Jazz thrives in Milwaukee’s “music alley” a.k.a. Center Street

 

 

Baritone saxophonist Anders Svanoe

ASTRO (Anders Svanoe’s Teleporting Rhythmic Orchestra), Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts, 926 E. Center St., 7 p.m. tonight, May 17, ($10)

The Ethan Philion Quartet, 8-10:30 p.m., May 24, Bar Centro,  ($10)

The Tlalok Rodriguez Quartet. Bar Centro, 8-10:30 p.m. , May 25 (free)

Donna Woodall, Bar Centro, 8-10:30 p.m., May 30

The Anthony Deutsch Trio with Juli Wood, 8-10:30 p.m., Bar Centro, May 31 ($25)

“Since the 1980s, Riverwest has moved like the river it borders—a place of restless culture and commingling social currents.”

That’s how I described my neighborhood for a Shepherd Express survey of distinctive Milwaukee neighborhoods in 2022. Nothing epitomizes that vitality more than E. Center Street, perhaps the commercial heart of Riverwest and pretty close to the geographic center of Milwaukee.

The next few weeks will demonstrate the jazz side of Milwaukee’s “Music Alley.” Center Street boasts at least six music venues, active to varying degrees.

There are comparable weeks of activity at any given time, but I decided that attention must be paid as “Up Jumped Spring,” as jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard might’ve put it. Such artistic buoyancy is important because, after all, “Spring can really hang you up the most,” as another memorable jazz standard puts it.

The space with by far the longest jazz-performance pedigree is The Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts, 926 E. Center, located just one block west of the beginning of Center Street, which is North Humboldt Blvd.

It’s storied history is primarily “centered” on its first incarnation as the Milwaukee Jazz Gallery, which ran from 1978 to 1984, as a bastion of both national and local talent that a Milwaukee venue the size of an intimate nightclub has rarely equaled.

The venue’s new incarnation, the JGCA has endured financial ups and downs as did its namesake and has survived in recent years largely thanks to being a non-profit and its well-marketed art exhibits. But tomorrow night will exemplify the type of cutting-edge jazz and improv-oriented music the center now exemplifies.

A relatively new Madison-based ensemble called ASTRO will perform Friday, May 17 in support of their new album Eclipse, the ensemble is conceptually and somewhat nominally inspired by avant-bandleader and musical visionary Sun Ra and his Myth Science Arkestra, and is led by baritone saxophonist and composer Anders Svanoe (the band’s name is an acronym for Anders Svanoe’s Teleporting Rhythmic Orchestra, which soars to the spirit of the outrageously and blissfully transcendent Sun Ra, whose band was always ably ballasted by powerful if pliant and fleet baritone saxophonists, including Pat Patrick and Danny Thompson for many years.

Eclipse is subtitled State of the Baritone, Volume 6, a concept nominally and somewhat aesthetically derived from the late saxophone giant Joe Henderson’s acclaimed two-volume live recordings State of the Tenor. However, those were magisterial and somewhat summative statements from a restlessly creative artist nearing his autumnal years. Svanoe, by contrast is a substantially younger musician, though clearly in his prime. And he’s absolutely dedicated to advancing the artistry and visibility of his primary axe.

Thus, Svanoe has now produced the sixth volume of albums that strive to define the aesthetics of the still underexposed and appreciated baritone saxophone for the present and future. He does so with all the authority of bop and post-bop masters like Pepper Adams, Nick Brignola, Gary Smulyan, and James Carter, and pathfinders like Ra’s bari travelers, Roscoe Mitchell (with whom he still performs), and fusion pioneer John Surman.

Eclipse opens fearlessly and auspiciously with “Klokka Er Fem,” a brief, flat-out free-jazz kaleidoscope, followed by the funky and propulsive “Whistle Stop,” evoking a bustling train loaded with musicians, like what you’d imagine a traveling swing orchestra might sound like jamming on the rails while on a cross-country concert tour of venues both grungy and glorified. Geoff Brady’s vibes riffing give this driving urgency, while Svanoe’s baritone lends it the sort of hard-driving swiftness that makes such time fly by.

Then Svanoe’s honors another truly historic Madison jazz musician who recently passed away, bassist Richard Davis. The small ensemble blending angular cubism and spacious pointillism with Bobby Hutcherson-esque vibes evokes two classic mid- ’60s modern jazz masterpieces, Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch! and Andrew Hill’s Point of Departure. and Svanoe hardly eases up on meaty free full ensemble interludes. Bassist Davis played on both of these ever-engaging and challenging Blue Note albums, and always proved supportive yet as artful and provocative as any of his co-players.

