Inverted Garden

Jason Moran no-shows; Malaby trio triumphs

Two weeks ago, Search & Restore’s “Spontaneous Construction” was a sparsely attended after-hours gig—a night-cap elixir of free jazz after a busy night. The musicians riffed and experimented. It felt more like a closed-door workshop than a formal performance. We were all, as Samir Zarif said, “hanging out.”

The stakes felt much higher last Friday night. A long line snaked down West Third Street thirty minutes before the show was set to begin. Inside, the Blue Note was packed with the “jazz famous”—musicians, critics, and devotees whose collective presence signifies a concert-of-note. This wasn’t going to be a hang-out. It was going to be an event.

The crowds had gathered for one big reason. And that reason wasn’t really to hear the explosive tenorman Tony Malaby, or the brilliant drummer Joey Baron, or the tuba dynamo Bob Stewart. That reason was to hear one of the jazz world’s bona-fide stars: a MacArthur “genius,” Blue Note recording artist, and badass pianist by the name of Jason Moran.

To be fair, I wasn’t there just because of Moran. I was there because the prospect of Moran, Malaby, and Baron playing a late-night free-jazz set for $10 sounded too good to pass up. I’m a sucker for a certain strain of high-brow culture that celebrates the casual work of serious artists. Sure, I’d love to have a dinner at celebrated chef Eric Ripert’s haute-seafood palace, Le Bernardin; but I’d probably be even more excited to have him fix me some fish-and-chips. Likewise, I’ve always enjoyed seeing Jason Moran play with his flagship group, The Bandwagon—the product of ten years of top-flight trio cooking; but when he leads one-off side-projects, there’s a freewheeling creativity that can be even more thrilling. With Malaby and Baron (and the late addition of Stewart), it felt like Moran had the perfect collaborators to create something really special.

He did. And he didn’t even have to show up. The gig was scheduled to start at 12:30. Joey Baron sat down at the drums shortly thereafter looking ready to go. Bob Stewart milled about the audience talking with friends. Tony Malaby ducked in and out of my view. I didn’t see Jason Moran. A little before 1 a.m., Malaby and Stewart stepped onto the stage and started to play. It was beyond casual. Malaby leaned against the piano with the rakish pose of a street-corner loiterer and blew softly through his horn. The audience continued to talk, unsure if this was the beginning of the show or just some live background-music. The club didn’t even dim the house lights.

After about three minutes, it became clear the Malaby-Stewart-Baron trio was performing. The lights went down. Malaby stepped forward. The music took off. The band: instant synergy. Malaby and Stewart engaged in a quick-fire call-and-response—like birds at sunset—and Joey Baron dictated the pace, slowing Malaby down to half-time with a couple hits on the snare, then speeding things up with a few strikes on the toms that soon echoed in Stewart’s tuba. The trio blasted through up-tempo improvisations and slowed gracefully to some wide-open abstractions. They never seemed lost. A middle-aged woman sitting in front of me turned and asked, “you said, they’ve never played together before?”

During all of this, Jason Moran haunted the proceedings—an open question. It quickly became apparent that the trio wasn’t going to leave anyone disappointed. Still, a thought lingered: if Moran walks in here halfway through, hops onto the bandstand mid-song, and lifts this music even higher, the audience is going to go absolutely nuts. It’s going to be as explosive as the moment when Ornette Coleman sauntered onto the Beacon stage at Sonny Rollins’s 80th-birthday concert. No, it’s going to be even more explosive. It’s going to be more like Sonny Rollins not showing up for his own 80th-birthday concert; his bandmates, Christian McBride and Roy Haynes, playing an incredible 45-minute duet alone on stage; and then—just as everyone in the audience is thinking, “well, Sonny didn’t come, but it was still a fucking incredible concert”—Sonny himself bounding into the theater, running through the audience, catching a tenor saxophone thrown to him from off-stage, and digging into the best solo of his career. It was going to be like that.

That didn’t happen. Jason Moran never showed up. He missed what could have been the greatest hero’s welcome of his career. It didn’t matter.

