Music director John DeMain conducts the Madison Symphony Orchestra in the stunning setting of Overture Hall in Madison. Courtesy isthmus.com

Rain…Rain…I don’t mind. Shine, the weather’s fine. I can show you that when it starts to rain, everything’s the same, I can show you, I can show you… It’s just a state of mind, can you hear me, can you hear me? — “Rain” by Lennon and McCartney

What a pleasure to be reminded how fortune smiles on Wisconsin with the blessing of two great symphony orchestras. There’s nothing like an orchestra working its big-canvas magic in person. In recent years I’ve reacquainted myself with the glories of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

On a rain-soaked day, sheets of rain, billows of rain, Ann Peterson and I drove to Madison to hear that city’s superb orchestra, but not before what has become a ritual, a stop at the Pine Cone Inn halfway between the cities in Johnsonville, to pick up a gluten-free monster cookie.
With slightly soggy crumbs nestled in laps, we rolled into Mad Town and stopped first at The Harlem Renaissance Museum on East Washington.

This place is  worth your time although, on a Sunday afternoon, also consider that a religious service is held in the back room, which is the way to enter. So if you make your way quietly to the front galley, you now see an exhibit of Cubist jazz art by the museum’s artist-in-residence Martel Chapman. The exhibit also includes a tribute to the great Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer, a Wisconsin resident and one-time faculty member at the UW-Madison. On display were a selection of Toomer’s letters hand-written and typed to various people during important years of his career and they are illuminating and a bit historically transporting, although I wasn’t taking notes (apologies), so I can’t go into detail.

But Chapman’s art is a marvel. He has an uncanny ability to do conventional oil portraiture with great insight and style. But most of the pieces display his own trademark Cubist characterization of jazz and African-American cultural figures. Despite the almost futuristic stylization he’s capable of capturing the deep character of someone as profound as John Coltrane as he does in a portrait titled “Late Coltrane.” I  believe this is actually an interpretation of the famous black-and-white photograph of Coltrane for the album A Love Supreme.

“Late Coltrane,” John Coltrane as interpreted by Madison cubist artist Martel Chapman. Courtesy Martel Chapman

He does the same for white-haired sax icon Sonny Rollins and even superstar Black studies scholar-minister Cornel West. It’s almost as if the artist is torching a living person out of tubes of metal. Chapman’s not going for realism here, rather the essence of the artist, a remarkable achievement somewhat akin to a jazz player’s act of getting to the truth of the matter through a musical stylized abstraction.

Some of Chapman’s pieces comprise complete scenes more akin to Georges Braque’s early, somewhat painterly ” analytic cubism” such as the utterly delightful “Quartet ’58.” This painting interprets the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane performing at The Five Spot Nightclub in New York in 1958. The luxuriously-faceted piece is a virtual whirlygig of animated expression spinning out from the fabulous figure of Monk himself whose splayed arms and legs hover around the keyboard like a hipster Gumby. 1

Martel Chapman’s “Quartet 58,” and interpretation of the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane on saxophone. Courtesy Martel Chapman. 

For all these fine artistic moments, the afternoon’s main event was the Madison Symphony Orchestra. They rolled up their sleeves with a taste-whetting performance of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Op. 62.
Then Emanuel Ax ambled on. The veteran, gray-maned and portly pianist has acquired a decidedly avuncular demeanor by now. But he sat down and showed that any uncle who can play a Beethoven concerto (No. 4) like this is worthy of inviting to dinner any old time. His playing absolutely sparkled and finely mirrored the orchestra’s rhythmic dancing through the melodies and sonic gusts rippling through deep meadows of sound.
Ax encored with an unannounced Debussy prelude, I believe, which unwound with strangely complex colors and arabesques.

Soon it was time for the centerpiece of the concert, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony 4 in G Major, one of the majestic pinnacles in the standard repertoire, and of late Romanticism.
I’ve always loved this work, as have many.  But it had been so long since I heard this orchestra after covering it for nearly 20 years. I somewhat forgot how fine and firm a grip DeMain has on such myriad details, dynamics and tempo, etc. and how superbly responsive the orchestra is.

They showed us what a ravishingly immersive creation the Mahler is, once again. It must be a supreme pleasure sit in the middle of that and participating in it. I’m still sappy enough of an Irishman to be moved to tears by it.

Composer Gustav Mahler outside the Grand Hotel Toblach in the Alps. Courtesy grandhoteltoblach.com

So thank you for moving me, my old friends. It’s in the way that all the strange and wondrous colors and rhythms engulf the listener, like a fully-evoked world or lifetime of memories, and then the finely-wrought melodies and fanfares that swell up like water-drenched sirens. This all leads to that late, luminous cathedral-like chord rising to forever, not long before the soprano enters.

This is DeMain the Grammy-winning, Leonard Bernstein-mentored opera conductor synthesizing those skills into the orchestral domain for a rare sort of larger-than-the-moon musicality. He’s clearly spent all the time necessary for a reach for transcendence, having performed the whole Mahler symphonic cycle during the years pI lived in Madison. I would love to hear this band record a Mahler symphony.

A protege of Leonard Bernstein, DeMain has led the Madison orchestra for 22 years.

And such a celestial song in the finale, though guest soloist Alisa Jordheim, still doesn’t compare to the warm magnificence of Judith Raskin with George Szell and the old Cleveland recording. Ms. Jordheim had confessed to DeMain that she was suffering from a cold, which did not seem to affect her voice’s lovely timbre. But at moments she seemed to strain to project over the orchestra.

Still, it came to a marvelous end, like a winding scenic journey to a high vista.

And finally DeMain nudged the unaccompanied basses along to extend the symphony’s last very note, like an earth-whispering Ommmm.

Sublime. I could go on, but it would be just the German side of me getting a little oom-pah pushy.