“Long Road” seems to gaze down to the horizon with an eloquently anthemic theme and highly musical horn riffing keyed by Svanoe’s improvised through-playing and a piquant guitar solo by Louka Patenaude. It lights the way with a reflectively lyrical theme, a piece that’s an album highlight. “Images” is free-playing again and seems to honor saxophonist Albert Ayler, who often used metaphysical beings in his titles, with big heart-bursting tenor sax playing from Pawan Benjamin. The players then seem to wander through the sonic haze, searching for, or perhaps embodying, ghosts of a genuinely spooky sort.

This leads to “Ghosts,” another sumptuous and regally outward-bound theme, promenading through fulsome whole notes, al a Sun Ra at his most magisterial. The processional closing harmonies are astringent yet spacious, almost hallowed.

The album ends, in utter irreverence, with a rock ‘n’ roll riff groove called “Memories” and Svanoe quickly drives it into a burn-out-the gears heat. Trumpeter Jon Ailabouni almost evokes a crazed-elephant trombone bleating in comic grotesquery, as does tenor sax player Benjamin. Guitarist Patenaude adds saber-slashes of crunching power chords, before the sax-heavy front line band brings it home breathlessly.

This should be great stuff live even if the Milwaukee band will be smaller than the album’s medium-sized big band.

Chicago bassist Ethan Philion (background) will lead a quartet including trumpeter Russ Johnson (foreground) next Friday at Bar Centro.

A week from Friday on May 24th, Center Street other leading jazz venue, Bar Centro,, now the area’s premiere place for straight-ahead modern jazz, will present The Ethan Philion Quartet. His name may still not ring bells with many Milwaukee area jazz fans, even if I’ve done my modest part to hop Quasimodo-like onto those resounding ropes.

I was deeply impressed by the Chicago-area bassist-bandleader’s dedication album to a great musical hero. And, for sure, it had been so long since I’d heard great new music in the letter and spirit of mighty Charles Mingus — that I did feel some of Quasimodo’s astonished gratification, when he says of Esmerelda, “She gave me water!”

In fact, I was so struck that I chose Philion’s Meditations on Mingus as the best album of the year in the NPR jazz critics poll bthat year, which I can’t say much more for, especially for a musician I hadn’t heard of before. Here’s my review: https://kevernacular.com/?p=14938

Meditations was recorded with a ten-piece band. Centro will present The Ethan Philion Quartet, featuring Greg Ward on alto saxophone, Russ Johnson on trumpet), and Dana Hall on drums. Their debut album, Gnosis, was released on October 6th on Sunnyside Records and drew praise from DownBeat Magazine, Chicago Jazz Magazine, JAZZIZ and more. Critic Larry Applebaum praised the ensemble’s “deep listening and open-ended solos” in his four-star review of Gnosis in DownBeat.

This should be a heavyweight group that floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. For my money, Chicagoan Ward and Milwaukeean Johnson are currently the best soloists on their respective instruments in the upper Midwest, yes, alto sax and trumpet. As for Philion the player, he was the winner of the 2019 International Society of Bassists Jazz Competition.

If Philion is still mining Mingus, the instrumentation suggests one of the bassist’s greatest small bands, with Eric Dolphy on alto sax and Ted Curson on trumpet, renowned for the 1960 Candid label album Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus.

The ten-spot cover charge might be a steal.

Philion also leads an acoustic trio featuring arrangements of jazz standards in the Nat King Cole Trio style.

*****

Bar Centro will present Tlalok Rodriguez Quartet on Saturday May 25. The bassist-bandleader is a bilingual singer / songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in Milwaukee. I don’t know him but Centro explains “Originally a Chicago native, he comes from a long line of musicians dating back to his great-grandfather who was a composer from Vicente Guerreo, Mexico.  A century later he keeps the family tradition alive through boleros, bossa novas, and vibrant performances channeling the passion of his ancestors.”

Thursday May 30 Centro will feature perhaps Milwaukee’s leading female jazz singer, Donna Woodall, who probably needs less introduction than any live performer in this column. She won the 2023 WAMI for best female vocalist. Period.