I’d be lying if I said, I wasn’t disappointed; but I’d be foolish to think Moran would have guaranteed a better concert. A sax trio is one of the music’s most flexible forms, a vessel with little harmonic mooring that can convert sheer energy into beauty. Tony Malaby plays the saxophone in torrents; Joey Baron hits the drums like a conductor directs an orchestra; Bob Stewart deploys the tuba’s oomph with warm charisma. Each of them has a big presence. Each of them knows how to listen and how to amplify the simple interplay of three instruments into rich drama. Moran knows this too, but I wonder if his long, percussive keyboard runs wouldn’t have been too much of a good thing. On this night, perhaps Moran’s absence was his best possible accompaniment.

Sonny Rollins on his favorite soundtracks

New York magazine's Vulture site has an ongoing feature called Vulture Recommends in which artists of different stripes (actors, comedians, directors, writers, musicians) discuss their top five works in given categories. In the past, I've done Vulture Recommends with Vijay Iyer, The Bad Plus, Neil LaBute, and Joe Lovano. Last week, I interviewed the great Sonny Rollins about a top-five category of his choosing: film music.

Each Vulture Recommends has very limited space, no more than 300 words. I spoke with Sonny for 45 minutes, which gave me a lot more than 300 words. My "...Recommends" piece is now up on Vulture. Here, with thanks to Vulture, I present my conversation with the great Sonny Rollins.

The Blue Angel

Eric Benson: What jumps out at you about The Blue Angel?

Sonny Rollins: The musical director was a fellow called Friedrich Hollaender. He’s one of my favorite popular song composers. I really put him at the top of my list with people like Jerome Kern. In The Blue Angel, he wrote that sort of Marlene Dietrich theme, "Falling in Love Again." It was a very moving song, a lot of pathos. I’m sort of fascinated by the whole German scene around the 20s and early 30s—their barroom songs and all of that stuff.

EB: Is "Falling In Love Again" a song you’ve played a lot throughout the years?

SR: Many years ago I touched on it slightly, but I don’t think I played it too much in performance. I don’t think I ever recorded it. I might have just gone over it in rehearsal a couple times, because I love Friedrich Hollaender’s music. But when I went to Germany a couple years ago, I found an opportunity to play it to a very enthusiastic reception. They still remember it there.

 

Cabin in the Sky

EB: Maybe we switch gears and talk about Cabin in the Sky?

SR: When I was a little boy, my father was a steward in the Navy, which was the highest rank you could attain as a black at the time. He was in charge of the officers' club at Annapolis. I had a chance to go down there during the summers when I was 10, 11, and 12, and I’d work around the officers' club as a busboy.

One afternoon when I wasn’t working, I went into town and there was this movie playing at the one little theater: Cabin in the Sky. It was great! It had all my favorite people: the great Duke Ellington and his band; Ethel Waters; Lena Horne; Eddie Rochester Anderson, everybody was familiar with him from the Jack Benny comedy show; and Buck & Bubbles—I used to see Buck & Bubbles at the Apollo Theater in New York, where we went every week to check out all the bands.

EB: And Louis Armstrong was in Cabin in the Sky, too.

SR: You’re quite correct. I think Louis had more of an acting role, along with Rex Ingram and Mantan Moreland, the famous black comedian from the Charlie Chan movies of that period. And there were some great songs: "Taking a Chance on Love," "Happiness is Just a Thing Called Joe." And, of course, it was a great thrill to see the Duke Ellington band.

EB: And Duke was playing his own music?

SR: Oh, yeah! They played a couple of songs. I believe Ben Webster was in the band at the time. Johnny Hodges was in the band. There were people like Lawrence Brown and Harry Carney. Their segment was really outstanding, especially the number "Things Ain’t What They Used to Be."

[A later Ellington performance of "Things..."]

 

EB: So what was it like for you to hear all this great music as a 12-year-old?

SR: I had already decided that I wanted to be a musician and it really confirmed my ambition. There was so much entertainment on such a high level; It was very impressive for me as a youngster. I’ll never forget that movie.

Casablanca

EB: How about we talk about Casablanca?

