it was time to abandon intellectual complexity for its own sake, and to write music that audiences could embrace — this despite his own devotion to the 12-tone method, which many listeners regarded as the root of the audience’s estrangement.

Only a few months earlier, in June 1979, Mr. Schuller had caused a stir by greeting the students who had come to Tanglewood to study at the Berkshire Music Center with an address in which he excoriated orchestras, orchestral musicians, conductors and unions for creating a situation in which, as he put it, “joy has gone out of the faces of many of our musicians,” replaced by “apathy, cynicism, hatred of new music” and other ills. Some of his arguments found their way into a compilation of his essays, “Musings: The Musical Worlds of Gunther Schuller” (1986), and his 1997 book, “The Compleat Conductor.”

But if Mr. Schuller learned composition on his own, he approached it with a solid grounding in musical basics. His paternal grandfather had been a conductor and teacher in Germany, and his father, Arthur Schuller, had played the violin in Germany under Wilhelm Furtwängler. Arthur Schuller joined the New York Philharmonic as a violinist and violist in 1923 and remained with the orchestra until 1965, and he encouraged his son to take up the flute and the French horn on the grounds that woodwind and brass players were in shorter supply than string players.

“I was fortunate to have been born into a musical home,” Mr. Schuller told The New York Times in 1977. “My father played with the New York Philharmonic for 42 years, and he had a lot of scores. When I was 11 or 12, I began buying my own scores, and at 13 I became a rabid record collector. Then, of course, there was playing. All of those things were my teachers, and they all complemented each other.”

Gunther Alexander Schuller was born in Queens on Nov. 22, 1925, to Arthur Schuller and the former Elsie Bernartz. After attending a private school in Gebesee, Germany, from 1932 to 1936, he returned to New York and enrolled at the St. Thomas Church Choir School, where he studied music with T. Tertius Noble and sang as a boy soprano. He also began to study the flute and the French horn, and was engaged by the Philharmonic as a substitute hornist when he was 15. He attended Jamaica High School in Queens; during his high school years, he also studied music theory and counterpoint at the Manhattan School of Music.

In 1943, Mr. Schuller dropped his studies to take his first professional job, touring as a French hornist with the American Ballet Theater. That same year he became the principal hornist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, a position he held until 1945, when he moved back to New York and became the principal hornist at the Metropolitan Opera. He was already composing as well, and before he left Cincinnati he was the soloist in the premiere of his own First Horn Concerto (1945).

It was also in Cincinnati that Mr. Schuller became interested in jazz, primarily through the music of Duke Ellington, which he transcribed from recordings and arranged for the Cincinnati Pops. As a player he began living a double life in New York, performing at the Metropolitan Opera and in chamber music concerts, and in ensembles led by, among others, Miles Davis.

He also began to temper his concert music with jazz elements, and he wrote a series of works to perform with the jazz pianist John Lewis, with both the Modern Jazz Quartet and a larger ensemble, the Modern Jazz Society. Typically, in these collaborations, Lewis would lead a jazz ensemble augmented by strings or woodwinds, which Mr. Schuller conducted.
Photo

Mr. Schuller leading the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra during a festival in 2012. CreditHilary Scott for The New York Times

In 1957, Mr. Schuller began describing these classical-jazz hybrids as Third Stream music. An important early showcase for the concept was a concert in May 1960 at the Circle in the Square theater, in which the Contemporary String Quartet and a starry cast of jazz musicians — among them the pianist Bill Evans and his trio, the guitarist Barry Galbraith, the multi-reed player Eric Dolphy and the alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman (who died on Thursday) — played a sampling of Mr. Schuller’s Third Stream works. He continued to champion the notion of Third Stream music throughout his career, sometimes expanding its definition.

“The Third Stream movement,” he once said, “inspires composers, improvisers and players to work together toward the goal of a marriage of musics, whether ethnic or otherwise, that have been kept apart by the tastemakers — fusing them in a profound way. And I think it’s appropriate that this has happened in this country, because America is the original cultural melting pot.”

For about 15 years, Mr. Schuller balanced his performing and composing careers by composing all night after playing opera performances. But by 1959 his schedule had become too arduous, and he decided to give up performing to devote himself more fully to composition.