Pianist-vocalist Anthony Deutsch

Then on the following Friday May 31st, The Anthony Deutsch Trio with saxophonist-vocalist Juli Wood will play Bar Centro. Deutsch, now based in Viroqua in the Driftless region in Western Wisconsin,  developed in Milwaukee as a sophisticated jazz pianist who also has a powerful streak of nature-loving folk artist in him, in his original songwriting and singing, in the the guise of Father Sky. So expect some sort of vocals from him, but here probably jazzier than folkier. Wood is a versatile and popular performer best known for her long association with singer-bandleader Paul Cebar.

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Dave Bayles Trio reveals fruits of a long residency at the Uptowner Bar on new album

I am re-posting this review because at the time posted it received very minimal traffic for problematic reasons. So the album is still available

The Dave Bayles Trio will have a CD release party at The Uptowner Bar, 1032 E. Center St, from 7-11 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 9.

This album is the fortuitous result of superb veteran musicians working together as a trio almost weekly for two years at the Uptowner Bar in Riverwest. You hear a superb sense of musical dialogue among the three players, though naturally the star is trumpeter Russ Johnson, along with bassist Clay Schaub and drummer-bandleader Dave Bayles. The recording underscores my feelings that Johnson is arguably the most resourceful and supple horn virtuoso in Wisconsin (He also leads a quartet on an excellent new recording, Reveal, on the same label).

There’s no loss in the comparative spareness of instrumentation. Schaub’s opener, “Fitzroy,” quickly engages with a lyrical, playful melody, an almost samba-like groove with Bayles riding the tricky tempo perfectly. Johnson’s trumpet sings and floats, frolicking like a bird in a warm, spiraling breeze. After a melodic bass solo, Bayles delivers a dancing Billy Higgins-like solo. “Third Birthday (this many)” is an affable Ornette Coleman-ish melody. Johnson is a joy to follow through the trickier changes over Bayles’s marvelously sensitive accompaniment.

The Dave Bayles Trio (L-R) — Clay Schaub, bass, Dave Bayles, drums; Russ Johnson, trumpet — perform at the Uptowner Bar. Photo by Kevin Lynch

“Sundogs” sounds like a slow waltz, another well-crafted melody with a deliberate walking bass vamp and more lyrical utterances from Johnson. By contrast, “The Illusionist’s Sister” is up-tempo with Johnson delivering swift but lucid ideas and a bravura closing restatement of the theme. Thelonious Monk’s “Shuffle Boil” is a quirky, staccato theme that fits this band’s aesthetics like a glove. And “Comanche” reveals Schaub’s imaginative composing. A languid, forlorn mood seems to evoke a Native American brave, alone out on a scouting mission, but half lost in his thoughts. Finally, “Waking Hour” captures the sunrise of consciousness from slumber, the pre-caffeine aura, the finally getting-to-it.

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Stream or download Live at the Uptowner on Amazon here.

This review was originally published in The Shepherd Express, here: Live at the Uptowner by Dave Bayles Trio – Shepherd Express

A YouTube recording of “A Tribute to Wayne Shorter” by a Madison jazz sextet brings his often-mysterious music back to life

Wayne Shorter in the era of his celebrated Blue Note recordings

MADISON JAZZ FESTIVAL 2023, Review VOL. 1

This is for anyone who cares about the passing, in the eternal night, of Wayne Shorter. He was a titanic of modern jazz and jazz-fusion, and of American music in general. As with the famous Titanic, there was a certain fatefulness in him, even though he lived to 89. One of his underappreciated albums was Phantom Navigator, and his wife Ana died in 1986, at age 43, in the crash of TWA Flight 880. And his music often seemed to dwell in mystery, not unlike most of the iceberg submerged and waiting for the “unsinkable” ship liner, now once again in our consciousness, due to intrepid if fatefully foolhardy explorers.

The following video’s value is representing a live tribute by a sextet of musicians who handle an intriguing array of Wayne Shorter repertoire with aplomb and dedication as part of the recent Madison Jazz Festival.

The festival, by the way, has evolved to become, in my book, the best Midwestern jazz festival north of the inherently larger Chicago Jazz Festival. These musicians are from the Madison and Milwaukee region, but perform Shorter’s music in a representative manner, as comparable to most any region in America. The concert was at saxophonist-entrepreneur-educator Hanah Jon Taylor’s music venue Café Coda in Madison, which has been one of the Midwest’s hotbeds of such creative and improvisational music for some years now.