So we headed home. And the rains came, again, stronger than ever.

______

1. For news on the museum’s first year anniversary and future plans, check out Pat Simm’s Wisconsin State Journal article:http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/madison-s-harlem-renaissance-museum-celebrates-first-year-plans-for/article_a1f73372-1a82-52bc-b0dd-4f9caaee33dd.html

Jazz pianist and author Mark Davis practicing at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music where he directs the Jazz Institute. Photo by Kevin Lynch

In person, Mark Davis exudes warm, affable intelligence. At the piano he translates his personality, knowledge and talent into penetrating, fluent and swinging music. He’s the city’s premiere jazz pianist, director of the Wisconsin Conservatory’s Jazz Institute, and pianist with the school’s faculty jazz ensemble We Six, which can be heard on the recording Bird Say. He’s performed with jazz greats Jimmy Heath, Charles McPherson, Slide Hampton, and Frank Morgan, among others.

And now Davis is the author of Jazz Piano Method , published by Hal Leonard , which may become one of the most effective and efficient ways to learn jazz piano, short of taking lessons with a gifted musician and teacher like Davis. The book includes online access to 180 recorded examples of its practice exercises, each introduced and performed by Davis himself.

Courtesy halleonard.com

What’s the genesis and motivation for this book?

I’d thought about this for years working with students of all different backgrounds and levels. There wasn’t  a perfect book to recommend my students that fit my way of teaching. So why not write my own book? In 2008, I began recording for Hal Leonard (the world’s largest music publisher) accompaniment tracks for various books including The Real Book (a primary jazz repertory book) with bassist Jeff Hamman and drummer Dave Bayless. But I really wanted to write the jazz piano method. Everybody teaches jazz differently. From pianist Barry Harris, I learned how interconnected teaching and playing are. I hope the book allows students a method to find their own way.

There is an inherent mystery to jazz in that it seems created out of the ether. But you give each note a purpose and get into why the music sounds and feels this way . For example, you point out that diatonic chords are ones that contain the same notes as other chords– which helps a student move through progressions musically and easily.

Jazz is not easy music play. You can get very comfortable with certain chord progressions and I hope the book gives people the fundamentals to give them a certain kind of freedom, so they can really take off.

Another example of useful theory you address are “shell voicings” and extensions.

My home base as a musician comes from the bebop approach, so shell voicings is a left-hand technique that bop pianist plays. But they also use, say, a tenth  interval (extension) but I show them how to get around that by breaking the chord up, as well as things like rootless voicings. Also, you can’t be jazz musician without understanding what came before. I’m using the bebop era as the starting point, rather than Herbie Hancock or Keith Jarrett.

But this can get them to Hancock or Jarrett. You emphasize learning directly from recordings. Also you address the idea of tension and release in the basic II-V-I chord progression. Doesn’t this help a student make an aesthetic choice, to make these decisions for expressive, dramatic or sonic effect?

Tension and release is an important factor in so much music, or even in movies or drama. If you just give a student a scale to improvise with you can point out the tools to see how tension and release occurs, which is the drama music. Otherwise it’s like going to a movie where nothing really happens.

In Chapter 5, you make a strong point that the rhythmic feel and the blues feel are the most important things, even more than the correct note or chord. Why is that so important?

Learning to play jazz is similar to learning a language. When a baby is learning to speak, before words they get the rhythm of language,  it sounds like talking but you don’t hear the words. Then the meaning starts to be filled in. Same in jazz, the more we learn, the more we can fill in, like language, the specific thoughts or ideas.

At the end, why do you characterize jazz piano as a never-ending journey and a quest?

In his 90s, Hank Jones said, you never fully master it. I find that students with careers outside of music can find a way to escape the day-to-day grind and of our own personal lives — escape inside music to a place where nothing really else matters. Charlie Parker didn’t want to go back to that other place. Maybe that’s why he was such a genius player. It’s the beauty you can find within music.

What I hope is that teachers will use this with students and now have the background using as a guide to teach jazz and they can pick up on these pocket topics and run with it in their own way. For example Brian Lynch is really excited about what his students are doing with it at the Frost School of music in Miami. I want to get this book into schools.

Among other jazz piano books, Davis notes, Jazz Piano by Mark Levine is an excellent book which I recommend. But it’s more of a reference loaded with information, where my book is a method, a pathway hopefully to come away with a much deeper understanding of music and approach for how they can continue to play it.

I don’t want to give them too much information because people can become overwhelmed by this music. I want them to enjoy learning how to play jazz.

Mark Davis and We Six will perform at 7:30 p.m. March 18 with guest artists Brian Lynch, a Grammy-winning trumpeter originally from Milwaukee, and Benny Golson, a renowned jazz saxophonist and composer, at Marquette University’s Weasler Auditorium, 1506 W. Wisconsin Ave.  Over a distinguished career, Golson has worked with, among others, Tadd Dameron, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and the Art Farmer-Benny Golson Jazztet. Golson has written a number of jazz standards including “I Remember Clifford,” “Killer Joe” and “Whisper Not.” He’s also composed for TV shows including Ironside, M.A.S.H., and Mission Impossible. For information, visit www.wcmusic.org.

Benny Golson. Courtesy jazzpages.com

_______

This interview was originally published in The Shepherd Express in a slightly different form.

_

“Catskill Lake, N.Y.” By Thomas Cole, one of the co-founders of the Hudson River School.

Here’s my review of the extraordinary Milwaukee Art Museum exhibit Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School  in OnMilwaukee.com:http://onmilwaukee.com/ent/articles/mamhudsonriverschool.html

Here are a few extra images from the show that I comment on in the review, plus a few notes at the bottom.

