Inverted Garden

Guillermo Klein: Sunday Magic at the Village Vanguard

Ever since Bill Evans's classic 1961 recordings the phrase "Sunday at the Village Vanguard" has had a mythic ring. Tourists go to the Vanguard on Friday and Saturday. The real people, the die-hards, go to the Vanguard on Sunday. The music isn't something the die-hards do on a night out, it's part of their weekly routines—as essential to good living (if not as mundane) as a home-cooked dinner or laundry. You do routine things—even beautiful routine things—on Sunday.

Sunday is also the night at the Vanguard on which you're most likely to hear a great show. Jazz bands get tighter and bolder the more they play together, and a week-long stint at the Vanguard is often a process of gradual improvement. A promising piano trio with solid ideas on Tuesday becomes a potent and intuitive music machine by Sunday. To crib from poker, on Tuesday, the musicians play the tunes; on Sunday, they play each other.

I've rarely visited the Vanguard twice in one week, but every time I have, I've been rewarded. Guillermo Klein y Los Guachos' first show on Sunday was the latest confirmation that ten sets (and, in this case, a recording session) do a lot to hone a sound. I loved Los Guachos' performances on Tuesday, but the band sounded tentative on some of Guillermo's new material ("Artesano" felt even more off-kilter than intended). On Sunday night, Los Guachos strutted with an ecstatic shuffle. They owned the material, and their confidence allowed them greater freedom and creativity.

On "Juana," a song the band has been playing for 15 years, tenorman Bill McHenry showed that he knew the music well enough to play directly against its current. Instead of mimicking the song's jaunty clave-heavy groove, McHenry sang out a tectonic procession of long, heavy notes. Usually a soloist flys fast over the top of the music; McHenry allowed the rest of the band to rush under him—a great ship at anchor resting atop the waves. McHenry has been playing a version of that solo on "Juana" for years (you can hear it on Los Guachos II), but his version on Sunday was a more extreme rendition, and it was all the more expressive and moving for it.

Los Guachos' interpretation of the first movement of Alberto Ginastera's "Piano Sonata No.1" also showed the benefits of a week's hard work. What had been moving but inconsistent on Tuesday landed with a wallop on Sunday. Ginastera's daughter Georgina and her companion, the Argentine poet Albino Gómez, sat in the audience. After the set, Guillermo admitted that he'd been nervous in the presence of such porteño cultural royalty. If Guillermo really had the jitters, they didn't hamper his playing. It was the strongest version of Ginastera the band had played all week, Guillermo told me, even more assured than what they'd recorded the previous day for their album.

It's that remark, that the band's best came not during an exhaustive recording session but on a lonely Sunday night in a basement club, that reveals why these visits to the Vanguard can feel so magical: there's the possibility that you'll witness the music in its most perfect form. If you're so lucky—as I think we were on Sunday—it'll exist for just a moment in the ears of you and about 100 other people. Then it'll fade, and the band will start playing—imperfectly, beautifully—once again.

Joe Lovano is the laughing Buddha of mainstream jazz

I write today in praise of Joe Lovano, a man whom I called in NYMag's jazz listings "the laughing Buddha of mainstream jazz." Ten years ago—on June 2nd, 2001 to be exact—I went to the Vanguard for the very first time, a 16-year-old discovering the music, taken with Lovano's 1992 release From the Soul. (The copy I had of Richard Cook and Brian Morton's Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD had called the disc something like "the definitive jazz album of the nineties," hyperbole that they edited out of subsequent editions.) Lovano was playing that night with two trios, a rhythmic assault that echoes in the dual-drummer format of his latest band, Us Five. After the set, I approached Joe, asked if he could sign my copy of Trio Fascination: Vol. 2, and he ushered me back to "the kitchen," as the Vanguard's greenroom is called. Joe didn't just sign my CD, he asked me about myself—what I played, where I lived—and he told me about his straight-alto horn and where he was heading on his tour (Dallas was the next stop).

That event feels fresh because last night, I went back to the Vanguard to hear Lovano. The club was jammed, seemingly fuller than a usual sell-out; and the band was big league, especially the drummers Matt Wilson and Otis Brown III. Lovano took a while to warm up—his breathy tone can be wispy and strangely insubstantial; but as the night wore on, it grew sharp and mighty. The pianist James Wiedman was stellar, awakening dark harmonies that played beautifully off the heavy grooves.