Pianist Dave Stoler (left) and bassist John Christensen from the Shorter tribute band. Tribute band photos courtesy Arts + Lit Lab

The tribute event was organized by the Arts + Literature Lab and it covers a discerning array of Shorter’s remarkable oeuvre. It opens with “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum,” one of the uncannily fetching tunes from his masterpiece album of the 1960s, Speak No Evil.

Wayne Shorter’s 1964 acoustic jazz masterpiece, “Speak No Evil.” Bing images

The title admonishment doesn’t mean that Shorter did not fearlessly peer into the eyes of evil and transmute that into music, among his other uncanny feats. Besides the implicit ominousness of that fable-evoking tune, that shadow-toned album includes the pieces “Dance Cadaverous” and “Witch Hunt,” although one suspects Shorter, a Buddhist fascinated with science fiction, was far more intrigued than put off by the “evil” powers of witches. Tenor saxophonist Pawal Benjamin, employing Shorter’s own horn voice, dug into hearty low notes in a solo both meaty and muscular, though not as oblique as Shorter’s would be. Pianist Dave Stoler came in swinging with some Herbie Hancock-like harmonies. The only drawback here was a rather ragged ensemble reading of the theme.

But that cleaned up in the playing of the ensuing tune, “Lost,” from an underappreciated Blue Note album The Soothsayer. Stoler plays tough here, riding the changes with block chords, really digging into this minor-key mood. As with the first tune, “Lost” has marvelously dense but resounding harmony in the ensemble line, rendering it indelible to memory.

The front line of the Wayne Shorter tribute band included (L-R) trumpeter Russ Johnson, tenor saxophonist Pawal Benjamin, and alto saxophonist Clay Lyons.

The band ensues with their own take on “Nefertiti,” recorded with the Miles Davis Quintet. The original was atypical in that it repeats the sighing, languid theme over and over, with no front-line solos, only drummer Tony Williams sustaining the tune with an explosive solo throughout, so you are constantly listening to his drumming as the theme turns mantra-like. Here the band allowed for a Benjamin tenor solo that slices up the theme nicely while drummer Wayne Saltzman digs into the Williams-esque rock-shuffle feel while striving to approximate the incendiary energy of a drummer who made legend of himself with Miles Davis even in his late teens.

Here Stoler also delivers very Hancock-like block chords and octaves, tart and pungent but still pretty, a fine-honed power.

The ensuing tune, “The Big Push,” also from The Soothsayer, has harmonies I could eat for dinner, as protein-packed as they are, and another oddly engaging melody. About Shorter’s harmonies: Each has a story-telling quality, with a layered ensemble chord a chiaroscuroed image in itself, and the change sequences cast suspense and weird beauty in equal measure.

I’ll touch on the second set somewhat more briefly: a highlight was Shorter’s intense yet atmospheric “Sanctuary,” written for Miles Davis’s slightly satanic yet spiritual album of controversial jazz fusion, Bitches Brew from 1970. It has a loping, free-ish melancholy contour, and here trumpeter Russ Johnson shone — the style is his wheelhouse, unfettered but well-formed improv.

Tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter with trumpeter Miles Davis in the band that produced “Sanctuary,” from the seminal jazz fusion album “Bitches Brew,” which included bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette. Courtesy www.musicajazz.it/festival-e-concerti

The band then shifted back to the Shorter Blue Notes with “El Gaucho,” another deceptively simple theme from the album Adam’s Apple with a characteristically resonating harmonic structure.

The band encores with, for Shorter, comparative ear candy. The rollicking “Yes or No” is among the composer’s most ingratiating and invigorating melodies and saxophonist Benjamin is cooking the hard-bop brew here, which could have been a Jazz Messengers tune, from Shorter’s days as musical director of that band. But the title’s implicit dialectic is key; this is from the album JuJu, by which time Shorter’s was conceptually delving into paradoxical African powers beyond the ordinary.

Such tension-filled qualities permeated the musical particulars of his writing and soloing style and helped to sustain the intrigue of several generations of jazz musicians as represented here.

So, this critical preview is to help document what you hear but, most of all, to encourage you to sit down, buckle up in the safari jeep, and follow this band longer than you might otherwise, on this Shorter sojourn:

(16) Tribute to Wayne Shorter at Cafe CODA – YouTube

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A jazz giant speaks to our times on Ethan Philion’s “Meditations on Mingus”

Album review: Ethan Philion Meditations on Mingus (Sunnyside)

Ethan Philion will present the full-ensemble “Meditations on Mingus” at the Chicago Jazz Festival on Sept. 2, and at the North Street Cabaret in Madison on Sept. 10, and a quartet version at Bar Centro in Milwaukee on Sept. 11.