Albert Bierstadt (American, 1830-1902)Donner Lake from the Summit, 1873Oil on canvas: 72 1/8 x 120 3/16 in. (183.2 x 305.3 cm)Gift of Archer Milton Huntington, 1909.16

Here’s a photo of the still-imposing Donner Pass today, above Donner Lake, which I drove through in 2014. It is the highest point in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

This painting is not from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s “American Vision” exhibit. It is an artist’s rendering of 1846 Donner party battling the the blizzard they encountered in the rugged mountain pass that would be named for them. 

I

“Niagara Falls” (1818) by Louisa Davis Minot is the earliest Hudson River School painting in the exhibit.

Thomas Cole, “The Course of Empire — The Savage State.” 

Thomas Cole, “The Course of Empire — Destruction.”

___________

This review was originally published in OnMilwaukee.com

Here are a few notes about a somewhat comparable show you may have seen at MAM, Masterpieces of American Art, 1770-1920, work from the Detroit Institute of Arts.

1. That 2005 show was more diverse and diffuse but slightly less impressive over all than the Hudson River School show, especially with the new show’s celebrated “The Course of Empire” series by Thomas Cole. However, Masterpieces included two works that would enhance this show. There’s nothing quite as spectacular in this show as Hudson River School member Frederic Church’s “Cotopaxi” from that show. But then, there are no active volcanoes to render in North America (another brilliant South American mountain painting by Church, “Cayambe” (1858) is in the new show).

2. Also, Church’s “Niagara,” in that earlier show, is perhaps the most accomplished and definitive painting of the falls, as impressive as Louisa Davis Minot’s Niagara painting is in the new show.

3. Cole’s 1836 “Destruction” may have been a model for English Romantic painter John Martin’s 1851 “Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,” as the two painting compositions are remarkably similar:

Reproduction of Albert Bierstadt’s “Donner Lake from Summit” is courtesy www.hawthornehotelblog.com  All other images courtesy The Milwaukee Art Museum and The New York Historical Society, unless otherwise noted.

The Ches Smith Trio: Craig Taborn, piano; Mat Maneri, viola; Ches Smith, percussion. hallwalls.org.

Ches Smith The Bell (ECM)

Music of The Bell seems about the interplay of the subtlest of overtones, not unlike the layered harmonic convergences of multiple bells when played on a steeple. That’s a way of imaging and accessing this chamber jazz, which sometimes elides listener engagement with minimalist vamps and fragmented indirection. Underlying, more promisingly, is a sense of internal three-way dialogue.

The title piece opens, casting a suspenseful aura. Vivid scenarios unfold — Mat Maneri’s musky viola often serpentine and mysterioso — and arrestingly on “I’ll See You on the Dark Side of the Earth.” A songful purposefulness arises in the latter part of “I Think.” That vigorously fraternal sparring leads to “Whacken Open Air” with a funky, push-pull tension that fully employs some of pianist Craig Taborn’s powers of dynamic attack and improvisational resource. “It’s Always Winter (Sometimes)” seems to tell an under-heated but sympathetic winter’s tale, with each player allowed enough to play to presume a character’s presence. In all, Taborn’s performance skills feel underused, but this is spatial art music. (Kevin Lynch)

___________

The Ches Smith ECM Trio performed on Feb. 23 at Bay View United Methodist Church, 2772 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., Milwaukee. 

This review was originally published in slightly modified form in The Shepherd Express.

Kurt Elling in a promotional photo for “Passion World.” Photo by Anna Weber

The flowers I bought and arranged into a bouquet last Thursday for my girlfriend Ann Peterson still haven’t faded. Nor should the spirit of Saint Valentine’s Day, and one of the greatest cultural purveyors of concepts and larger values of love is the great jazz singer Kurt Elling.

His last album Passion World (Concord) has been out for a while, but it seems like it should have been released on Valentine’s Day. So the review of the album I wrote for The Shepherd Express, reposted here, feels as timely as ever. 1 Elling took a cosmopolitan and extremely global view of the concept of romance and love that, with his stylistic range, reaches to the common man and woman as well as the romantic sophisticate. And we sure need a serious concept of love to take hold in all the troubled spots in the world today. One of the first concerts Ann and I ever attended together was Elling performing at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Performing Arts on Valentine’s Day of 2014.

Elling is on the West Coast right now, as part of his Passion World tour, and he’ll perform at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley in Seattle Thursday through Sunday https://www.jazzalley.com/www-home/artist.jsp?shownum=1618

Since we saw him in Milwaukee, he’s been a bellwether for the quality of music events we have strove to attend, which has compelled us to Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado, as well as the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco, among other places, all by hitting the road in my car.

I also drove to the 1997 Chicago Jazz Festival, and l’m posting a few previously unpublished and unposted photos of the unforgettable performance that Elling put on at that festival with his primary inspiration, the fearless and gifted jazz vocal pioneer Mark Murphy. If ever I have experienced love on a stage — profoundly leavened by mutual respect — it was between these two performers. Elling is straight and Murphy had been openly gay since early in his career. That fact had made Murphy’s whole professional life an uphill climb, as I detail in the blog post I wrote in commemoration of his death:https://kevernacular.com/?p=3932.

But that performance’s facts also made their set’s feeling of love trans-gay-straight, if you will. Elling’s regard is palpable in a performance video recorded shortly after Murphy’s passing. 2

Mark Murphy (top, in Miles Davis T-shirt) and Kurt Elling perform together for perhaps the first time together at the Jazz at Jackson stage at the 1997 Chicago Jazz Festival. All photos by Kevin Lynch

Elling, a Rockford native, remains one in the most impressive and ambitious artists in jazz today. He has persistently conceived and realized concepts for both his albums and for special concerts that encompass jazz tradition and innovation, as well as literature, philosophy and the other arts.

