Catching Up with the Max Johnson Trio

After spending almost 48 hours with Michele Rosewoman’s New Yor-Uba Ensemble, who were in town earlier in the week, we had scant time with Anna Webber (tenor sax/flute), Michael Sarin (drums), and the leader, Max Johnson (bass), who performed on October 26 in Easthampton, MA. While the short visit made for easy logistics, that’s not how I prefer it.

Along with the music itself, of course, the time spent eating, drinking and socializing with musicians, what we often call, “the hang”, is one of the payoffs for doing the work of producing concerts. The opportunity to interact with my musical heroes is both motivation and tonic for me. By organizing public performances, I become a small part of the great historical flow of creative music in North America.

After a gig in Philadelphia the night before, the Trio arrived at the beautifully refurbished Blue Room in Easthampton’s old town hall in time for sound check and a quick meal imported from Daily Operation. They left after the show to crash at Webber’s Greenfield headquarters, leaving precious little time to trade stories and catch up on news and jazz scuttlebutt.

But the music was all there, being road tested for a December recording session. After a performance at Firehouse 12 in New Haven the next day, the trio is off to Germany, Austria and Slovenia for eight concerts, before heading back to New York for another live show and the recording. The music should be well lived in by then.

These compositions, much of it recently penned by Johnson, were so new most didn’t yet have titles; Johnson encouraged us to come up with names for them. Many featured intricate heads played in unison by bass and saxophone, some at impossibly fast tempos. As impressive as their technical skills were, it was the melodicism and coherency of the pieces that brought nods and wows from the assembled.

The sophistication of the written music should come as no surprise. Johnson is an accomplished composer, having written dozens of chamber music and vocal pieces in the European classical tradition. He is now enrolled in a PhD program in composition at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is studying with Tyshawn Sorey and others. Johnson is also a first-call bass player in the bluegrass tradition, having performed with artists like David Grisman, Sam Bush, Molly Tuttle, the Travelin' McCourys, Chris Thile, and others. Perhaps the accessibility of his complicated jazz pieces results from his immersion in American roots music.

Johnson’s deep, woody sound on the bass complemented Webber’s strong effort on saxophone and flute. Her phrasing, full of short syncopated bursts and redolent of blues and bebop, infused the evening with jazz essence. On one (unnamed) piece, her precise, masterful use of split tones over the rhythm section’s steady pulse was oh, so musical. Over the last few years we’ve been lucky to see Webber with her Simple Trio (John Hollenbeck and Matt Mitchell), her duo with Eric Wubbels (live streamed from Amherst Media), and as part of David Sanford’s big band. She has always had chops, but she has added a restraint and ebullience that gives added depth to her ideas. Besides her busy touring schedule, the 38-year old Webber is now co-chairing the Jazz Department at the New England Conservatory of Music. She’ll next perform in the Valley on March 17 at the Shea Theater, leading her new ensemble, Shimmer Wince.

What a treat to hear Michael Sarin twice in a month. He was here October 1 with Jeff Lederer’s Septet, but in this stripped down format he really had a chance to shine. He was a whirlwind, changing sticks, picking up rattles and bells, constantly adding color while pushing the ensemble. But as busy as he was, he was never louder than the music demanded, and his shifting rhythmic palette constantly refreshed and reinvigorated the music. It was hard not to focus on him.

I first met Max Johnson during the depth of the pandemic, when Jazz Shares produced a live streamed concert at Amherst Media featuring the James Brandon Lewis Quartet. It was an atypical visit, to say the least. And even though our time together on Thursday was brief, Max Johnson and his trio renewed my faith in the vitality of creative music today. Only 33 years old, the bassist is one of a number of young musicians carving out a life for himself in music. Resourceful, multi-dimensional and right-minded, Johnson has a lot to offer the music world. I hope he continues to include western Massachusetts on his itinerary, and at some point, stay awhile.

Pulling In the Same Direction: Michele Rosewoman & New Yor-Uba Celebrates 40 Years

Ah, to be on a team again. I grew up playing baseball in high school and college, and since those days I’ve missed the camaraderie and bonding that comes from the pursuit of a common goal. The last two days, spent in service to pianist and composer Michele Rosewoman and her New Yor-Uba Ensemble, felt like I was part of a team again.

With the help of a New England Foundation for the Arts grant, Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares hosted Rosewoman’s 11-piece juggernaut on October 23 and 24. On Tuesday, the musicians and our family of music lovers organized a transcendent day of music and scholarship in Holyoke and Springfield. We introduced our visitors to the wonders of western Massachusetts, cooked for the musicians and relied on Jazz Shares members to offer home stays for the band. Sharing meals and roofs brought us together in furtherance of art, culture and community. Sometimes it takes a village to produce a concert.