Imagine a sculptor laboring over the Mount Rushmore of modern jazz giants and, somehow, forgetting about Charles Mingus. Through some boisterous psychic phenomenon, Mingus would barge into the artist’s consciousness and muscle his way into the layout of great granite figures. Mingus had a personality as large as his talents, and his social consciousness. These qualities all arise in a simmering stew called Meditations on Mingus by Chicago bassist-arranger and bandleader Ethan Philion.

Key to this project’s accomplishment is Philion understanding how pointedly Mingus’s 1960s music addresses America’s open societal wounds and flaws of today. This 10-piece band (including Milwaukee trumpeter Russ Johnson) bristles, wails, and swings like a 10-headed-demon inspired by the jazz gods. Mingus emerged from jazz god Ellington, retaining The Duke’s gifts for lyricism and fine detail. Yet Mingus upped the quotient of fiery, chest-pounding large-ensemble jazz.

Ethan Philion’s Mingus Big Band live at the Green Mill in Chicago. Courtesy ethanpilion.com

For example, on the opening “Once Upon a Time in a Holding Corporation called Old America,” the music ripples and reaches for the sky while keeping its collective feet deep in the funky earth. It evokes the profound income inequality that is worse today than ever. “Haitian Fight Song” boils and stomps, exemplifying how Mingus horn ensembles could mutate into one strangely beautiful creature of defiance.

“Pithecanthropus Erectus” is a striking musical portrait of homo sapiens rising from ape to human; it’s superbly orchestrated myriad voices, from cacophony to harmonized reason (and back), comments on the struggles of “man” to truly achieve humanity. Philion’s liner notes include an ominous Mingus quote to help signify the tune: “His own failure to realize the inevitable emancipation of those he sought to enslave…deny him not only the right of ever being a man, but finally destroy him completely.”

Bassist-arranger-bandleader Ethan Philion with trumpeter Victor Garcia. Courtesy Ethan Philion

Blues-infused, mournful and dramatic, “Meditation on a Pair of Wire Cutters” is a vivid small-picture evocation of a man’s incarceration, strengthened and sustained by dreams of freedom.

By contrast, “Remember Rockefeller at Attica,” is an ironically titled big picture on prison’s institutional racism. In 1971, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller notoriously rejected a requested visit to Attica Prison to address the black inmates’ grievances, thus spurring a prison uprising, which 1,000 white state troopers smashed by killing 33 inmates and 10 hostages. President Richard Nixon spun the tragedy as a triumph of governmental justice. Medical examiners confirmed that all but the deaths of one officer and three inmates were caused by law enforcement gunfire.[1][10] The New York Times writer Fred Ferretti said the rebellion concluded in “mass deaths that four days of taut negotiations had sought to avert”. The Attica Uprising has been described as a historical event in the prisoners’ rights movement.

Throughout Meditations, Philion conveys Mingus’s brilliance with tight-yet-liberated ensembles, bounding with call-and-response passages, and an inner fire that spurs soloists to heights of fire and ardor (especially alto sax player Rajiv Halim, on the bracing “Prayer for Passive Resistance”).

In referring back to the music as I wrote this, I’m continually captivated by the richness of the compositions, arrangements and the colorful soloists. Jazz doesn’t get any better.

Remember Rockefeller, sure, but remember Mingus indeed – hearing this album he’s as alive as a man breathing right down your neck.

Charles Mingus. Courtesy New England Conservatory of Music

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This review was originally published in shorter form in The Shepherd Express, here: Mingus music review

For information on, and to purchase, this album, visit: https://ethanphilion.com/home

 

 

 

 

 

Milwaukee’s premiere trumpeter-composer Russ Johnson to play Chicago Jazz Festival September 2