Originally a divinity student at The University of Chicago “(who admits he was going to write ‘big thick tomes no one would ever read), he turned that passion, reverence and skill into jazz lyrics,” as Charles W. Johnson reported. 3

And I have no little doubt that Elling has contemplated the legacy of Saint Valentine in his many inquiries into love’s meaning, value, and role in society, and even global affairs. Saint Valentine was “a priest of Rome who was imprisoned for giving succor to persecuted Christians.” The celebration of Saint Valentine did not have any romantic connotations until Chaucer‘s poetry about “Valentines” in the 14th century. 4

So here’s an expanded version of my original review:

Kurt Elling — Passion World (Concord Jazz)

Among the world’s most ambitious and gifted singers, Elling pursues what philosophers call the life examined, evidence of his training as a seminarian. Here, his deft, pliant baritone addresses the concepts of passion and romance, and how their complexity and commonality exist among various cultures. Songs in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German include folk to art song and tunes adapted with Elling’s own lyrics. Accompaniment ranges from trios to orchestras from Germany and Scotland. For all his global reach, the results consistently convey the truth and illusions of personal experience.

Among Elling’s ports of song is “La Rose en La Vie,” popularized by Edith Piaf. Sumptuously orchestrated with brilliant orchestra-ensemble passages, the magnificently genial melody reaches globally in Elling’s eight-minute-plus version. Carolina Strassmeyer unfurls a lovely, ardent alto sax solo reminiscent of Stan Getz in his bossa-nova phase.

U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name,” echoes U2’s spare yet expansive instrumentation, and lyric: High on a desert plain/ where the streets have no name… We’re always building and burning down love/  But when I go there/ I go there with you/ It’s all I can do…”

The song reflects both Elling’s ambition and his serious-minded humility, in the lyric’s near-helplessness, and in the sense that he’s forever pursuing great material, past and present, by other great artists, to honor and revitalize. By contrast, “Voce Ja Foi a Bahia?” by Brazilian Bossa-nova singer-songwriter Dori Caymmi, is an effervescent duet with Sara Gazarek that conveys the joy of dance in the way the singers twirl, embrace, and artfully circle each other, in perfect rhythm and harmony.

Almost improbable as a follow-up to such Latin joy is Elling’s reading of Johannes Brahms’ exquisitely abject ballad “Nicht Wandle, Mein Licht,” His strong supple baritone holds the lieder up to the light to examine and honor with love’s tenderness. The light is the song’s metaphor for the singer’s lover, for whom his tears may or may not have prompted a flood of tears. A sultry piano by Frank Chastenier brings the ballad fully to the present.

Elling’s ports lie far afield from jazz again on Bjork’s “Who Is It?” But it works as a heart-swelling affirmation of amour — the lover’s trust is a fortress for the lover. It’s an example of Elling’s mission, to pursue the life examined, here by patiently asking the questions that give the real or potential love in one’s life due scrutiny and honor in one’s view.

Elling’s vision expands outward and inward; following along is an armchair adventure.

______________

1 http://shepherdexpress.com/article-27011-kurt-elling-passion-world-(concord-jazz)- album-review-shepherd-express.html

2

3 http://www.chicagonow.com/vociferous-envoy/2013/12/the-evolution-of-kurt-elling/

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day

Passion World CD cover courtesy udiscovermusic.com

(L-R) Jon Irabagon, Matt Ulery, Russ Johnson, and Jon Deitermyer, live at the West End Conservatory on December 28. Photo by August Ray

Sidebar to West End Conservatory feature

Concert review of Jon Irabagon-Russ-Johnson Quartet

Twas the night before New Year’s Eve, give or take a chilly few. And all through the night the big blizzard had blown. Milwaukee lay mostly fast and asleep, engulfed in a blanket of silver and white.

Yet the embers of cutting-edge jazz arose and flared at an unlikely locale. 55^th and Vliet Street is not the hip East Side, nor is it Bay View or Riverwest. The East Side’s now-darkened  beacon, The Jazz Estate, hovers in limbo. So The West End Conservatory just may become the new locus of envelope-pushing jazz in Milwaukee.

What radiated like a blazing furnace in the conservatory’s long, icicle-encased recital hall was the Russ Johnson- John Irabagon Quartet, though the big, bad blizzard took its toll even here. Besides New York-based Irabagon, the other featured guest performer, tenor saxophonist Ohad Talmor got trapped in O’Hare, Chicago’s black hole of an airport, due to the blizzard. Thankfully Irabagon, from Gurnee, Il. (and likely visiting relatives) got to the Midwest early enough for the gig, as did two Chicagoans, bassist Matt Ulery and drummer Jon Deitermyer.

The great trumpeter Russ Johnson, a Shorewood resident who worked for some years in New York, has built up strong connections with top-flight East Coast jazz musicians. But even he needed a serious listening space for his latest heavyweight collaboration. That’s where the still-young and evolving West End Conservatory has stepped up big time.

It was the latest in an impressive series of concerts the West End has hosted (see main story). But even the star jazz band The Bad Plus, upcoming Feb. 6, will be hard-pressed to top this performance.

Husky trumpeter Johnson projects unbridled passion, bristling virtuosity and bravura power which, at times, summons the spirit of Louis Armstrong, whose legendary 1928 recording “West End Blues” resonates in the Conservatory’s name. Johnson has been burning it up here and in Chicago for several years, and released two superb recent recordings, including a daringly ambitious reimagining of a classic Eric Dolphy album, which Johnson titled Still Out to Lunch!