SR: Well, I was surprised to learn that Dooley Wilson who sings the famous song, “As Time Goes By,” wasn’t playing the piano. They had another person playing the piano on all of his songs; and his playing is really great, especially if you’re an aficionado of stride piano, which I am. I think that’s the definitive version of “As Time Goes By,” primarily because of the pianist [Elliot Carpenter]. Like with many songs, there are several choices of harmonics that you can use. The harmonics that the pianist played on “As Time Goes By” were really right on. And over the years I’ve heard a lot of harmonics on that song; but that to me, was the definitive way.

 

At Rick’s place, there was Dooley Wilson, but he also had an orchestra, and they play a lot of the soundtrack on that film. They play a lot of great songs, including one of my favorite, a World War II song called “Heaven Can Wait.” If you like American Songbook songs, that film is chock full of them. That was a big part of what made the film for me. It was a great film, but I like the parts where the music interludes. That’s what really sealed it for me.

You Were Never Lovelier

SR: Well, ”You Were Never Lovelier” is one of Jerome Kern’s slightly more obscure songs, but the fifth bar, to me, reveals Jerome Kern.

EB: What about that fifth bar?

SR: Hahahaha. Well, you’re asking me to describe music.

EB: Well, what happens in that fifth bar? Is it a harmonic change?

SR: It’s not the lyrics, it’s the harmonics, what he does harmonically. Where he goes harmonically in bar five, it’s so Jerome Kern. It’s so pregnant with ideas. If you hear it, you might not notice anything significant about it, but now that I mention it, maybe you will.

EB: Is it a particular chord?

SR: It’s the chord, yeah.

EB: What’s the chord?

SR: I don’t really know what the chord is. It’s like a chord that’s basic. You can play it basic of course, but it has so many implications, you can do so much with that chord. I’ve always wondered why I loved that song, and then I said, “it’s, bar five!” It’s just Jerome Kern. If you like this song, if you like this type of tunes, these melodies, this is it. So I can’t put it into words what it is.

EB: Have you recorded that song?

SR: No, but maybe one day. Now, I have to make a caveat: the book is sort of silly—silly but endearing. But a lot of these movies are kind of silly; it’s the music that makes them.

 

Swing Time

SR: When I was a little boy, there was a movie house right across the street from where we lived, the Lincoln Theater on 135th Street. My parents took me over there and they had this picture, Swing Time. There’s so much about that film, those great songs. "The Way You Look Tonight," of course, which I recorded and many other people recorded. I had the privilege of recording that with Coleman Hawkins. I had the privilege of recording that with Thelonious Monk. So that song stayed with me. And there were other songs in that movie—"Pick Yourself Up, Start Right Over Again," where they dance to it. And all through my life, I’ve remembered the scene with the song “A Fine Romance,” where Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire are up in the country in the snow.

EB: So the music worked really well with the film?

SR: Oh did it ever. After I got away from thinking about that movie and started living my life, that scene always stuck in my mind. And when I saw it again, I still remembered it. Maybe I hadn’t seen it for twenty years or so, and I remembered that scene and that song.

 

Jerome Kern is just a master of these melodies. I still think of him as maybe my favorite. I’ve always tried to find out a lot about him. The say his music comes from European operetta type music that he may have been exposed to. I guess so, but wherever it came from, he put it together in these American songs. I’m telling you, he was something else, I like all of the American Songbook, I know a lot of standards, and Jerome Kern is a guy I can almost put at the top of the list. That’s saying a lot.

Video of Sonny + Ornette at the Beacon

This is where I say that I disapprove of the unauthorized taping and recording of shows, but that I'm going to post this video anyway. Damn, it's history! Footage of the moment at the Beacon when, for the first time ever, Sonny and Ornette shared the stage!