Of course, the band's bassist was the biggest star of all: Ms. Esperanza Spalding, she of the Obama Nobel Prize gig and the Grammy Best New Artist nod. In a band like this, Spalding was pretty clearly the least assured musician. That's not surprising. She's the youngest and least experienced by leaps and bounds. When I saw Lovano in 2001, he'd been a big jazz star for a dozen years and he was, famously, a late bloomer. Esperanza Spalding was a junior in high school.

What impressed me about Spalding in the gig wasn't her playing—which certainly wasn't bad, but lacked the confidence and dexterity of the musicians around her—but that she, despite her rapidly growing celebrity, chooses to keep learning. If Esperanza Spalding wanted to, she could spend all of her time doing jazz-crossover gigs with a crack backing band while earning a lot of money. That's what Chris Botti does. That's what Harry Connick Jr. once did. (It's kind of mind-boggling now to think that Harry Connick Jr. once played the Vanguard.) But to her immense credit, Esperanza seems to want to be a really good musician more than she wants to be a star; and she realizes that the way to do that is to play with better musicians. It's an attribute that's going to serve her very well. (What's Harry up to these days, anyway?)

Notes:

WBGO's Josh Jackson was on-site last night to record the first set for NPR's broadcast "Live at the Village Vanguard." Available here.

And Us Five just put out an excellent album, Bird Songs, Lovano's tribute to Charlie Parker. To help plug it, he wrote a few words about his favorite Charlie Parker performances for NYMag. Check it out here (scroll down).

Guillermo Klein's new album (plus an exclusive clip!)

Tomorrow, Sunnyside will release Guillermo Klein's latest album, Domador de Huellas, an inventive and powerful take on the music of the Argentine folklore legend Cuchi Leguizamón. The early reviews are stellar. The Times' Ben Ratliff lauds the way Klein transforms Cuchi's music while retaining its essence. NPR's Patrick Jarenwattananon analyzes Klein's entrancing introduction to "Coplas del Regreso" and admits that, like me, he's been listening to the album on repeat for the last week.

For the next day, you can hear the entire album streaming on NPR's website. Then you can buy your very own copy. I can't recommend it highly enough.

But, wait, there's more—much more. Last December, I traveled to Buenos Aires and conducted lengthy interviews with Guillermo, Richard Nant, Pipi Piazzolla, Fer Isella, and Esteban Sehinkman, all part of the Domador de Huellas team. (Richard plays trumpet and bombo, Pipi is the drummer, Esteban plays keyboards, and Fer is one of the producers.) This material will be part of my forthcoming radio documentary, "Sounds of Upheaval: Guillermo Klein and the new Argentine jazz." The doc will be released on next week's installment of Josh Jackson's The Checkout (Tuesday, 8/17 at 6:30 p.m., 88.3 on the FM dial), which just so happens to be the night that Guillermo, Richard, and Pipi open their run at the Village Vanguard.

On the same day that my Checkout show premieres, I'm going to be releasing a veritable encyclopedia of Argentine jazz on this very blog. Interviews with Pipi Piazzolla, Richard Nant, Juan Cruz de Urquiza, Esteban Sehinkman, Fer Isella, Lucas and Seca Cutaia, and Guillermo Klein (and possibly more) will form the backbone of the project. I'm busy putting all of this together. It's going to be a multimedia extravaganza (words and sounds and sights, oh my!) and should feel like the Criterion Collection Disc 2 (the making-of docs, interviews, outtakes, etc) to my Checkout show's Disc 1.

For now, I leave you with a recording from my afternoon with Guillermo Klein at his house in the Buenos Aires neighorhood of Nuñez. He was playing a mash-up of Cuchi Leguizamón and Duke Ellington on his upright piano, and a very unskilled radio engineer managed to capture a few minutes of it in mono:

Klein Plays Cuchi

The Argentine Invasion, Pt. 3: Juan Cruz de Urquiza

Joining Richard Nant in the trumpet section of Guillermo Klein's Base de Nave (at the Vanguard next month) will be Juan Cruz de Urquiza. JCU studied at Berklee with Klein and Nant in the early 90s, but unlike them, he returned to Buenos Aires soon after graduating. Much of the new Argentine jazz comes out of Klein's and Nant's work in mid- to late-90s New York (that's a large focus of my upcoming Checkout report), but JCU's contribution shouldn't be overlooked.