Nevertheless, the real revelation this night was the first-area performance by Irabagon, an affable man of modest stature but gigantic gifts and intelligence. We understood quite quickly why he compares well with any rising saxophonist playing jazz today. And why he won the 2008 Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition. Besides Johnson, Irabagon has worked or recorded with such luminaries as Kenny Barron, Lou Reed, Wynton Marsalis, Mary Halvorson, The Chris Potter Big Band and Mostly Other People Do the Killing. He played on two of 2015’s best albums, Dave Douglas’s Brazen Heart, and Irabagon’s own Behind the Sky with trumpeter Tom Harrell and pianist Luis Perdomo.

Album cover to Jon Irabagon’s latest CD “Behind the Sky.” Courtesy allaboutjazz.com

Irabagon’s deft fingers and lusty lungs turned the first set into to a concise, vivid history of the modern tenor sax, with lighthouse beacons from most of the giants.

On the opener, Johnson’s “Sowatch,” Ulery’s big, spacious bass and Deitermyer’s finely crackling drums cushioned a loping lope of a funk rhythm. Johnson set the pace with a solo of sharply rising clarion climaxes.

Then they launched into Irabagon’s “It Needs It,” which proved an odyssey.  A neo-boppish groove felt like Sonny Rollins meeting Wayne Shorter — sax lines alternately rounded, juicy, oblique and gruff. Here Irabagon’s tenor sax recalled Rollins’ bristling youthful brio on his early RCA recordings. Soon, he’d also evoked Archie Shepp and John Coltrane in alternating bars and finely fractured intervals, and then a burst of Joe Henderson’s gloriously gutsy flag-waving cries.

Jon Irabagon. Courtesy republicofjazz.blogspot.com

When Johnson joined in, they sounded a bit like Rollins with avant-garde trumpeter Don Cherry, the trumpeter dancing and smearing notes, the theme now slower, in a mock conversation between two horn players. The tune then rose into magnificence, the two players now resembling brothers reminiscing shared bitterness, pain, love and loss, all with an abandon veiled in puckish wit.

By the end, both players began emitting slightly strangled embouchure noises in the virtual silence of the rhythm section, akin to bizarre and exquisite sonic manifestations of Roscoe Mitchell (who Irabagon has studied with) and the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

I couldn’t recall anyone who had so convincingly summoned more sax masters in a four-minute solo.  I also sat stunned because none of this, nor the ensuing playing, sounded the least bit like academic exercises or showiness. It was more like a train traveling deep from a tunnel in jazz history, clearly blowing its own horn, “I’m coming through!” — even as all those music greats echoed from the cavern deep in the horn.

And this night sounded like more than enough of what Milwaukee needs to rejoin the major leagues in jazz.

For all his passion, Irabagon conveys a sense of well-considered irony that dwelled in much modern art more than the more facile post-mods may realize.

The second set was no less stunning than the first, with a couple of angular lines, Irabagon’s “Obelisk” and Johnson’s “Pardon the Pun.” They both brought to mind the Dolphy-by-way-of- Monk heart-skipping intervals that Johnson employed in his Dolphy re-invention album. Frequently bassist Ulery recalled the glowing songfulness of the late Charlie Haden, who traveled in the deep valleys of forward-trucking Americana during decades of the most exploratory jazz.

As the crowd poured out on Vliet Street, the snow-bound noir felt considerably warmer than before. A brightness glimmered around the streetlamps, like fireflies dancing in the dark.

The West End Conservatory is the story of a burning vision shared by two Milwaukee jazz musicians with surplus talent, energy, intelligence and pure grit. But the flame almost went out early on – like a candle they burned together at both ends, in a roaring wind.

For you browsers, detectives, or the occasional researcher, here’s a list of all Culture Currents blog posts, in order of the number of views they have received, as of Feb. 2, 2016. You may directly access any given post by clicking on the title. I hope this increases your enjoyment and use of the website.

As always, thank you for your interest, and always feel free to comment,

Kevernacular (Kevin Lynch)

Top Posts for all days ending 2016-02-02 (Summarized)