  • Trumpeter-bandleader Russ Johnson. Courtesy Chicago Reader
  • Let’s give it up for Milwaukee trumpeter (Shorewood resident) Russ Johnson, who may be the finest jazz trumpeter living in the upper Midwest. He will be leading a quartet at Chicago Jazz Festival on at 1:50 p.m., Saturday, September 2 at the Von Freeman Pavilion, named for legendary Chicago saxophonist.
  • You can catch Russ in town regularly, as he plays most Tuesday evenings in the Dave Bayles Trio at the uptown or Tavern, at the corner of Humboldt and center Street, in Riverwest.
  • The Russ Johnson Quartet will do a warm-up for the Chicago fest at The Sugar Maple, 441 E. Lincoln Ave, at 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 27 in Bay View. The quartet includes Johnson, violinist Mark Feldman, bassist Ethan Philion and drummer Tim Daisy.
  • Mark Feldman. Courtesy Soapbox Gallery
  • Feldman is a vastly experienced musician as a symphony orchestra player and has played with country stars, and a wide array of jazz and avant-garde musicians. including recording with Michael Brecker, Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano, and Chris Potter.
  • Though I haven’t heard Philion, he’s notable as the leader of a new Sunnyside recording Meditations on Mingus, leading a ten-piece band in a sequence of substantial Charles Mingus compositions. Johnson is a trumpeter on that recording,
  • Johnson says his festival quartet is also recording this fall, and that a prominent European label has already expressed interest.
  • Don’t miss the quartet in Milwaukee, if you can’t make it for the big Chicago event.
  • The Chicago Jazz Festival, sponsored by the city and others, is still a free event, though you need tickets to some events.
  • At bottom is one more recommendation for the fest, and a link to the fest schedule, ticketing and website.
  • (FWIW, here’s my review of Johnson’s 2014 album Meeting Point) :

    Trumpeter Russ Johnson opens new vistas in jazz conversation

  • September 2 Chicago Jazz Festival 
  • Von Freeman Pavilion (North Promenade)
  • 11:30am-12:25pm – Regina Harris Baiocchi (Jazz Institute of Chicago’s New Works, Fresh Voices)
  • 12:40-1:35pm – Arman Sangalang Quartet
  • 1:50-2:45pm – Russ Johnson Quartet
  • 3:00-4:00pm  – Adam O’Farrill’s Stranger Days

Here’s a YouTube of a set of the quartet, recorded live in March:

  • Milwaukee trumpeter Russ Johnson at the Uptowner Tavern with the Dave Bayles Trio (above and below) Photos by Kevin Lynch
  • Another recommendation for the Chicago Jazz Festival is the alto saxophonist-composer Miguel Zenon who’s riding his new superb recording Musica De Las Americas.
  • He performs at 8 p.m. in Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph St., on Sunday, September 3.
  • Miguel Zenon. Courtesy Wikipedia
  • The album further deepens his creative resourcing of his Puerto Rican music roots, this time with all originals rather than doing historic reclamation of underexposed Puerto Rican composers as he’s done several times in recent years.
  • His work amounts to a profound excavation and bridging of the Latin connection in music of the Americas.
  • Plus, Zenon has as dynamically charged and cohesive a quartet, including Luis Perdomo one of my favorite pianists, as you’ll hear in jazz. Musica De Las Americas is augmented by the percussion and vocal quartet Los Pleneros De La Cresta.
  • Zenon’s new music is pensive, probing, lyrical and exhilarating, by turns. It raises and musically waves a rippling flag of identity while conveying that identity’s universality as a musical language.
  • Here’s a link to the festival info: Chicago Jazz Festival 2022

 

Dave Bayles leads us down the road not taken

The musicians tip jar, accompanied by The Dave Bayles Trio, at The Uptowner Bar. All photos by Kevin Lynch

THE DAVE BAYLES TRIO AT THE UPTOWNER BAR, EVERY TUESDAY

THE DAVE BAYLES QUARTET AT RIVERWEST PIZZA, FRIDAY, JULY 8

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“I took the one less traveled by/ And that has made all the difference.” – Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken.”

 

Dave Bayles is something of a poet of the drums. Since the drums are the most fundamental of instruments in jazz, and in most African-American vernacular musics, that sort of makes him a poet of musical essences. You can hear and feel the magnetic power of his verse-like cadences in the propulsive swing he generates with other musicians.

This skill is so well established that he’s arguably Wisconsin’s premiere straight-ahead jazz drummer. He’s best-known as the long-time drummer of the all-star sextet We Six. That band comprises faculty of the Milwaukee Jazz Institute, where Bayles is principal percussion instructor. For many years, Bayles has also driven the engine of The Dave Stoler Trio, led by the powerhouse Madison pianist. He’s also backed up many big jazz names, including Peter Bernstein, Rick Germanson, Benny Golson, Slide Hampton, Brian Lynch, Brother Jack McDuff, Charles McPherson, Melvin Rhyne, and Phil Woods. Bayles is also now drumming for the resurrected Toty Ramos Latin Jazz Sextet, which played at Riverwest Pizza last week.