The vacuum created by giving up his playing job was quickly filled with other noncompositional activities. In 1962 he published his first book, “Horn Technique,” which quickly became a standard reference work and was revised in 1992. In 1963 he began directing “20th Century Innovations,” a new-music series that ran for several seasons at Carnegie (now Weill) Recital Hall. That summer he was appointed acting head of the composition faculty at Tanglewood, and he took over the department fully in 1965. He soon became a powerful force at Tanglewood, directing the Berkshire Music Center from 1970 to 1984.

After he resigned from Tanglewood, he started a summer festival in Sandpoint, Idaho. He was also the music director of the Spokane Symphony for the 1984-85 season, and he maintained relationships with several other ensembles, including the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra in Boston, of which he was principal guest conductor, and the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra in Washington, of which he was co-director with David Baker.

Mr. Schuller’s teaching career began in 1950, when he joined the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. He taught composition at Yale from 1964 to 1967, when he was appointed president of the New England Conservatory. During his decade in that position, he introduced jazz and Third Stream music as focuses of conservatory training.

His own research into jazz proved fruitful as well. His “Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development” (1968) and “The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945” (1989) are highly regarded histories, and his recording of Scott Joplin’s “Red Back Book,” with the New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble, won a Grammy in 1974 and helped start the ragtime revival of the mid-1970s.

In 1975 Mr. Schuller established his own publishing companies, Gun-Mar Music and Margun Music, and in 1981 he started a record label, GM Recordings. With these companies, he produced printed editions of everything from early music to jazz transcriptions and contemporary works, as well as a large catalog of recordings by classical and jazz players, among them the Kronos Quartet, the pianists Russell Sherman, Frederick Moyer and Ran Blake, the saxophonist Joe Lovano and the guitarist Jim Hall.

Mr. Schuller, who lived in Newton Centre, Mass., is survived by his sons, Edwin and George, both professional musicians. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Mr. Schuller was awarded a MacArthur Foundation grant in 1991; the William Schuman Award, from Columbia University, in 1989; a Jazz Masters Fellowship (for advocacy) from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2008; and a lifetime achievement medal from the MacDowell Colony this year. “As a composer and teacher,” the composer Augusta Read Thomas, the chairwoman of the selection committee for the MacDowell award, said at the time, “he has inspired generations of students, setting an example of discovery and experimentation.”

In 2011 he published an autobiography, “Gunther Schuller: A Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty.” That same year, he was the subject of a tribute concert at Weill Recital Hall, featuring two works by Mr. Schuller and two by the young composer Mohammed Fairouz.

In a laudatory review of that concert for The Times, Zachary Woolfe wrote of Mr. Schuller, “He has, as Mr. Fairouz said in an onstage discussion, big ears.”

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Gunther Schuller Dies at 89; Composer Synthesized Classical and Jazz – The New York Times

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/arts/music/gunther-schuller-composer-who-synthesized-classical-and-jazz-dies-at-89.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150621

The cause was complications of leukemia, said his personal assistant, Jennique Horrigan.

Mr. Schuller in 1964. Credit Lew Merrim from Monkmeyer

Mr. Schuller leading the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra during a festival in 2012. CreditHilary Scott for The New York Times

In a laudatory review of that concert for The Times, Zachary Woolfe wrote of Mr. Schuller, “He has, as Mr. Fairouz said in an onstage discussion, big ears.”

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Gunther Schuller Dies at 89; Composer Synthesized Classical and Jazz – The New York Times

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/arts/music/gunther-schuller-composer-who-synthesized-classical-and-jazz-dies-at-89.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150621

The cause was complications of leukemia, said his personal assistant, Jennique Horrigan.

Mr. Schuller in 1964. Credit Lew Merrim from Monkmeyer

Mr. Schuller leading the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra during a festival in 2012. CreditHilary Scott for The New York Times

In a laudatory review of that concert for The Times, Zachary Woolfe wrote of Mr. Schuller, “He has, as Mr. Fairouz said in an onstage discussion, big ears.”