• 7 Days |
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• All time

All Time

Title		Views
Home page / Archives		10,125
The day Elvin Jones fired up Milwaukee’s Lakefront Festival of Art in 1972		2,414
If These Quilts Could Talk: Signals along the Underground Railroad		814
Will the Wolf Survive — or Attack? Examining “The Grey” Controversy		803
“In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” — and Duane Allman *		691
The Day the United States Hanged a Woman		637
Discovering a Famous Seafaring Scene in Calatrava’s Pavilion		628
The loss of Milwaukee’s black talk radio stirs memories of Marvin Gaye		620
Wisconsin gave John Steuart Curry a home. He gave back the state’s idea as image		616
Charlie Haden’s bass sang around the world, and back, to The Shenandoah		533
Culture Currents Fave Art Gallery		521
The Deadly Attack of the Smart Phone Zombies		470
“Real/Surreal” explores the haunted intersection of realist and surrealist American art		458
Gorky’s “Garden in Sochi” might give new meanings to the Olympics.		450
My All-time Best Americana/Roots albums.		449
If you asked her, Kathy Naab could write a book: A life remembered		419
A remarkable Mother’s Day story of an unforgettable “Lady” and her gifted son, Arshile Gorky		403
Rembrandt: Last Chances To See a Life-Changing Work of Art		385
Ishmael and Queequeg: the Original Pan-Cultural Odd Couple?		380
Remembering Ron Cuzner and jazz on “The Dark Side”		373
Blogger bio and statement		318
Samsara: A Wordless World of Magnificent Images (opens Friday)		288
Edward S. Curtis preserved America’s Vanishing Race for Posterity		275
More images from Edward Curtis and The Vanishing Race		263
A graphic version of T. Monk (but not Bud Powell) getting unfairly busted by racist cops…		256
Kathy Mattea’s “Coal Journey” Back Home		240
Reprise: Nocturnal Milwaukee jazz DJ Ron Cuzner lives on in musicians’ memories		220
If Dylan wanted to back him up, he must’ve been a hell of a leader. On mountains, he was.		216
Garry Wills exposes the cultural roots of America’s gun mentality		208
A few words about Jeff Poniewaz, and a poem by him		208
A round-trip drive from Milwaukee to the Pacific Ocean — a cultural travelogue part 2		207
Jazz education is swinging hard across Milwaukee and America		205
The Magician Behind Miles: Reviving the American Individualism of Gil Evans		203
A round-trip drive across America’s mountainous backbone — a cultural travelogue		201
Dissenting thoughts on the Cuzner style		190
A clean, well-lighted place: A river runs through Wisconsin’s roots music mecca		186
Clyfford Still? Yes, the great American painter still holds up, in a whole museum		178
The last of the great 19th-century whaling ships takes another journey, into living history		177
“He IS the guitar.” Blues pioneer Michael Bloomfield finally gets his due		167
Manty Ellis builds a new foundation for Milwaukee’s jazz scene		159
The “Magic Book” of Weather Report and Zawinul interview		159
“I Fought the Law, Brother Dead and Gone” (The ghosts of Brown, Garner & Hamilton)		153
The Aura of the African-American in Visual Art and Culture		153
Resources		149
Modern pioneers: How Lombardi’s Packers transformed football’s racial culture		143
My Moby Dick sculpture from Cottage House Primitives		142
A grand dame of jazz presents a celebration of “Dexter Gordon @ 90.”		140
Three Decisive Days of the Civil War, 150 years ago this week		138
Toni Morrison on Melville and the Language of Denial		137
Culture Currents Picks: Best Jazz and Roots Music of 2014		136
Jeffrey Foucault: Songwriter on a Train to You		135
Culture Currents writer-creator Kevin Lynch receives top prize for arts criticism from Milwaukee Press Club		133
Collage: Piecing Together Snips and Heaps of a Common Cultural Act — in Colorado		130
Following the inextiguishable flight of The Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star”		121
Milwaukee’s Revived Jazz Gallery: A Beacon for Creative Freedom Burns Again		121
Weather Report: From the First Lightning Bolt to the Rise of a Jazz Tsunami		116
Is the Tedeschi Trucks Band the Best American Group Working Today?		115
An Elegy to a Symphonic Musician — Bill Bennett		113
The paranoid and racist John Birch Society is alive in new guises.		112
A Melville research trip with photos by Katrin Talbot		112
Thelonious Monk died today in 1982. An obit column from back then		111
Undecided Voters (in Swing States?): Who Are Those Guys?		110
Superband leader Christensen survives, but still fights for his financial life		107
“Genius” Jason Moran ain’t gettin’ a big head. He’s updating Fats Waller for shows in Milwaukee and San Francisco…		106
George Bernard Shaw scrutinizes human folly and romance in APT’s “The Doctor’s Dilemma”		102
A very behind-the-beat blog on my favorite jazz recordings of 2013.		98
Tedeschi Trucks Band – Part 2: A Comparison and a Closer Look		98
Gifted trumpeter-composer Philip Dizack will play three Milwaukee dates		97
Bluegrass inventor Bill Monroe (Sept. 13, 1911-Sept. 9, 1996) Springs a Surprise		95
“Trains That Passed in the Night” — How photographer O. Winston Link told a classic American story		94
Discovering the black community’s role in the Underground Railroad’s “Hidden History”		92
Political Call and Response and The Falling Man Who Still Haunts		90
Guitarist Manty Ellis tells all about Milwaukee jazz back in the day		87
Wisconsin Proud: Shimon and Lindemann reveal courage, commitment and salt-of-earth soul		87
A barely suppressed sneer: The persistence of Dick Cheney’s dark “honor.”		86
Bandleader Maria Schneider walks a wintry tightrope over her jazz success		81
They’ve got the back of the Man in Black: Johnny Cash		81
Trumpeter Russ Johnson opens new vistas in jazz conversation		80
Photos That Made History and Make You Remember		80
Eagle Wings and Byrd Calls, and a Gust of Defiantly Mystical Romanticism		79
Stepping Inside the Outside the Box New Music Festival		78
Coltrane comes home, to find his deepest or his most far-flung self?		77
Robert Hilburn’s “Johnny Cash: The Life” feels like a definitive biography		76
It’s spring and jazz is busting out all over in Milwaukee		74
Drummer-composer Devin Drobka harbors dreams for a surviving world in “Bell Dance Songs”		74
Masterpieces born of rebellion: from Van Gogh to Pollock at the Milwaukee Art Museum		73