With the help of scholars Ivor Miller and Priscilla Maria Page, we organized an afternoon presentation at Holyoke Media, a beautiful, well equipped new community space. A combination lecture, interview and musical demonstration, the event focused on the rich history of Afro-Cuban folkloric music and Rosewoman’s innovations bringing that tradition into the jazz world. The program featured Rosewoman, along with singers and percussionists Román Díaz, Rafael Monteagudo, Abraham Rodriguez and Roger Consiglio.

The evening concert at the Community Music School of Springfield was a crowning achievement for Jazz Shares. That it fell on my 69th birthday gave special resonance to the proceedings and confirmed the rightness of my chosen career path.

Playing selections from their two releases: Hallowed and 30 Years-A Musical Celebration of Cuba in America, New Yor-Uba delivered a 90-minute tour de force, bringing together the power of the spiritual realm, the virtuosity of accomplished musicians, and the inspiration of a visionary composer and organizer.

Since New Yor-Uba’s 1983 debut at the Public Theater in New York, Rosewoman’s concept has continued to get tighter, the arrangements more elaborate, and the vision clearer. She originally built the band around the legendary Orlando “Puntilla” Rios, a percussionist and a major holder of Afro-Cuban cultural and religious knowledge. His last public performance with New Yor-Uba was a 2007 Magic Triangle Series concert I produced at UMass. Since that time, the role of linchpin has been carried by Román Díaz, “El Maestro”, who not only anchors the rhythm section, but grounds the ensemble with his extensive understanding of the roots of African music in Cuba. He is perhaps the leading practitioner of Afro-Cuban religious music outside of Cuba.

The core of New Yor-Uba is the percussion section: pianist Michele Rosewoman, bassist Yunior Terry, trap drummer Robby Ameen, and hand drummers Román Díaz, Rafael Monteagudo, Abraham Rodriguez, Roger Consiglio. The interlocking rhythms of the three sacred, two-headed batá drums were integral to the music, as were the vocals of Díaz, Monteagudo, Rodriguez, Consiglio and Rosewoman who sang beautifully in praise of the orishas (the spirits of the Yoruba people of West Africa and the diaspora).

Those percussionists formed the bedrock upon which Rosewoman’s very hip horn arrangements and the individual soloists rested. Those horn players: Alejandro Berti (trumpet), Greg Osby (alto, soprano sax), Stacy Dillard (tenor sax) and Chris Washburne (trombone, tuba), soared over the traditional chants and rhythms offered in honor of the deities.

The musical highlights in Springfield were many. At one point during “The Heart of It (for Chango)”, the band dropped out, leaving the batá drummers spinning endless permutations of perfectly overlapping rhythms. The crowd burst when the band reentered was loud and justly deserved. The concluding selection, “Vamp For Ochun”, an oft recorded Rosewoman original that serves as an unofficial theme song, had a funky angular drive that brought another eruption from the 100 gathered. The horn soloists were all outstanding, especially the legendary Greg Osby and the up-and-coming Stacy Dillard.

All evening the tempos changed, the grooves morphed, and riffs entered and exited with precision. Band members told me how clear and well written Rosewoman’s charts were. So a few rehearsals and two September performances at Dizzy’s Club in New York were all that was needed for the band to gel. After their visit to western Massachusetts, they had multi-day stops at Boston University and the First Congregational Church in Old Lyme, CT. What a wonderful way to celebrate the band’s 40th anniversary.

Michele Rosewoman, who turned 70 in March, is a pioneer in the fusion of Latin music and jazz. That tradition, of course, is woven into the very essence of jazz, what Jelly Roll Morton called “the Latin tinge”. In the 1940s, the innovations of Chano Pozo, Dizzy Gillespie, Machito, Mario Bauza, Chico O’Farrill, and others, injected new rhythmic complexity into jazz. Rosewoman’s contribution has been to bring the sacred rhythms and chants of Santaria, an important Cuban religious practice, into the jazz realm.

At the CMSS they performed, “Natural Light (for Obatala)”, where the deep chants, the ancient drums, the snap crackle of hi-hat and snare, the modern horn arrangements, along with Rosewoman’s jazz drenched piano, all combined to produce a true melding of cultures. No wonder she was just honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by M3 (Mutual Mentorship for Musicians) at the Jazz Museum of Harlem.

M3 was founded by vocalists and activists Jen Shu and Sara Serpa as a means to elevate women and non-binary musicians. How appropriate then, to honor Rosewoman, a woman who has created her own thing, who has persevered in sharing her vision of preserving and advancing the rich tradition of Afro-Cuban jazz.

