“A World of Piano” in our Corner of the Universe

“There are eighty-eight keys on a piano and within that, an entire universe,” wrote pianist and writer James Rhodes. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Valley audiences heard three distinct points in the piano macrocosm, as Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares presented “A World of Piano” at the Arts Trust in Northampton. Lafayette Gilchrist (Nov. 17), Ron Stabinsky (Nov. 18) and Marilyn Crispell (Nov. 19) each gave breathtaking solo recitals, filled with intrepid improvisation at all levels of intensity and complexity.

“A World of Piano” was a revival of a series I first produced for the Northampton Center for the Arts in 1995 (Jaki Byard, Stanley Cowell, Paul Bley) and every year from 2003 to 2012. After a final concert by Dave Burrell in 2013, the Center lost their Old School Commons space and the series went dormant. Until now. Kelly Silliman, Program Director of NCA, was excited to partner with Jazz Shares to bring the series back to life, and so we began the further exploration of the piano-sphere.

I had known Lafayette Gilchrist primarily through his work with the great tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist David Murray, with whom he has worked since the turn of the century. “He plucked me from obscurity,” Gilchrist told me. The long time Baltimore resident played with rhythmic assurance in multiple styles, much of it imbued with the blues. His playing brought to mind Jaki Byard and Dave Burrell, two expansive pianists who draw from the entire history of jazz. I loved his tendency to play a phrase then stop for a split second, adding drama and giving our ears a chance to catch up. It made me think of Artur Schnabel’s words, “The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes – ah, that is where the art resides!” His program of originals was full of ear catching melody drawn from the piano lineage. Gilchrist is a beautiful soul, open and easy, and he made lots of friends on his first tour through New England, which also included stops in Boston and Portland, Maine. Thanks to jazz protector Ann Braithwaite for her help in organizing his visit.

Ron Stabinsky, unfamiliar to the vast majority of concertgoers, is best known in the jazz world for his work with avant-garde trumpeter Peter Evans and Moppa Elliot’s ensemble, Mostly Other People Do the Killing. For the past four years, he has been a member of the influential rock band the Meat Puppets, and is one of the most in-demand classical pianists in central Pennsylvania. Stabinsky, who possesses enormous technical skill and plays convincingly in many genres, is a charming and disarming music nerd. From the stage, he told us he was going to improvise like he does at home, and not like he is performing for an audience. He seemed to be able to play whatever was in his head, which was by turns, florid, eruptive, swinging and emotive. His work straddled contemporary music, romantic-period classical, blues, swing and other styles. He ended the program by playing two of his favorites: Horace Silver’s “Peace” and Thelonious Monk’s “Introspection”. Stabinsky is a long-time fan of “A World of Piano”, having made the four-hour trip from his home near Scranton to see pianists Matthew Shipp, Cooper Moore and Dave Burrell, along with his Northampton friend, Dick Moulding. “I really can’t put into words how deeply I enjoyed playing on this reintroduction of my favorite piano series,” Stabinsky wrote. Even though his visit was short, (he returned home after the show for an early Puccini rehearsal), the chance to meet his partner Mary, and his friend Doug, gave us a chance to get some insight into a really nice, very talented individual.

Marilyn Crispell is also a fan of the piano series. She played it in 2004, and for the last two years she’s been a dues-paying member of Jazz Shares. Her protean talent was on display at 33 Hawley St., as she wowed a crowd of 75 with her piano explosions. Shareholder Ron Freshley told me he felt the vibrations through his chair. But there were also periods of aching beauty, reinforcing Frederick Chopin’s insight that, “After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” Her improvisations seemed fully formed, as coherent as any written music, with ideas coming in torrents. Crispell is a self-effacing person. Her hair, like that of her upstate New York neighbor Carla Bley, obscured her face while she played. Her preference to angle the piano and lower the stage lights, emphasized her modesty. When Jazz Shares live streamed her trio, Dreamstruck in October, 2020, she insisted the cameras focus on her hands. Long-time Jazz Shares member Julie Orfirer’s solution to the lack of “face time”: “I just closed my eyes and followed the paths.”I love that Crispell’s demure on stage demeanor sits so comfortably with her loud, disruptive playing. Priscilla Page and I are so happy to call her a friend.