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From the ARSC Archive: New Orleans Veteran Record Makers Panel

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Interview: Les McCann on Jazz, Photography and Openness | Red Bull Music Academy Daily

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** Interview: Les McCann on Jazz, Photography and Openness
————————————————————

** Travis Atria sits down with the jazz legend to talk about his new photo book
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Martin Cohen

One could call Les McCann a jazz musician. But then what of his forays into R&B, funk, and soul on albums like Talk to the Peopleand Hustle to Survive? What of his early adoption of synthesizers, clavinets, and electric pianos? What of his painting, his photography?

That last one, photography, is especially important. If McCann never touched a piano in his life, he’d likely still have become famous as a photographer. The proof is in his new book, Invitation to Openness: The Jazz & Soul Photography of Les McCann, which collects many of his best pictures.
Les McCann

Looking at McCann’s photographs, one gets the distinct sense of being in the room with the subjects. One can practically hear Richard Pryor mid-routine at some unnamed comedy club, before he lost his babyface to the vagaries of fame. One can feel the seething inner turmoil that amplified and destroyed Nina Simone’s genius. One can see the unguarded Cannonball Adderly, smoking a cigarette, the expression on his face cooler than a frozen pack of peas. In each case, McCann’s lens strips these icons of pretense, brushes away the dust of history, and leaves them not naked, not vulnerable, but open.

Perhaps that’s why McCann called the book Invitation to Openness. It is an invitation not only to the subjects of the pictures, but also to the reader. The pictures are suffused with the sense that these aren’t icons or legends, but normal people. And if they are normal people, what does that say of the rest of us? McCann’s answer, which he repeated several times during the interview, is that we are all made to do great things. We just have to be open to it.

In the intro to the book you talk about how your brothers all had cameras growing up. I’m curious to know more about what it was like growing up in Kentucky in that era.

My father worked at the Lexington Water Company as a custodian. It was a good job for him, because he never went to school really. My mother just took care of the house. Occasionally she would take odd jobs taking care of people’s houses. Everybody was in a position of doing the best they could with whatever. We never thought of ourselves as being poor. My life was fantastic, just as it is now. It has been great all my life.

But you grew up in a time of pretty strict segregation. How did that impact your life?

It made me the great person I feel I am today. I don’t believe in – I’m trying to say it in the right way – I see and have learned that everything that happens in this life, this time, for me, was exactly what I asked for. In order to be a jazz musician, which is something I’ve always wanted, I’m going to say it to you the way I say it in my own heart, in sitting down with God [before I was born], “What you wanna do when you go down to Earth this time?” “Well, I want to something different this time. I want to be a jazz musician.” “Really? That’s a noble thing. Me and my staff will do the priming, and we’ll call you when you’re ready to go. We’ll figure out what family you need to be born in, what part of the world you want to be born in. What type of jazz you want to play?” I said, “I want to be soulful, just like the church.” “We got you covered. We know what to do.” And that’s how it was.

There’s no difference between jazz and photography, or any art form. It’s all about creativity.

I guess had you been anywhere else, you couldn’t have been a jazz musician, because jazz came out of that specific place and time.

That’s the way it is for all of us. We often forget that we’re just here for a few moments. This ain’t the real shit. This is like taking a little nap.

Jazz and photography are obviously different art forms, but it seems like with both you have to be constantly present, constantly paying attention. Whether it’s a picture or whether you’re creating something musically, you have to have a heightened sense of being in the moment.

No. You don’t have to be anything. You just live, enjoy your life, and all these things will come to you. It’s when we start thinking in our head, trying to figure it out, trying to make it what we want it to be, we stumble. We go down the side roads. We don’t mess it up, we just put it on hold. We go off the main track, but we always end up back on the right one. There’s no difference between jazz and photography, or any art form. It’s all about creativity. It’s not always a conscious thought, “I’m going to go down here and take some pictures and be creative.” No. You are directed to the things you’re supposed to do. They come automatically.

Yes, but not everybody can take a good photograph, or not everybody can be a great jazz musician. Would you say that’s just because it’s not their path?

Is that your path?

No, I suppose it’s not.

Well. [laughs]

What’s the main thing we learn when we’re young? How to be afraid of everything.

But even so there must be some thought, or craft, to it.

