Herbie Hancock: On Top Where He Belongs - Downbeat Magazine Interview #jazz #music

ck has a new project on the horizon but says he will not put it out until he’s ready.

(Photo: Mars Breslow)

On April 12 of this year, Herbie Hancock turned 84. How many people do you know in their 80s who are still working full time — and a lot more effectively than some candidates in this year’s U.S. presidential election?

Hancock, though not the President of the United States, is certainly no ordinary octogenarian. He celebrated his recent birthday in Las Vegas. Perhaps he got a little gambling in, but Hancock was actually performing as part of an 18-show American tour, before flying halfway around the world to Tangier, Morocco, to fulfill his duties as UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and concert host of the 13th International Jazz Day, serving in his role as the titular head of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz.

Back home in Los Angeles, Hancock likes to take it a bit more easy, playing semi-regularly at his favorite local haunts, the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall. He returns to the Bowl in August for a 50th anniversary reunion of his Headhunters band with Bennie Maupin, Harvey Mason and Bill Summers. Marcus Miller sits in with the group, playing bass in place of the late Paul Jackson.

Hancock remains as active and vital as he has ever been to the current zeitgeist of jazz.

“I am honored to be selected as the 2024 DownBeat Critics Poll jazz keyboard winner,” said Hancock, in a statement to DownBeat. “I am truly grateful for all the appreciation and support that the fans, critics and DownBeat have shown me over the years.”

It’s the fourth win in five years for Hancock in that category, but it’s only his ninth honor for keyboards in the 61 years since his name first appeared in the 1963 Critics Poll in the subcategory of “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition,” the precursor to DB’s “Rising Star” categories. By 1966, he had moved from TDWR to “Established Talent,” placing in the middle of the pack along with Jaki Byard, Erroll Garner and Andrew Hill, yet far behind Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans and Earl Hines, who won the piano category by a landslide.

Two years later, Hancock was all alone at the top of the Critics Poll for piano, where he would stay for the next three years. But then, he followed his mentor Miles Davis into the unpredictable currents of fusion, drifting into a riptide that pulled Hancock off the DownBeat charts, vanishing completely à la Atlantis from the Critics Poll in 1972 and 1973. He would resurface in 1974 within the brand-new categories of synthesizer and electric piano.

DownBeat’s publisher at the time, Chuck Suber, curtly announced in his regular column: “Herbie Hancock has turned to syn(thesizer) and has been banned from piano.” And even there, he found himself in fifth place, behind winner Jan Hammer, Paul Bley (what?), Sun Ra and Joe Zawinul.

All that seems absurd considering that just a year prior, Hancock made an album that would cement his status as one of the greatest jazz keyboardists of all time. Head Hunters (Columbia, 1963) sent shockwaves throughout the jazz world that reverberate to this day. Hancock had already incorporated electronic keyboard into his own albums, starting with Fat Albert Rotunda (Warner Bros./Seven Arts, 1969), from which came Hancock’s beloved tune “Tell Me A Bedtime Story.” He followed with three profound, experimental albums with his Mwandishi sextet. But Head Hunters demonstrated that jazz could indeed morph into new forms yet still retain that elusive essence unique to jazz. He proved that serious jazz could be unmitigated fun, and undeniably funky.

The general public went nuts for it, making Head Hunters the first jazz album to go platinum. But jazz-loving fans also embraced Hancock’s hot new thing, voting him the top synthesizer player in the 1974 Readers Poll. The critics, however, were not as impressed, elevating Joe Zawinul or Corea over Hancock in every subsequent Critics Poll for a very long time. Granted, Hancock was always hovering near the top, but never breaking through until — incomprehensibly — 1995, more than two decades after the release of Head Hunters.

It wasn’t for lack of new material. Take, for instance, 1974’s Thrust (Columbia), which bolstered the trajectory of its predecessor, loading two more tunes into the Herbie canon: “Actual Proof” and “Butterfly.” That same year also saw the Japanese release of Dedication (CBS/Sony), a solo album Hancock recorded while on tour in Japan, showcasing his utter mastery over both acoustic piano and electronic sound creation.

Hancock moved further into ’70s funk with Man-Child (Columbia, 1975), an album that could have been produced by Stevie Wonder (who makes a cameo on harmonica). Secrets (Columbia, 1976) sported a more mellow, groovy vibe, and a reggae-influenced version of a re-spelled “Cantelope Island.” For Sunlight (Columbia, 1977), Hancock added another instrument to his arsenal: a Sennheiser VSM-201 vocoder, entertaining the idea of Hancock as jazz musician-turned-singing star in the mold of George Benson or, before him, Nat Cole.

The late ’70s into the early ’80s saw Hancock strut into the disco craze with four more albums for Columbia: Feets, Don’t Fail Me Now (1979), Monster (1980), Mr. Hands (1980) and Magic Windows (1981). Also in 1981, he would refresh his acoustic jazz roots, recording a trio record with his former Miles Davis bandmates Ron Carter and Tony Williams, adding to a second session a promising young trumpeter named Wynton Marsalis, who came to view Hancock’s extended foray into popular music as a threat to the survival of jazz. But that is another story.