My Best Jazz Experiences of 2012 (in memory of James Hazard)		71
My book “Voices in the River: The Jazz Message to Democracy” gets a pre-published airing		70
The Perpetual Adolescence of Match.com: Social Network Bans Moby-Dick		69
American Players Theatre’s Sarah Day makes Didion’s devastating “Year” magical		69
Antler reaches for sky-born ideas and touches people down here		68
Stemper’s “Persistence of Honor” speaks volumes in pure music		67
Critic Gary Giddins scurries up the masthead of The Pequod. What do you think of Moby-Dick?		65
The Tedeschi Trucks Band: As Timeless as the Red Rocks of Colorado		65
“Edward Curtis and the Vanishing Race,” two more memorable samples		64
Recent Hauntings: Does American Democracy Stand a Ghost of a Chance?		63
Pondering Jesus Christ’s birth, death and “immaculate reconception,” via Lawrence Ferlinghetti		63
Charles Woodson: A Poster Boy for Packer Ageism? — Part 2		61
Thoreau on newsworthiness/ Environmental writing anthology		60
Singer Jackie Allen’s Sophistication and Soul comes home to Milwaukee		60
Under Richard Thompson’s spell: From tragic loss to boyish wisdom		60
Riding with another African American as “guilty” as Trayvon Martin, and Pip		60
Grammy-winning trumpeter Brian Lynch salutes unsung heroes of his art		58
Edo de Waart records Mahler/Harvey Taylor’s new trumpeting		58
Night Thoughts of a Baffled Humanist: Marilynne Robinson		57
Delving into the Depths of Trump the Stump — a comment and a visual image		57
The original Milwaukee Jazz Gallery’s Shadow and Act		56
Rediscovering a Cezanne Chateau in my Basement		55
Titian’s “Christ (the Humanist) and the Adulteress”		54
Out There in the Life and Time of Dave Brubeck (1920-2012)		53
And a few more big jazz dates for Jazz Appreciation Month		53
Aaron Rodgers is finally getting a little more subtle with his comedy		52
Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair. Hover through the Fog and Filthy Air!		51
Looking again at how the great Italian painter Titian understood ancient times, and ours		50
Why Gore Vidal (1925-2012) Still Matters		50
Levon Helm and The Band: A Speculative Fictional Fragment and a Tribute		49
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott still takes his audience down a long, crooked road		48
Plucking Musical Fruit Deep in Appalachia		48
“Revival’s in the air” at Gregg Allman’s Potawatomi concert		48
Alone and live, guitar wizard David Torn’s far-reaching sonic colors recall Pink Floyd and beyond		47
Guy Clark and Darrell Scott: Country Troubadours for Our Times		47
Author Michael Perry reflects on his friendship with two Wisconsin photographers		46
The Adventures of Madame Maggie, or the Return of the Hound of the Baskervilles.		45
Literary critic, writer and professor Ihab Hassan spent a lifetime questing for humanity		45
Sand County Songs: Aldo Leopold’s Words and Ideas Make Beautiful Music.		45
Discovering Ecuador’s color, bounty and majesty in August of 2014		44
A Coen Brothers movie reaches for a rootsy wrinkle in time		42
The Gypsy Lumberjacks are pied pipers who carry a heavy vernacular load like pros		42
“The Journey” — A Deathly Odyssey Teaches Trumpeter David Cooper about Music and Life		41
Climber-skiier-banojist Bill Briggs redux and a correction		41
A review: Charlie Haden and Keith Jarrett’s “Last Dance”		40
On Charlie Sykes, “right to work” in Wisconsin, and the will to power		39
Scott Walker hears from God, or thinks his job creation makes him really special		38
Fave Art Gallery: Sloan, just because		38
Culture Currents moves to the Grand Tetons		37
“The Changin’ Times” and The Drizzly November of Bob Dylan’s Soul		37
Maria Schneider just nabbed 3 Classical Grammies. Deservedly?		37
Jeff (Because) Poniewaz hovers over the freeway		36
Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret” endures a modern-day “Shock Corridor.”		36
A round-trip drive to the Pacific Ocean — Part 3: The SFJAZZ Collective remembers and creates like America could		35
CC readers, introducing (bugle fanfare) the new house cat, Queen Cleopat- er, Chloe		35
The Tedeschi-Trucks Band sets a high bar for American vernacular music		35
Up there in the wind, listen for Johnny Cash — his voice, courage and vision		35
My best albums of 2012 in roots vernacular music		35
James McMurtry’s “Game” reveals more of himself, and of a vividly evoked America		32
A Musical Meditation on Honor and Barack Obama		31
Paul Ryan: The Story of the Peanut Butter-munching Automaton and his Granny		30
“Searching for Sal” — A quest for the hole-in-one, and even more elusive truths.		30
Inside a real wild animal sanctuary		30
Rodney Crowell’s long and winding road back to Emmylou		29
Digging (up) the Year’s Vernaculars, Roots and All		29
Amiri Baraka: A Native Son of Racial Reality and Necessity		28
On 9/11 Anniversary: How Another City Survived its own Fallen Men (Women and Children)		28
If you are what you eat, did I know what I was, and how all that stuff got to be food?		28
Jazz singer Mark Murphy (1932-2015), “The next Sinatra,” did it his way		27
Going back to Townes Van Zandt’s “Proud Mountains,” to anyone’s mountains.		27
Stemper’s “Persistence of Honor” (Preferred performance link) and other upcoming Stemper events		27
John Mellencamp and Stephen King conjur the Ghost Brothers of Darkland County		26
Riding with another African American as “guilty” as Trayvon Martin, and Pip		26
The Flatlanders head for the hills, or was it for a sure-bet payday?		25
Here’s my list of “Books that Mattered the Most to Me.”		25
Is She Safe Because Buddha is on the Smart Phone?		23
“Hope Springs” Bubbles Below the Oscar Radar		23
“Big Miracle”: A video movie gem hidden below an icy Alaskan surface		23
Wit, wisdom, and evocation emanate from Richard Wiegel’s “Wiegel Room”		22
It Must Work is holding a fundraiser for a new well for orphans without water in West Africa		22
Paul Kantner took Jefferson Airplane/Starship and ’60s American rock high and far		22
Wynton Marsalis makes like St. Nick with his bag of traditional and contemporary goodies		22
Is it Jurassic Jazz, or a new creature with a very big sonic footprint?		22
		22
Color this your favorite Jackie Allen album		22
How can the government be everywhere stealing our guns, Senator Lee?		22
