All the Magic: Dave Burrell at UMass

It’s not easy to establish an original sound on your instrument; it’s especially difficult on a percussion instrument like the piano. The number of jazz pianists I can readily identify in a blindfold test is small: Thelonious Monk, Jaki Byard, Cecil Taylor, Abdullah Ibrahim, Ran Blake, Don Pullen. Dave Burrell is another.

On Wednesday, May 2, Burrell performed a solo concert on the beautiful nine-foot Steinway in Bezanson Recital Hall. It was the concluding event of Season 29 of the UMass Magic Triangle Jazz Series.

Like Byard, the whole history of jazz piano is at the tip of Burrell’s fingers, which he uses as raw material for elaborate storytelling. His approach has a clunky feel, with an upright mien that runs counter to today’s prevailing aesthetic. His tendencies hew closer to the off-kilter plunk of Monk than the refined filigree of Ahmad Jamal. Burrell’s left hand was often emphatic, in the tradition of James P. Johnson and other stride piano masters, giving each piece a strong backbone.

On his composition “Black Robert,” he was not afraid to play the jaunty theme slowly, pressing it into our brains. Once made memorable, Burrell began to add to and alter the melody, digressing from, but never abandoning his original intent.

On his rag, “Margy Pargy,” he upped the ante by doubling the tempo. Other times, even on lush rhapsodies, things would devolve into a churning, vibration-heavy maelstrom. The massive energy Burrell produced on stage stood in stark contrast to his quiet, understated demeanor off the bandstand.

After a standing ovation, Burrell ended the evening with a lesson in creative deconstruction, giving a moving performance of Harold Arlen’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” the only piece not written by the pianist. Because the melody was so familiar, we got exceptional insight into Burrell’s taffy-like manipulation of the composer’s intent. Even at its most abstract, shards of the song were audible.

Burrell is not overly technical, not interested in wowing audiences with speed and prowess. His aim is deeper and more profound: to move us, to reveal what it means to be human. The simplicity of his compositions drew us in, and before long we found ourselves listening to music full of complex harmonies, subtle rhythmic displacement and considerable dynamic range.

Born in Middletown Ohio in 1940, Burrell has lived in Hawai’i, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Sweden, where he retreats to a rural cottage with his long-time partner, the poet and writer Monika Larsson. He travels widely. His interests are equally broad.

He has written an opera Windward Passages, with libretto by Larsson, that explores conflicting sentiments around Hawaiian statehood. During a small, public listening session the night before his concert, Burrell talked of his daily pilgrimage to the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, where he served as composer-in-residence. His research there on the Civil War yielded Turning Point (No Business), a crowning achievement in a career filled with them. He has written a score to accompany Oscar Micheaux’s silent film Body and Soul and has adapted Puccini’s La Bohème. He is currently exploring the Harlem Renaissance and worked a couple of unrecorded compositions into his UMass performance.

Another crowning takes place on May 23rd when the 23rd Vision Festival, one of America’s most important creative music gatherings, honors Dave Burrell with its Lifetime Achievement Award. Previous recipients include Muhal Richard Abrams, Milford Graves and Joe McPhee. Burrell will celebrate the evening with a set featuring his old mate Archie Shepp, who will play with William Parker for the first time. Another set will pair Kidd Jordan, 83, and James Brandon Lewis, 35, on tenor saxophones. Darius Jones, Steve Swell, Harrison Bankhead and Andrew Cyrille are other royalty that will share the moment with him.

In 2005 and 2013, Burrell performed at A World of Piano a solo series produced by the Northampton Center for the Arts. As time passes, each visit becomes richer, each performance more wondrous. Long live Dave Burrell.

Easy As Pie: Terry Jenoure & Bejewelled at CMSS

After Terry Jenoure’s Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares performance on Sunday, April 15, we were chatting about how easy she made it look. Indeed, there was no sign of strain on the stage of the lovely Robyn Newhouse Hall at the Community Music School of Springfield. Jenoure’s ensemble of fearless women improvisers: Angelica Sanchez, piano, Sibylle Pomorin, flute, Jin Hi Kim, komongo and Maria Mitchell, dance, are all veteran improvisers who have done quite a lot of thinking on their feet.