No. I say one thing. It’s pure God. With this in my heart, I can do anything. You’re not always conscious of trying to be great. It’s certainly not intellectual. “Intellectual” is people that like to play mind games. The mind is a tool, but it certainly isn’t the full truth of what we are.

Is this something you’ve always felt or have you developed this philosophy as you’ve gone through your life?

Well, once again, I’ll say we all know this. When we’re born, we’re trained to forget these things. What’s the main thing we learn when we’re young? How to be afraid of everything. They want to protect us, they want to keep us away from things. Everything is about teaching the fully armed baby who comes into the world beautiful, and loving, and knowing everything, just waiting to develop and learn, and we try to make them as fearful as they can get.

How do you escape that?

You have to know it first.

Les McCann – Compared To What

The song that you’re best known for, “Compared to What,” there’s a lot of anger in it, a lot of questioning of society. I know you didn’t write the lyrics, but there’s anger in your reading of them. And that’s coming back up now. There’s a lot of that anger in modern music, with all the police brutality, and riots happening yet again, and so much turmoil going on in society.

I’m trying to understand what you’re saying. What, we should not be angry about things?

No, no, no. I think we absolutely should be angry. But what I’m wondering is how that coincides with feeling like everything is a part of love. Is the anger a part of love?

How do you define love if you don’t know what love is? Why are we angry? We’re forgetting something. We’re forgetting the basis of what we truly are, which is pure love. This beginning is part of the trip. You can’t break everything down into fragments and say, “What about the little kids over in Africa?” It’s the whole picture we’re looking at. We’re all here in the name of love, and since we’re here just temporarily, it doesn’t matter what we do. There’s no right and wrong. There’s learning. Period. Laws are for communities, cities where people live around each other. But the real laws come from what we came from. If you believe this is all there is, then you have some beautiful things to learn, and that’s okay.

Some of the most interesting pictures in the book were the ones of Duke Ellington toward the end of his life.

He looked very depressed, didn’t he?

He did, absolutely. I got the sense that he was getting toward the end of his life and there was just such sadness in him. I don’t know how well you knew him…

Very few of them I could say are friends of mine, but I knew them all because we were all doing the festivals and passing each other on the road all the time. Or, they’re in my record collection at home. Me, I feel like I know them, but I don’t mean I know them as in what he eats for dinner. I’m talking about how you sometimes recognize the great things about yourself by looking at the people you like. They’re lessons for us too. But I want to stress again, there is no such thing as right and wrong, good and bad. There are things. Period. They are. Try to do that, take a little time each day to be quiet, forget the daily things and open up to another realm of your great ability to be everything.

But there are so many things going on in the world where you think, “I have to resist this.” The kid gets killed by the cops, and you think, “That’s terrible, I have to resist this,” and you get angry.

It’s been like that always hasn’t it?

I suppose so. That’s another thing that makes me angry.

In every culture, in every country, it’s no different. We call it everything but what it really is. “It’s racism; it’s whatever you want.” No. It’s fear. It’s fear.

When we made Swiss Movement, I was so angry after we finished playing.

Did you pick the pictures that went into the book?

I did not pick any pictures. Not one. They just had to check everything before they printed it to make sure I liked it.

This might not apply for the book, then, but how do you know when you’ve got the right take of a song or the right shot of a person?

In jazz, it’s not one thing. You know it when you hear it. It’s about the heart and the feeling. When you hear something great, or you have a producer or partner that you trust, you listen to them. Sometimes, like when we made Swiss Movement, I was so angry after we finished playing, I went right back to the hotel and told the man, “Don’t take no calls from anybody, I don’t care who it comes from.” And they were trying to call me from the moment I left the building. “Get your butt back over here. You’re not going to believe how great this is.” I though it was the worst thing we ever did, because we were making a lot of mistakes.

When I heard it, I couldn’t believe it, which taught me another great lesson. Let it happen. Let it be. You don’t have to be hovering over every little note. You do it, and let it happen, and you’ll know it. My heart and my body is loaded with creativity. And when I step on that stage, I acknowledge it and allow it to come forth. I love my life.
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By Travis Atria on June 19, 2015

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