Inclusive and Finely-Drawn: Mat Maneri Quartet in Springfield

In the sound world, we are accustomed to equating intensity with high volume and fast tempos. But as Mat Maneri’s ASH Quartet demonstrated on October 15, it is entirely possible to produce intensity at low volume and at slow tempos. The Quartet: Mat Maneri, viola, Lucian Ban, piano, Brandon Lopez, bass and Randy Peterson, drums, gave us a 70-minute set of power-filled originals at the Community Music School of Springfield (CMSS) without raising their voice or breaking a sweat.

The band is on an extensive tour of the U.S. and Europe in support of their recent Sunnyside release, ASH (John Hébert plays bass on the recording). It follows on the heels of their 2019 effort, DUST. The third part of the trilogy, MIST, will be out in the near future.

Wearing various shades of black, the musicians improvised freely and performed selections from the aforementioned records. Both the compositions, written by Maneri, and the group improvisations, rarely moved beyond Adagio (66-76 bpm). Of course, beats per minute is not the most useful measure of the work, since the music seemed to flutter and float, suspended in the breeze like the blowball of a dandelion. The music was played at low to moderate volume, forcing us to lean in and concentrate.

Cultures everywhere employ a much broader tone world than we’re used to, and Maneri is a master of microtones, the notes between the notes of the equal tempered scale most westerners grow up hearing. Maneri’s father, the great saxophonist and clarinetist Joe Maneri, devoted his life to exploring microtones, which he taught to generations of students at the New England Conservatory of Music. During an interview on WHMP’s Talk the Talk, Maneri told me about the 72-note scale system his father developed, and how comfortable he became with the pitch-rich music of India, Greece and the Jewish and Arab world.

Imagine if painters could only use primary colors, forbidden from mixing pigments and bending color. What a limited universe that would be. Isn’t it the same for music? Why commit ourselves to so few ingredients? We must free ourselves from the tyranny of living in a right note/wrong note world.

The Mat Maneri Quartet has managed to create its own sound world, a way of working that is highly intuitive, reactive and distinctive. Using indeterminate tempos and an expanded palette of pitches, Maneri and his bandmates wove music that was dark, mournful, dramatic and a little disorienting. Near the end of the program they “broke character” and played an (unnamed) up tempo piece that swung at times and made me think of the great Carla Bley, who passed away two days later.

Intuitive, reactive and distinctive describes the largely unsung Randy Peterson. “Far from the spectacle of music,” wrote the No Idea Festival, “drummer Randy Peterson has been quietly cultivating a singular approach to pulse and time that is both deeply profound and mysteriously idiosyncratic.” Playing with brushes and his hands a good amount of the time, Peterson created forward momentum while playing metrically free. Mat told me Peterson was a kick-ass bebop drummer when he first met Joe Maneri. Over many years working with both Joe and Mat - documented on an important series of 1990s recordings for ECM, Leo and hatOLOGY - Peterson has opened up his approach, becoming the perfect drummer for this music.

Lucian Ban is Maneri’s most frequent collaborator. Their duo concert seven years ago in the same elegant CMSS space, remains stuck in my head. Their work together also includes a fantastic trio with saxophonist John Surman (see Transylvanian Folk Songs, ECM, 2020), and recordings made with Evan Parker, Abraham Burton, and others. After the Springfield concert, Ban and Maneri were flying to Birmingham, Alabama to perform Bartok folk songs and compositions of George Enescu with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. On Sunday, Ban’s technique of dampening the piano strings with one hand made him a perfect collaborator with his fellow string players, while at points he let the piano ring and brighten the bandstand.

Brandon Lopez replaced John Hébert, who couldn’t make the tour. A generation younger than his bandmates, the 35 year old Lopez reinforced his reputation as one of the most promising young bassists on the scene. He’s been mentored by William Parker, and has been part of New York’s Art For Arts family for some time. We heard him two years ago in Goshen with trumpeter Steph Richards’ ensemble. His deep, woody timbre and his varied means of sound production, were delivered with confidence and conviction. He fit right in.

One of the highlights of my presenting career was a 2004 concert by Joe and Mat Maneri at Bezanson Recital Hall. I was happy to hear that Mat also cherished that evening (and still has the poster). I’ll always remember Mat walking to his father after the performance and kissing him on the forehead, a spontaneous and genuine gesture. When I think of Mat Maneri, I think about gestures and mark making, the subtle and idiosyncratic ways he makes sound on the viola. There were times when his playing was barely audible but still projected power, and he displayed a level of detail and control that was precise and quite impressive.

I invited him back to the Valley when the trilogy was complete.