Sonny Rollins + Ornette Coleman at the Beacon

Toward the end of his concert at the Beacon Theatre, the great Sonny Rollins announced that there was someone in the house “with a horn” who wanted to wish him a happy 80th birthday. The announcement suggested the imminent appearance of the mystery guest, but Rollins plunged into his next number, “Sonnymoon for Two,” without any front-line support. As Sonny soloed, I racked my brain: who could this extra-special interloper turn out to be? Roy Hargrove, Jim Hall, Christian McBride, and Roy Haynes had all been billed as special guests, but they hadn't received such protracted introductions. Who would justify this kind of drama? Wayne Shorter? No real history with Sonny. Wynton Marsalis? Too polarizing. James Carter or Joshua Redman? Too green and not enough oomph. And then, about five minutes into “Sonnymoon”, the obvious answer sauntered on stage—rail-thin and slinky, with a hat and demeanor that define the word “rakish,” it was Ornette Coleman.

I’ve never thought of Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins as brothers-in-arms. I figured that as the two last surviving jazz Olympians, they must share a certain measure of mutual respect, but I never thought their music sounded terribly related. After all, Ornette made his mark pushing jazz away from the rigid harmonic framework of Tin Pan Alley standards and bebop charts; Sonny made his mark as one of the greatest explorers of that framework—the Platonic ideal of jazz soloist. Yet as the two men played—Ornette excising the melody from the changes with a surgeon’s unflappable precision; Sonny probing each note with a new gusto for experimentation—I realized their music came from a similar place: a deep devotion to melody, to song, to voice above all else.

A few years ago, I heard the Chicago saxophonist Ken Vandermark give a talk after a screening of Musician, a documentary chronicling the avant-gardist at work. At one point, an audience member asked Vandermark to reflect on his influences, and he obliged saying he came out of Sonny Rollins and his explorations of melody and rhythm far more than he did John Coltrane and his experiments in harmony. In an oversimplified history of jazz, it’s common to view Coltrane as the great innovator and Rollins as the more traditional virtuoso who couldn’t get hip to the times. (Rollins's 1959 - 1962 hiatus from performing is usually chalked up to his feelings of inadequacy in the face of Coltrane and, to a lesser extent, Coleman). Vandermark, though, was arguing against the idea of Coltrane as revolutionary and Sonny as establishment hold-out. Sonny’s music wasn’t less innovative; it just came from a different place.

Ornette Coleman, like Vandermark and Rollins, is first and foremost a melodist. Ornette’s “harmolodic” approach uses melody as the music’s foundation—harmony and rhythm are built on top of it. It’s very different from a typical bebop improvisation, in which the musician develops his solo over already determined chord changes and rhythms. Much of Sonny Rollins's music follows the more traditional approach, but he's always been pushing against its boundaries. From early in his career, Rollins has favored bands without a piano, an arrangement that builds a more malleable harmonic framework. In these bands—his famous sax trios, especially—Rollins shapes solos that are full of subversions, jokes, and quotes. He never sounds concerned with wrapping up his ideas before the next chorus.

It's this preference for space that reveals the deep affinity between Rollins and Coleman. Both players helped move jazz from the rigidity of the AABA song structure to the wide-open free jazz of the 60s and 70s. That Coleman pushed this development more radically and brashly seems increasingly unimportant. On Friday night, side by side, jazz's sax kings were clearly on the same quest.

A few more thoughts on Sonny:

In the 50s, Sonny’s nickname was “Newk” because he bore an uncanny resemblance to Brooklyn Dodgers' pitcher Don Newcombe. I’d never known the story of how he got the name until I happened upon an excerpt from Miles Davis’s autobiography on Sonny's official website:

"One day, me and Sonny were in a cab...when the white cabdriver turned around and looked at Sonny and said, `Damn, you're Don Newcombe!'' Man, the guy was totally excited. I was amazed, because I hadn't thought about it before. We just put that cabdriver on something terrible. Sonny started talking about what kind of pitches he was going to throw Stan Musial, the great hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals, that evening..."

Is there any jazz musician today who looks a lot like a famous professional athlete? And if, say, a great young bassist was a dead ringer for Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, how many of today’s jazz fans would get it when the bassist billed himself as “Big Papi”?

Plus: The first video to surface from the concert. (It's Sonny playing "Global Warming," which is called "Global Morning" on the set list.)

A bizarre TMZ-stalks-LiLo-style video of Ornette Coleman leaving the Beacon:

And a set list of Friday night’s concert from Bret "Jazz Video Guy" Primack, via the Ottawa Citizen!