Gilchrist and Crispell stayed at chez Siegel/Page, and Jazz Shares board members Nancy Goldstein and Marta Ostapuik had the musicians in their homes for delicious pre-concert meals. We are western Mass. ambassadors, ensuring our region remains a welcoming place for cutting edge creative musicians, and their music. Three concerts in three days gave us a needed boost of piano bliss, which we hope to continue annually.

The Griots Speak in Holyoke

William Parker is the most important jazz musician to emerge in the last 40 years. That view is entirely disputable, of course, and subject to all kinds of varied responses. But that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.

So when someone suggests I produce a concert that includes Parker, I almost always say “yes”. The Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares event on October 29 at the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke, featuring The Griots Speak, was the 14th time I’ve produced the great bass player live. If you add his Valley appearances under Michael Ehler’s aegis starting in the mid-1990s, the number of times Parker has performed for Valley audiences exceeds two dozen.

Parker was the lynchpin that held the Griots together, just as he’s been the coalescing force within New York’s creative music scene since the 1980s. On Saturday, Parker’s mates were underground legend Juma Sultan (percussion), NY stalwart Daniel Carter (saxophone, flute, trumpet, piano) and the Valley’s own Charlie Apicella (guitar, percussion). The pairing was the brainchild of Apicella, who put together the idea after meeting Sultan’s daughter through the music education organization, The Blues and Beyond.

Parker turns 71 years old in January, so now is the right time to step back, assess and give praise. It’s hard to underestimate Parker’s influence as a player, organizer and friend. He’s a phenomenal bassist, whose work with Cecil Taylor, David S Ware, Charles Gayle, Matthew Shipp and Peter Brötzmann is well documented. He has 75 recordings as a leader or co-leader, where he plays donson’goni, shakuhachi and other non-western string and wind instruments, in addition to composing and playing bass. Taken together his music paints a portrait of an expansive soul, who despite his free-jazz cred, is blues rooted and grounded in deep, deep swing.

Parker’s biography, “Universal Tonality: The Life and Music of William Parker”, by Cisco Bradley, was just published, and Parker’s own writing, including “Who Owns Music?” and “Conversations”, is both profound and straightforward, the way enlightened beings do it. He and his wife, Patricia Nicholson, have built Arts for Art (which includes the Vision Festival) into a national model for musician-centered presenting, all while quietly helping hundreds of musicians and others in need. William Parker is a spirit driven pied piper, who put a whole music on his back and carried it across a period of steep financial decline.

At Wistariahurst, Parker’s bass lines, insistent, forceful, constantly shifting and always swinging, served as the evening’s anchor. He gave the audience something we could hang our hats on, and provided the band a direction, a tonal center, and a set of rhythms to work with. If not for him, the music would have meandered off the proverbial cliff.

There was no written material, and except for Parker’s sturdy backbone, no real signposts guiding the music. Sultan’s playing, on hand percussion and a large, African two-headed drum, was elemental and straightforward. Carter’s work on flute, tenor sax and trumpet added a tasty top that provided a modicum of melody, while Apicella switched between a madal drum, an instrument integral to Nepalese folk music, various bells and shakers, and electric guitar.

With no one particular in charge, the music often sounded unmoored, wandering without forward momentum, listing from side to side.

The presence of 80 year old Juma Sultan was a cause for celebration. Sultan was a close associate of Jimi Hendrix, performing with him at Woodstock and appearing on a dozen recordings with the great guitarist. His work on bass and percussion in the 1970s with his Aboriginal Music Society and others, is collected on a beautiful Eremite Records box set, Father of Origin.

Carter, 76, has a long history with Parker. He was on Parker’s first record as a leader, In Search of the Mystery Peace (1980), and they have played together since the late-1970s in the co-operative quartet, Other Dimensions in Music. Carter shows up on Thurston Moore, Yoko Ono and Yo La Tango records, and has a fondness for western Mass that was cultivated when he had a college girlfriend at Smith.

At the end, the 80 people crowded into the elegant Music Room at Wistariahurst stood to applaud, as much to acknowledge more than 150 years of collective experience, as to show appreciation for this one night only musical experiment.

