Secret Society will be appearing: Thursday, 17 Sept 2009 -- New Languages Festival , McCarren Hall (98 Bayard St, Williamsburg, Brooklyn). 11:30 PM. Opening sets by the Respect Sextet (8:30 PM) & House of Mirrors (10:00 PM). Friday, 18 Sept 2009 -- Jazz Gallery (290 Hudson St., SoHo, Manhattan). 9:00 PM & 10:30 PM. Monday, 19 Oct 2009 -- Search & Restore presents: Brooklyn Big Band Bonanza at the Bell House (149 7th St., [...]
I'm pleased to announce that beginning this fall, I'll be joining the faculty of a new educational venture founded by my friend and colleague Javier Arau, the New York Jazz Academy . My official profile says "composition/arranging" but basically I'm happy to accept private students with an interest in anything from songwriting to ear training/transcription skills to coming up with horn charts for your awesome new crabcore band. The faculty at NYJA also includes the likes of Brad Shepik , Miles Okazaki , Loren Stillman , Pete Zimmer , Ike Sturm , [...]
(Photo: DJA) The tragic news has been confirmed on his website . Thought it seems inconceivable now, for a long time, Rashied was long the object of widespread scorn and even anger, for the crime of daring to be the guy that Coltrane picked to succeed Elvin. But the approach he pioneered, his way of sustaining a breathless surge of momentum in free time, has been so widely emulated that whole great swaths of jazz today are unimaginable without his influence. Pretty much anytime you [...]
We are all up in this month's DownBeat (September cover). First, the four-way: And then the main event:
Time Out New York theatre critic David Cote issues a call for theatre bloggers to start throwing more punches : This item will generate noise (and that's the point): I wish bloggers would mix it up more. Does it take a Rachel Corrie fiasco to generate heat? The theater blogosphere has been dull, insular and quiet lately. We need more arguments, more dirt, more bloody knock-down-drag-out fights. Not just self-promotion, obscure manifestos and production diaries. And here's hoping for a new breed of long-form critics worth reading. Director [...]
Secret Society's July 15 show at Le Poisson Rouge is going out over the airwaves on WFMU tomorrow, July 31, at (I am told) 10:30 AM-ish Eastern. If you're not within signal range, there's a web stream here -- and the show will also be available for download from WFMU's Beware of the Blog following the broadcast. (I understand there has been some confusion recently regarding my ontological status so I hope this helps clear things up.) Big thanks to 'FMU's Scott McDowell and LPR's Matthew Duane for making this happen.
Saxophonist Matana Roberts recounts her recent experience working with the late Merce Cunningham on her MySpace blog : i had been staying away from the computer the last few days and wished i would have stayed away a day longer as i opened my inbox to come across an email from Merce Cunningham's amazing music coordinator Stephan Moore about Mr. Cunningham's passing. I got to work with Mr. Cunningham and his dancers last month surrounded by amazing art work at the DIA in upstate NY for [...]
AP Obit It's hard to think of anything else in music that gave me as much of a thrill on first discovery as "All About Rosie." But that thrill was magnified tenfold (I am not exaggerating) when I heard the later recording by the Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band, with Mel Lewis on drums -- the original 1957 version does not really do justice to the immense power of this piece (the famous Bill Evans solo piano break notwithstanding). "All About Rosie" is one of the most kinetic and propulsive [...]
In the spirit of advancing our ongoing National Conversation on Race (and I have to say, I was not previously aware that large numbers of Americans were so willing to defend "I didn't like his attitude" as a legitimate justification for the police arresting someone on his own property ), my Pulse colleague Joe Phillips tackles one of the thornier issues surrounding this year's CMA Grants -- what does it mean when one of the only comissioning programs devoted to jazz doesn't award any grants to African-American artists this year? Go read [...]
In the spirit of advancing our ongoing National Conversation on Race (and I have to say, I was not previously aware that large numbers of Americans were so willing to defend "I didn't like his attitude" as a legitimate justification for the police arresting someone on his own property ), my Pulse colleague Joe Phillips tackles one of the thornier issues surrounding this year's CMA Grants -- what does it mean when one of the only comissioning programs devoted to jazz doesn't award any grants to African-American artists this year? Go read [...]
I'm swamped right now with various things, but I took a break to read this Nate Chinen post on the recently unveiled Chamber Music America commissions and on grants for jazz generally. The ensuing conversation includes comments from pianist Vijay Iyer and bassist Ronan Guilfoyle and is well worth your while. This is a discussion that's been going on the classical community for a very long time, as grants play a much more important and prominent role over on that side of the fence. But we haven't seen much talk of this in the jazz [...]
A roundup of recent Society-related items: " The History of Jazz, by Darcy James Argue " (actually by the New York Observer's Devin Leonard) Various blurbs for tonight's show at LPR -- New York Times , New Yorker , Village Voice (& blog ), Time Out New York (& blog )... New podcast interview up @ New Amsterdam Records -- click the "PODCAST" link [...]
Darcy James Argue's SECRET SOCIETY 15 JULY 2009 LE POISSON ROUGE buy tickets now
I had no idea that Clark Terry and Wayne Shorter had ever played together. I had even less of an idea that Clark sat in with Wayne's quartet at Newport. In 1986 . Or that video of this encounter exists. And is on YouTube. Internets, sometimes you bring me down, but how can I stay mad? Remember, this is the kind of playing that led former (thank the FSM ) New York Times jazz critic Peter Watrous to [...]
Matt Rubin, co-proprietor of the newish blog Twenty Dollars , breaks out the lead pipes and blowtorches with a post called Why I Hate Big Band Music . I am, ironically, too busy to respond at the moment because I'm writing liner notes 1 for an upcoming bigband record by a certain notoriously prolific trumpeter and composer . But Matt's piece is certainly worth reading. I have definite qualms about Matt's diagnosis -- if the problem with bigband music is the fetishization of "precision" above all else, then citing Maria Schneider's [...]
Here's some Kenny Wheeler:
This Jackson 5 cover of "I Was Made To Love Her" (recorded 1973) is unbelievably audacious. Michael sets out to out-Stevie Stevie, on Stevie's own signature song , and actually succeeds . When I was growing up, "Michael Jackson Sucks" t-shirts were popular amongst a certain segment of the childhood population. I remember feeling sorry for those kids, for having already developed such terrible taste at such a young age. Quincy Jones famously attributed Michael's enormous success to his "ass power": [...]
My RSS Reader readers 1 won't notice a difference, but I have finally cleaned up the sprawling, embarrassingly out-of-date right-hand column and updated the Secret Society blogroll. I am not sure anyone ever looks at (let alone clicks through to) blogroll links anymore, but people have been politely requesting that I update mine for literally years now, and I have finally been shamed into actually doing something about it. I removed inactive blogs and blogs I don't read anymore and all blogs that feature that damnable light text on a dark background. 2 [...]
15 JULY 2009 LE POISSON ROUGE buy tickets now
Two essential new interviews: Ethan Iverson unleashes another epic conversation, this one with Tim Berne : Intro Part One Part Two A taste: EI: You are a pretty rare example of someone who isn't playing music already as a teenager but then has the willpower - because of a love of the music - to [...]
Darcy James Argue's Secret Society
Monday Music – 28 May 2012
Bison - Quill