P.S. On Trayvon Martin post. Is Zimmerman a provoker or a victim? (Give us The Watchman!)		22
Chicago Yestet gears up with music of empowering politics		21
Did I see yo mammy steal somebody’s Grammy? Kudos and Komplaints		20
A weekend brimming with performing arts choices in Milwaukee		20
A discography: Exploring the jazz orchestra’s wilds and wonders		20
Heyyy watermelon man, the whole world hears you playin’ that jazz!		18
Five Visionary Musicians Travel to the Apocalypse and Beyond		18
		18
Ornette lives! A brief appreciation of Ornette Coleman and “The Cry” (1930-2015)		17
Culture Currents Best Jazz Albums etc. of 2015		17
P.S. On Trayvon Martin post. Is Zimmerman a provoker or a victim? (Give us The Watchman!)		17
Another list of ideas for action from Walter Mosley		17
Wall Street on the Edge: A Deadly Margin for Error		16
Culture Currents adopts a new theme image from the Appalachian mountains		16
While Republicans filibuster (and fiddle), the grieving wall of Newtown may come to life		15
Marquette High grad chronicles how Iowa built a field of dreams for marriage equality		15
Trumpeter Jamie Breiwick plays at his CD release party Saturday at the Jazz Estate		15
More thoughts on Levon Helm from Louie Perez of Los Lobos and a great video		15
Paul Geremia Dwells in the Obscure Depths of the Blues He Brings to Light		15
A Walmart Cinderella Sweeps Up on Desolation Row		15
Does Marion Cotillard forge an anti-Ahab heroine for our time in “Rust and Bone”?		14
Bill Camplin’s “Understory” digs deep, while casting a long shadow on the present		14
A very brief photo essay on driving into Appalachia		14
Another trip, with abundant comic relief from politics and other ugly human doings		13
Thoughts of a saddened and bemused Bee Gees fan from 1967		13
Two days left to see Kandinsky, a great thinker and a greater artist		13
Santana, Trucks and Tedeschi feelin’ good		13
Jeffrey Foucault’s Cold Satellite Transmits a Yeats-like Vibe		13
WORDS, SOUNDS AND IMAGES OF COMMON (AND UNCOMMON) CULTURE		12
You Doubt Ryan Thinks of Humans as Mathematical Digits?		12
American Players Theatre’s Jim DeVita conjures a Shakespeare-haunted murder-mystery		12
Richard Deibenkorn is the summer artist of lush and glaring riches		12
Russell Banks returns to short stories with a great novelist’s sagacity for human nature		11
Los Lobos: The powerful and beautiful social comment of “Gates of Gold”		11
A couple of urgent cultural and political readings of late		11
Grammy-winning composer Maria Schneider on nature, and on the best Gil Evans		11
A Gust of Cooling Emily Dickinson		11
Jonathan Klett’s potent video film “Truth, Communion, Immense Possibility, and Art”		11
Does Walker walk the walk, too? Nah, he just pushes a pile he treats like garbage (cartoon by Kevin Lynch).		11
The Bad Plus go to “the emotional core,” and to ironies and contradictions		10
Culture Currents and No Depression Celebrate the Best Roots Music Albums of 2015		10
Culture Currents is now on Facebook		10
Two Guys and Their Guitars		10
“Black Radio” Radiates Across Milwaukee’s Great Divide		8
The Shepherd Express has provided fact-based reporting to help you make an informed vote.		8
National Literacy Month is here		8
Trumpeter Jamie Breiwick “dreams” of Thelonious Monk’s music		8
The Great Charles Woodson: Poster Boy for Packer Ageism? — Part 2		8
Another dose of too-slippery-to-peg Americana		8
A few thoughts on “Take Five.”		8
Correction: Starting time of Brian Lynch Master Class.		7
What are the most “popular” posts on Culture Currents? Here’s a full list.		7
The Bad Plus adds up a new Rite of Spring with smart subtraction		7
Getting down off your horse and savin’ a little face is as American as apple pie in the face.		7
Marc Eisen finds musicians who nail the Zeitgeist and its Parade of Masqueraders		6
Jonathan Klett’s potent video film “Truth, Communion, Immense Possibility, and Art”		6
Trumpeter Russ Johnson re-imagines Eric Dolphy’s classic album “Out to Lunch!”		5
now vote to recall		4
As Mittor Romsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams…		4
Sam Francis Carried Printmaking into Deep and Beautiful Realms		4
Local labor movement struggles for job creation.		4
James McMurtry talks about the making of “Complicated Game” and more		4
Moby rises again (intact) on match.com		3
Happy About a Hanging?		3
Something to do, to be responsible for.		3
Guitarist David Torn’s far-out and far-in music goes on tour, with a new album		2
The Jefferson Airplane lands on a New York rooftop — inspired ’60s anarchy		2
What’s Scott Walker up to now?		2
#2 (loading title)		2
#1 (loading title)		2
“The Highway Home, Spying Sun”: a photograph and two poems		2
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A still of Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick in Jean-Luc Godard’s film. openculture.com  

http://www.openculture.com/2012/02/jefferson_airplane_wakes_up_new_york_jean-luc_godard_captures_it_1968.html

Here’s a postscript on the significance of the 1967 Jefferson Airplane album After Bathing at Baxter’s, which was highlighted by Howard Mandel in a tribute to airplane visionary Paul Kantner who died on Jan. 28. See my previous blog for his tribute. Facebook friend Alan Ringel supplied us with a link to Jean Luc Godard’s short film of the Jefferson Airplane performing a piece from After Bathing and Baxter’s called “House at Pooneil Corners” — on a rooftop in downtown New York. Ringel says they had just performed the concerts that became the great live album Bless Its Pointed Little Head, which included Baxter’s material.

It’s really striking that they perform this fairly challenging minor-key song for a New York street public. However, the band sets up and sustains a strong groove, and vocalists Grace Slick and Marty Balin heat it up as only they can (Kantner is on the left, in glasses.).

It was too challenging for at least someone, who apparently called the police. They came and broke up the music and proceeded to arrest the members of Jefferson Airplane — arguably America’s best rock band at the time — apparently for disturbing the peace, for playing one song. They may not have had a performance permit for that New York roof. Watch it happen here.

Call it a quintessential moment of inspired 1960s rock anarchy.