 

Drummer-bandleader Dave Bayles at The Uptowner

However, all that implies a well-trod path, gilded with justifiable esteem, along which the heartbeat of modern mainstream jazz strides. Fair enough.

And yet, quiet as it’s kept, the drummer-bandleader has led THE DAVE BAYLES TRIO, an intimate and compulsively exploratory trio gig through the backroads of the pandemic to the present – every Tuesday night at The Uptowner Bar, on the corner of Humboldt Boulevard and Center Street in Milwaukee.

The Dave Bayles Trio, (L-R) Russ Johnson, trumpet; Dave Bayles, drums; Clay Schaub, Bass.

“It is a delightful, creative group that I thoroughly enjoy,” Bayles muses modestly. Yet the trio has built much intrepid synchronicity along the road not taken. They plan on releasing a live album recorded at The Uptowner. 

The regular trio includes the redoubtable and elastically adaptable bassist Clay Schaub. Out front is Russ Johnson, IMO the Midwest’s most powerfully creative and masterful trumpeter – north of Chicago’s Wadada Leo Smith and Marquis Hill, who now actually spend most of their time on the East Coast.(p.s. This Tuesday, July 12, Johnson and Schaub will be out of town. They will be replaced for this week by alto saxophonist Clay Lyons and bassist Doug Hayes.)

Russ Johnson at The Uptowner

So, if you stop by on a Tuesday night, you’ll begin to sense the phenomenon of talent and creative verve that sustains Johnson’s pre-eminence, which he reasserted recently in Madison in an all-star jam session led by the brilliant pianist-composer Johannes Wallmann, to celebrate the retirement of two veteran and beloved Madison jazz radio programmers. That night, Johnson’s trumpet blistered through the firewall of wonder when the music called out for it, and sang seductively at other times.

The informal vibe of The Uptowner is conductive to experimentation and unfettered daring, to venturing a few huge steps beyond.

So, if you want a taste of what the great jazz writer Whitney Balliett once called “the sound of surprise,” stop on by.

The venerable building that houses The Uptowner recently had its roof replaced, and Bayles relates that “someone said that one night we blew the roof off the joint.” Hyperbole? It may not be so improbable. This ship is full-steam ahead. Bayles asserts, “The gig will be going on until the building falls down.”

Here are a few photos of the group at The Uptowner, “workin’ and steamin’ ” into a stratosphere that’s a free ride for all patrons.

Ah, but don’t forget the musicians tip jar.

 

 

THE DAVE BAYLES QUARTET AT RIVERWEST PIZZA: And yet, now that summer is high, Bayles is about to debut a new quartet outdoors, on the beguiling terrace of Riverwest Pizza, 932 E. Wright Street, from 6 to 9 p.m. this Friday, July 8. This quartet features singer Pamela York, saxophonist Chris Medsen, and bassist Jeff Hamann. Bayles hopes to continue this gig, though at intervals less frequent than his trio at The Uptowner.

Regardless, this quartet promises to be a breath of fresh air, in the best sense.

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Madison composer-arranger Paul Dietrich’s music looks backward and forward, like sonic cinema

Paul Dietrich Jazz Ensemble – Forward *

In essence, Maria Schneider brought native Minnesota landscape and beyond to the Gil Evans orchestral impression. To stunning effect, Madison’s Paul Dietrich has done as much for Wisconsin vistas. Akin to Schneider, hear sumptuous orchestral shapes draped over ostinatos or vamps, or elegantly unfolding chord changes. Brilliant accordionist Gary Versace offers Grammy-winning Schneider slightly richer textures. By contrast, Dietrich employs a wordless female soprano voice, perhaps imported from Pat Metheny’s ensemble concept. 

Composer-arranger-trumpeter Paul Dietrich (left) conducts his jazz ensemble in the recording session for the album “Forward.” Courtesy youtube.com

Forward ranks a mere notch below Schneider’s best album or two. Yep, it’s that good, bolstered by ace soloists among its Chicago-area and Southern Wisconsin musicians. On opener “Rush,” Milwaukee trumpeter Russ Johnson’s warm, stately lyricism rides swelling backdrops and kicking boosts from Clarence Penn, Schneider’s own band drummer. It takes it’s time, building with Tony Barba’s climbing-to-climax tenor sax, but the tune is a rush.

“Settle” suggests history, a homestead, putting down roots, embracing the future with quiet courage. Altoist Greg Ward intimates a family-like vibe of circling tenderness.

