Inverted Garden

Darcy James Argue sells out!

That's right, the indie jazz world's favorite composer/conductor is taking his Reign-of-Terror–loving, Extraordinary Renditions–hating act from the halls of Williamsburg and the Bowery to Wynton's Jazz Palace in the Sky. To quote the man himself, "Zounds!"

In all seriousness, this is great news—a marker of Secret Society's recent successes and JALC's expanding horizons. Argue's Dizzy's Club gig will come as part of the new CareFusion Jazz Fesitval, a rebooted and vastly improved version of the bloated JVC Jazz Festival that was canceled last spring. The octogenarian jazz impresario George Wein is, according to the Times's Ben Ratliff, taking a far more active role in programming than in the past; and it looks like the opening bars of a hell of a swan song. The majority of the gigs are cheap, some are free, and the musicians trend young, local, and innovative. (The giants of the festival circuit still play a role, but a decidedly smaller one.)

The jazz world (especially its fringe blogosphere incarnation) has been immersed in a period of soul-searching for the last couple years, giving cultural irrelevance a sobering stare and scheming about ways to hook those crazy kids once more. It's nice to see the top echelons of the jazz establishment responding with such an affirmative, "we hear you."

NYMag: Village Vanguard Tales

My annotated slide-show, "A Brief and Colorful History of the Village Vanguard", is now up on nymag.com. It chronicles 13 events from the club's 75 years, from its beginnings as a hangout for lefty booze-hound poets to its present as jazz's most prestigious venue (with some Charles Mingus history/folklore and an account of Bill Evans's famous Sunday thrown in for good measure).

Irwin Corey stars at the Vanguard's Birthday Bash

Last night, New York's jazz elite gathered to toast 75 years of that quirky basement space at 178 Seventh Avenue South known as the Village Vanguard. The assembled included impresarios (Anzic's Colin Negrych, festival kingpin George Wein), writers (Gary Giddins, Ashley Kahn, Ben Ratliff), radio hosts (Phil Schapp, Josh Jackson), and, of course, musicians (Paul Motian, Jimmy Heath, Ravi Coltrane, Bill Charlap, Anat Cohen). The event was decidedly low-key—trays of ribs and wings for dinner, Lester Young records instead of live entertainment—which was fitting: even as the Vanguard has become the "Carnegie Hall of jazz" its retained the traces of its Village speakeasy roots. (That's "speakeasy" as in "illegal joint that serves swill to drunkard poets" rather than "trendy bar that serves cocktails to bankers, PR bunnies, and hipsters.")

The highlight of the night may have been an impromptu (and brief) stand-up routine by "Professor" Irwin Corey (pictured), an irreverent 95-year-old comedian who was a frequent Carson guest and a one-time presidential nominee (the 1960 Playboy ticket). While the Vanguard crew tried to fix the sound on a short documentary assembled by Deborah Gordon (the club's crown princess), Corey shuffled to the front and began to rant. I couldn't make out a word he said, but he clearly relished hamming it up like it was, oh, say, 1942.

Happy 75th Birthday, Village Vanguard!

The Village Vanguard, easily the most hallowed spot in the jazz world, celebrates its 75th birthday this evening with a party for friends of the club. (I was, unexpectedly and delightfully, invited last week.) The club has chosen to celebrate the big day on February 22nd, but befitting a basement venue that came of age in Greenwich Village's most bohemian days, its age and DOB are the subject of some dispute.

The Contenders:

February 26, 1934: In his memoir, Live at the Village Vanguard, Max Gordon, the club's founding eminence, gives February 26, 1934 as the date on which he started the venue. That date corresponds to the opening of the short-lived first Village Vanguard, a basement room on Charles Street that had only one exit and thus failed New York's requirements for a cabaret license. Gordon writes that he moved the club a year later to the Vanguard's current address, 178 Seventh Avenue South, in five truckloads over the course of a single night, but he doesn't specify an exact date.

February 21, 1935: The Wall Street Journal's 2005 article on the Vanguard's 70th birthday gives the club's DOB as February 21st, although I haven't seen that date anywhere and doubt that it was the result of thorough investigation.

February 23, 1935: The Vanguard's website is currently trumpeting February 23rd as the club's founding date, but the club's owner, Lorraine Gordon, told me she thinks February 22nd is more likely.

February 26, 1935: This date appears in Lorraine Gordon's memoir, Alive at the Village Vanguard, but appears to be an error: confusing Max Gordon's Charles Street founding date with the beginning of the current location in 1935.

February 22, 1935: Who knows if this date is actually correct, but it has a number of important things going for it: 1) Lorraine Gordon gives this as the founding date and says Max told her that the phone bills at the club started then, 2) the anniversary celebration is tonight so future generation's will probably date the founding thus (although one should note the big day also happens to fall on a Monday, the club's least popular night and the one on which it's least damaging to close to the public), 3) Wikipedia gives February 22nd as the date, and, well, that counts for something. (Although it should also be noted that the Wikipedia article say erroneously that the club went to an all-jazz format in 1957. Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce both performed at the club afterward.)

For a less speculative, insider-y take, I've written up an annotated timeline of the Vanguard's 75 years that should appear on nymag.com sometime this week. I'll also post some observations from tonight's event in the coming days...

Fred Hersch = LeBron James?

Fred at the piano is like LeBron James on the basketball court. He’s perfection.
– Jason Moran

David Hajdu's recent New York Times Magazine profile of pianist Fred Hersch is an odd amalgam of hyperbolic praise (above), made-up trends ("A new movement in jazz has surfaced over the past few years—a wave of highly expressive music more concerned with emotion than with craft or virtuosity"), and out-of-the-blue pot-shots ("Fred's ego is enormous.") That said, there's a pretty moving story here about a really excellent musician making a name for himself, facing death, and returning triumphantly to the scene.

I've been a fan of Hersch's music for a long time—a duo gig he did several years ago with Joe Lovano at the Jazz Standard was one of the more magical shows I've been to—and I've heard first-hand stories of his kindness—he recorded a tape of solo piano for a close friend of my mother's while she was awaiting a bone-marrow transplant (they had mutual friends but had never met). I just wish Hajdu didn't feel the need to dress Hersch's journey with the trappings of story: the exaggeration of Hersch's musical importance, the thinly backed-up claims of his arrogant "artistic temperament", and the pop-psychoanalytical discussion of how Hersch's sexuality relates to his lyricism.