In 1998, Urquiza formed what many regard as the first band of the new Argentine jazz, Quinteto Urbano—a clockwork post-bop unit that brought a new professionalism and conceptual sophistication to the music. Quinteto dedicated itself to a rather simple concept: performing original music once a week and practicing it once a week. That hardly sounds like a radical proposition, but it proved to be—helping to shift the paradigm from pick-up gigs to intricately thought-out performances.

Drummer Pipi Piazzolla told me that hearing the jazz chacarera on Quinteto Urbano's first CD marked what the Argentines would call an "antes y después"—jazz could animate his country's native music and push it in bold new directions.

Here's Juan Cruz and Quinteto Urbano in a 2003 performance that's more straight-ahead than much of their music, but nonetheless shows this very tight band in very fine form:

The Argentine Invasion, Pt. 2: Richard Nant

When Guillermo Klein plays the Village Vanguard next month, his old friend and collaborator Richard Nant will be coming along. The trumpeter/percussionist Nant has been a fixture in Klein's flagship group, Los Guachos, for as long as its been in existence; and he's also a crucial contributor to Base de Nave, the band the Vanguard will host this time around.

In Buenos Aires, Nant leads his own ensemble, Argentos—a vigorous unit that deploys its horns in an intricate, constantly shifting attack that's grounded by Pipi Piazzolla and Matías Méndez's crushing rhythmic thump. Here, all-world saxophonist Miguel Zenón (who will appear with Base de Nave) guest solos with the band as they play "Carnavaleando," a Cuchi Leguizamón number that will not appear on Domador de Huellas but may very well get some play at the Vanguard:

POW!: Jenny Scheinman - Mischief & Mayhem

Jenny Scheinman -
Mischief & Mayhem

The Village Vanguard
Through July 18, 9 p.m., 11 p.m.

The Village Vanguard is the only club in the world that can shift the meaning of "mainstream" in jazz. Befitting its history and reputation, the Vanguard books a lot of traditional acts; but every so often, a group of adventurous young musicians arrives unexpectedly, and the week of gigs makes seismic ripples. When the then little-known Bad Plus played the Vanguard for the first time in 2002, a Columbia Records rep scouted them and quickly signed them. No band of the last ten years has been as widely influential as the Bad Plus (jazz musician friends of mine in Buenos Aires know their records chapter and verse); and the Vanguard's endorsement played no small part in their early rise.

This week's appearance by Jenny Scheinman - Mischief & Mayhem has the whiff of that Bad Plus show—the Vanguard taking a risk and displaying its best instincts. The violinst/fiddler/composer Scheinman has played the club before, but this band—with Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, longtime Ani DiFranco bassist Todd Sickafoose, and mad-cap drummer Jim Black—sounds especially promising: four virtuosos equally comfortable in and out of the jazz idiom who can't help but drive the music in new directions. I gave the show at critic's pick in New York magazine and can't wait to check it out...

The Argentine Invasion, Pt. 1: Esteban Sehinkman 3

Argentina's World Cup team may have lost in apocalyptic fashion last Saturday (something in the sun-drenched field and a screaming Carlos Tevez seemed to augur the End of Days), but don't expect to be rid of the Argentines any time soon if you're a reader of this blog.

Next month, Guillermo Klein, Pipi Piazzolla, Richard Nant, Juan Cruz de Urquiza, and Matías Méndez will come to New York from Buenos Aires for a week-long engagement at the Village Vanguard that will coincide with the release of Klein's latest album, Domador de Huellas: Music of "Cuchi" Leguizamón. The visit will also bring about the release of my long-gestating radio show on Klein and the Buenos Aires scene that I'm currently working on with WBGO's Josh Jackson. Around the time the show hits the airwaves (August 17), expect some in-depth interviews with the musicians to start trickling into Inverted Garden.

For now, though, I'll leave you with a teaser for Argentina month, a just released video of my friend keyboardist Esteban Sehinkman (he plays on Domador de Huellas but sadly won't be making the trip to New York) in his funked-up groove trio with Piazzolla and Méndez.

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.