Jenoure plays violin and sings, and is also an accomplished visual artist, gallery director, author and educator. She has a presence on stage that makes it look effortless. People have told her that. Of course, under that apparent ease lies hours of practice, visioning, and hard-earned experience. She’s a successful professional who has learned how to listen, how to articulate what she wants, and how to avoid attachment to a particular outcome.

The ease with which the beautiful confluence of sounds flowed, masked the effort necessary to pull five individuals with limited shared history onto one page with two rehearsals. The fact they had performed Jenoure’s theater piece, Pass, the previous night at the Shea Theater, made their feat even more impressive. Sunday’s concert, which brought down the curtain on season six of Jazz Shares, had no light cues, lines to memorize, or blocking to worry about; just a sketched roadmap, some loose themes and ample eye contact. It provided a beautiful example of skilled improvisers improvising, creating whole cloth from wisps of ideas. For the ensemble, I imagine it was more fun, or at least less nerve-wracking, than Saturday’s more complicated undertaking.

There were lots of spontaneously generated highlights: a calypso-like piece that began with Jin Hi Kim playing a Korean figure of her own making on a two-headed drum called a janggu. Jenoure’s highly rhythmic vocalizing placed the piece in the Caribbean, before Sanchez and Pomorin simultaneously reinforced and obscured that island feel. The results grooved in a deliciously indeterminate way.

Jenoure also moved us with a gorgeous vocal rendition of Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” sumptuously accompanied by Sanchez. Terry’s been a dear friend for years and I produced her memorable Magic Triangle Series concert with Billy Bang and Charles Burnham in 2009. But I was unprepared for the level of vocal control and emotion that she summoned.

There was another sequence when unaccompanied solos were passed around the horn. It gave us a welcomed chance to concentrate on each instrument’s particular sound. Kim’s kommungo was riveting. Immediately after the concert a pool of curious patrons gathered around her. A traditional Korean zither, the instrument produced a deep, rubbery sound, capable of highly refined rhythmic complexity. It blended perfectly with violin, piano and flute. Kim knows her instrument’s traditional history, but having worked with Henry Kaiser, Gerry Hemmingway, Elliot Sharp, the Kronos Quartet and a slew of others, she is also a seasoned improviser. Wherever she is, she’s right at home.

Since relocating to New York from Arizona in 1994, Sanchez has amassed a ton of performance experience with masters like Tony Malaby, Wadada Leo Smith and Paul Motian. Her Nonet will kick off the 30th anniversary of the UMass Magic Triangle Jazz Series in September. Undaunted by the challenge of manufacturing coherence out of disparate elements, Sanchez served as a de facto musical director, giving helpful directions during rehearsal, cueing others while performing, all in service to Jenoure’s ideas. She never over plays and is never obvious in her playing. Her toy piano solo produced a feeling that was both nostalgic and slightly disorienting.

Pomorin travelled from Berlin to partake in the weekend festivities. Her flute playing was strong and her use of voice in her work stirred many emotions. I wished she had stretched her considerable wings even further.

Dancer Maria Mitchell, who has the longest shared history with Jenoure, had free reign of the room’s marble confines and responded to the music with a toolbox of gestures that elicited smiles, prayers, and wonder over the course of the 70-minute concert. She first entered, moving right to left with a repeated series of fluid movements cut short by pained recoils. She interacted with an inflatable couch throughout the evening, at one point hiding under it while running to outer parts of the hall. The last piece featured Mitchell in ceremonious white, replete with dangling metallic tassels on her head dress. Her jumps provided in-the-pocket percussion and gave the proceeding a connection to the spirit world.