Twisting Trails of Career: Reggie Nicholson Brass Concept

The jazz world is built on the backs of musicians we used to call “journeymen”, artists who have learned their craft, paid their dues, and perfected their skills playing modest gigs of many types. They are the backbone of this music. The drummer and composer Reggie Nicholson, who led a wonderful quintet this past Saturday, is one such musician. His Brass Concept: James Zollar, trumpet, Marshall Sealy, French horn, Steve Swell, trombone, and Joseph Daley, tuba, shared an hour of meaty, alt-kilter music with a lucky few at the Community Music School of Springfield on October 15.

“Journeyman” is a dated (and gender-bound) term of faint praise. But I think of those freelancers and side persons, many of them drummers and bassists, as the connective tissue of the music, circulating stories and innovations from band to band.

Nicholson is a long-time member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a Black-centered Chicago institution formed in the 1960s, brilliantly documented by George Lewis in “A Power Stronger Than Itself”. He has performed with AACM luminaries like Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton and Amina Claudine Myers, and anchored bands led by Myra Melford, Leroy Jenkins, Fay Victor and Oliver Lake. He is the epitome of the talented, unsung musician who makes everyone around him sound better. It’s always cause for celebration when someone who has so ably served others is spotlighted.

Nicholson has absorbed a founding principle of the AACM: to compose and perform original music that expands the tradition. His mastery of other instruments (he played marimba on Saturday) and his embrace of interesting organizing principles (he also leads his Percussion Concept), are in keeping with AACM precepts.

Brass ensembles have a long history in European classical music, and are frequently employed in sacred and patriotic settings. Nicholson brings a risk-taking attitude to the genre, creating stimulating soundscapes that are both mellifluous and knotty. The sound was rarely loud, never brash, and often beautifully rounded, but filled with complicated counterpoint and dense chords. Most of the material was drawn from his 2009 recording, Surreal Feel, which featured Zollar and Daley. Eschewing swing convention and easy hooks, the music was highly composed, but left sections where one, two or three voices improvised. On pieces like “Celestials”, “Surreal Feel” and “Local Express”, I heard compositional echoes of Henry Threadgill, the Pulitzer Prize winning composer who Nicholson worked with in the mid-80s.

Like Nicholson, the brass section are all veterans with decades of varied experience, including as leaders. They read down complicated charts and soloed with style and enthusiasm. Trumpeter James Zollar, proud brother of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the founder of Urban Bush Women,was featured in Robert Altman’s film “Kansas City” and Madonna’s video “My Baby’s Got a Secret”, and has played in hundreds of settings with Cecil McBee, Don Byron, Marty Ehrlich and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, among others. He seemed to lightly direct his brass brethren through Nicholson’s written thickets, and used multiple mutes to add texture and humor.

Marshall Sealy also used a mute, a rarity for the French horn, given its large bell. His career includes work in show orchestras (Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis, Jr., Melba Moore), pit orchestras (Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey, Broadway productions of Lion King, Beauty & the Beast) and TV orchestras (Emmy and Grammy Awards). He has performed with Max Roach, Steve Coleman, Lester Bowie and Ray Charles, taught at Berklee College of Music and was the Director of Music at the Harlem School of the Arts.

Steve Swell is an old friend who produced a memorable Jazz Shares concert in Northampton with his Kende Dreams on March 13, 2020, just as the curtain closed on live performance. Other notable Valley Swell-sightings include a 2016 concert at Hampshire College, and big band work under Magic Triangle auspices with William Parker’s Little Huey Orchestra, Jemeel Moondoc’s Jus’ Grew Orchestra and Alan Silva’s Celestrial Communication Orchestra. His five minute unaccompanied solo, full of gutbucket and extended vocabulary, was some of the most bluesy of the evening.

Joe Daley has been a hero of mine since I heard him in Sam Rivers’ great small groups of the 1970s. His large ensemble releases of the last decade: The Seven Deadly Sins, The Seven Heavenly Virtues and Portraits: Wind, Thunder and Love, are towering achievements, which he hopes to tour in celebration of his 75th birthday in 2024. His playing added plenty of bottom, but I wish Nicholson had made room for him to rip some groove at some point.

There are musicians who, like basketball players who set picks, take charges and box out, do the little things that ensures the success of the group. But that selflessness can sometimes obscure other talents and higher ambitions. Reggie Nicholson and the other members of his Brass Concept are artists like that, first call sidemen with their own projects that teem with creativity.