The closing “Forward” suite (titled for the state’s motto) first evokes, in playful horn counterpoint, Dietrich’s vibrant hometown of Ripon. 1

“I can return to my hometown..and feel right at home even as life experiences change my perception of the things around me,” Dietrich comments in the album liner notes.  Then “Snow,” a tone poem of enveloping majesty, glows in contours of shade and light. Ward’s ardent soloing melts the snow closer to “Like Water” (a previous tune’s title).

“Roads” unfolds through more nifty crisscross writing, then sequencing of the same phrases among ensemble sections, and Dustin Lorenzi’s burnished, Stan Getz-like tenor peals.

Milwaukee trumpeter Russ Johnson (foreground, left) is among the strong soloists amid Dietrich’s deftly interactive ensemble, in this recording session scene. Courtesy Isthmus.

The suite closes with the poignantly anthemic “Green Fields,” written for the late Fred Sturm, a brilliant Appleton composer and trombonist (with the acclaimed jazz-fusion group Matrix) and mentor to Dietrich and many musicians. His protege’s own trumpet here sounds like cherished memory.

“The former department chair at Lawrence University, my alma mater, remains the most important teacher I ever had,” Dietrich notes. “He was unfairly taken too young by cancer in 2014…his love of music and his radiant (and mischievous) personality left an indelible mark on all who knew him.” Here, the Schneider connection echoes again, as Sturm edited the published scores for Schneider’s album Evanesence.

For all the album’s backwards-glancing reflection and sense of place, the theme of “forward” keeps the listener attuned to Dietrich’s long, winding road over the horizon.

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This review was first published in slightly shorter form in The Shepherd Express: https://shepherdexpress.com/music/album-reviews/forward-by-paul-dietrich-jazz-ensemble-with-clarence-penn/

  • photo of Forward album cover courtesy Jazz Trails

1 The Greater Madison Jazz Consortium commissioned Dietrich to write the Forward suite. The organization supports a wide range of jazz activities and ventures in the Capitol city. “The idea was to write music in a modern big band jazz style that represented my personal images and perceptions of my home state, Wisconsin,” Dietrich writes.  

Why should we care about Miles Davis? New biopic, live tribute, local thoughts

Portrait of US jazz trumpet player Miles Davis taken 06 July 1991 in Paris. Portrait du trompettiste de jazz Miles Davis pris lors d'un concert le 06 juillet 1991 à la Halle de la Villette à Paris. (Photo credit should read PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP/GettyImages)

Portrait of US jazz trumpet player Miles Davis taken 06 July 1991 in Paris.
Portrait du trompettiste de jazz Miles Davis pris lors d’un concert le 06 juillet 1991 à la Halle de la Villette à Paris. (Photo credit PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP/GettyImages)

Why care?

Miles Davis dwells at, and helped create, the root thrust of many music vernaculars of the 20th century — from vintage bop with Bird, to purring like a breeze-cooled cat in Birth of the Cool, to kicking in the blues ‘n’ back beat of workin’, walkin’ hard-bop with Trane, to modal jazz trance with Kind of Blue, to cutting-edge modern slash with his second great quintet, to polyrhythmic Afro-fusion with Bitches Brew, to deep street funk and proto-hip-hop ‘tude with On the Corner. And he always gave us the essence of personal style, as an expression of American individuality and romance. Whew.

Well, that’s by way of introduction to this radio story. Thanks to 88.9 Radio Milwaukee’s Glenn Kleiman and trumpeter Jamie Breiwick for including me in this fine feature. http://radiomilwaukee.org/discover-music/still-care-miles-davis/

The feature, with interviews of Breiwick and me is hooked on Don Cheadle’s highly-anticipated biographical film about Miles Davis Miles Ahead, and “A Tribute to Miles Davis,” (a supper club edition) a live concert event at Company Brewing, 735 E. Center St, Milwaukee, at 9:30 p.m. on April 15. The event is organized by and features saxophonist Jay Anderson along with trumpeter Russ Johnson, pianist Mark Davis, bassist Ethan Bender, and drummer Mitch Shiner. This is an excellent ensemble event, featuring music by and associated with Miles, not to be missed: https://www.facebook.com/events/1671208159798613/

Also, here is a link to my review of the 1983 Miles Davis concert in Milwaukee, for The Milwaukee Journal:https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19830218&id=XWgaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4ykEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4166,4949562&hl=en