Jenoure is a kick ass violinist, who has history with Leroy Jenkins, John Carter, Archie Shepp and other esteemed musicians. But she’s “not on the scene,” as we say. Actually, she’s on many scenes. Her mixed-media sculptures are exhibited at the Smithsonian and elsewhere. She has run the Augusta Savage Gallery at UMass for decades. She’ll be teaching improvisation at Hampshire College in the fall. She is a published author, poet, and playwright. But I wish she’d “play out” more often. How hard can that be?

Swinging Into Spring: Marty Ehrlich Quartet at Hampshire College

Soon after the start of Wednesday’s March 21st Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares concert, bandleader Marty Ehrlich confessed that he’d had “twenty-four hours of weather anxiety.” Despite the fact that Spring had sprung, we found ourselves nervously tracking the arrival of yet another mid-week snow storm. Plans were changed so that pianist James Weidman and drummer Chris Beck could arrive in the Valley on Tuesday night, avoiding the foot of snow dumped on New York beginning early Wednesday. With Ehrlich and bassist Jerome Harris already in Amherst, and the weather gods fully cooperating, 80 lucky listeners were treated to an immensely satisfying evening of music.

Ehrlich’s Philosophy of a Groove delivered a 90-minute tour de force at Hampshire College, confirming my belief that the 62-year old reed man is one of the most complete and creative musicians in jazz. Playing mostly alto sax, and some soprano sax and clarinet, Ehrlich touched many moods and grooves whipping through a set of evocative compositions of his own making.

Ehrlich is known for doing many things well. He is fluent on multiple instruments, is a major composer and arranger, a committed educator (at Hampshire), a gifted storyteller and a credible poet (although his wife Erica Hunt is the professional wordsmith in the family.) He is also a good friend to many and a force for good. There was a lot of Marty-love in the room.

He came up in St. Louis where he cut his teeth with poets, dancers, and musicians from the Black Artist Group. He studied at the New England Conservatory with Jaki Byard, Joe Maneri, George Russell and Ran Blake before being mentored on the bandstand by Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, Julius Hemphill and John Carter. Ehrlich has parlayed that pedigree into one of the most significant careers of his generation.

Although he has over 25 releases as a leader featuring a wide range of ensembles, this Philosophy of a Groove band has yet to record, a situation, one hopes, soon corrected. But Ehrlich has a ton of history with Harris, a former roommate and his most enduring musical collaborator. Ehrlich and Weidman go back over a dozen years, when the pianist appeared on his 2005 CD, News on the Rail. One of the evening’s highlights was a plaintive piano/clarinet duet, “Keeper of the Flame,” which appeared on that Palmetto recording.

Ehrlich and the thirty-something drummer Chris Beck met in October, playing in Rufus Reid’s large ensemble at Dizzy’s Coca-Cola in New York. Beck also powers Oliver Lake’s big band, so he can certainly propel. His two extended solos were strong, sophisticated statements, forceful without bombast, logical, and locked in. I’m a new fan. An example of us all benefiting from Ehrlich’s wide engagement with the jazz world.

Ehrlich has recently been working with NYU’s Hemispheric Institute to catalog some of Julius Hemphill’s archive. He remains a true champion of Hemphill’s important contribution to American music. Ehrlich’s original, “Blue Boye’s Blues”, a sprawling dedication to the late saxophonist/composer, was a centerpiece of the concert. Hemphill embodied the voracious artistic appetite that defined BAG, and Ehrlich’s piece reflected his interest in blues, jazz forms, r&b, extended techniques, and sound environments. As Oliver Lake, another BAG alum, likes to say, “put all my food on one plate.” Ehrlich’s playing here, and throughout the evening, was masterful, in full control of his instrument and his ideas.

Ehrlich has led classical-leaning string ensembles, saxophone sextets, and big bands, explored “radical Jewish culture,” spoken word, the Black avant-garde, and all of jazz history. He has a new idea: a quartet featuring flute (Nicole Mitchell), cello (Tomeka Reid), bassoon (Sara Shoenbeck) and his reed array. It is scheduled for Season 7 of Jazz Shares, the week after Thanksgiving. Has anyone seen the forecast?