Hancock forged on with Lite Me Up (Columbia, 1982), an entertaining blend of Earth Wind & Fire, Steely Dan and early Michael Jackson. And then, Hancock would electrify the music world again with the release of Future Shock (Columbia, 1983) and the hit single from that album, “Rockit,” through which the underground music of hip-hop was mainlined to the MTV crowd, earning Hancock a Grammy for Best R&B Instrumental Performance.

Not that the jazz critics cared. Head Hunters, of course, was a critical as well as commercial hit. Nat Freedland, in reviewing the album for Billboard, wrote: “Hancock is specifically trying to take his formidable jazz keyboard techniques into music that combines the appeal of soul at its funkiest and the flights of free-form playing.” And Chuck Mitchell in DownBeat gave the album five stars, writing: “Herbie Hancock has managed to bring his sound around to a more fundamental, easily communicable form without making compromises in the areas of energy, intensity and musical variety. He has both the skills and the creative vision to escape the trap of repetition that the deceptively simple approach will now present to him.”

But Hancock’s continued courting of Soul Train danceaholics had the prolonged effect of alienating more than a few jazz aficionados, evidenced by the fact that all or most of these later albums were either largely ignored or panned outright by jazz writers. In The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide, author John Swenson asserts: “Feets, Lite, Magic and Monster have virtually no interest from a jazz perspective, overladen as they are with vocoders and other gimmicktry.” This prevailing attitude might explain Hancock’s dry spell of Critics Poll wins during this era.

A dozen years after Future Shock, during which Hancock was relatively quiet on the recording front, making only three albums during that span (the last three he would do for Columbia), he released Dis Is da Drum (Mercury, 1994), another crossover album that reflected the acid-jazz/electronic music scene of the ’90s. Drum received less than stellar marks; Rolling Stone said of the album, “Where Hancock was once a master of the danceable pulse, his latest rhythms feel bloodless.”

Yet Hancock at this point had rehabilitated his jazz career, having scored and acted in the film Round Midnight (winning an Oscar in 1987 for Best Original Score), recorded and toured with Ron Carter, Tony Williams and Wayne Shorter along with Wallace Roney in a tribute to Miles Davis, who died in 1991, and started a new straightahead band, Parallel Realities, that featured Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland and Pat Metheny. All that seemed to convince enough writers to finally award Hancock that very first Critics Poll win for keyboards in 1995.

The second half of the ’90s would ensconce Hancock in his rightful role as one of the most important jazz minds to have lived. His run of albums for Verve: The New Standard (1996), 1 + 1 (1997) and Gershwin’s World (1998) were commercial and critical successes, and the critics responded with another poll win for Hancock in 1996 for keyboards and an overdue return to the piano category in 1997. In 1999, they voted Gershwin’s World Album of the Year, and they crowned Hancock as the Critics Poll Artist of the Year.

In 2005, DownBeat’s readers voted Hancock into the Hall of Fame, and three years later, he was again voted Artist of the Year in the 2008 Critics Poll, bookending the Grammys he received that same year, as River: The Joni Letters (Verve, 2007) won for Best Contemporary Jazz Album and also Album of the Year, in a shocking upset over Kanye West, Amy Winehouse, Vince Gill and Foo Fighters. It took nearly half a century, but finally the critics and the audiences were all on the same page in admiration of their chief Headhunter.

It’s a perch from which he has yet to climb down. Despite not having made an album in nearly 15 years, Hancock has been atop the Critics Poll for keyboards five more times during that span, and he has been the Readers Poll favorite for nearly every one of those years.

There is a new project in the works for Hancock, as he has been collaborating with a new generation of crossover jazz artists: Terrace Martin, Flying Lotus, Kamasi Washington and Thundercat, with potential appearances by hip-hop artists Kendrick Lamar, Common and Snoop Dog. One could speculate that their successes at blending jazz with funk, pop and hip-hop are built on the shoulders of their prime collaborator, who has spent his lifetime trying to do just that. Whatever they ultimately produce together will be the full-circling of that legacy.

But Hancock has indicated he’s in no rush to put anything out before it is ready. So, as we await the next chapter in his storied career, Herbie Hancock will do what most 80-somethings do all the time: whatever the hell he wants. Fans and critics alike know he’s earned it. DB

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Jazz saxophonist Richard Elliot keeps movin’ on up

When smooth jazz saxophonist Richard Elliot set out to make his latest album, “Rock Steady,” he did so with three distinct songs in mind.

He framed the entire album around Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up,” “Rock Steady” by Aretha Franklin, and “Keep on Truckin’” by Eddie Kendricks.

“Most of the time when I start a CD, I have some kind of theme in mind. With my CD prior to ‘Rock Steady,’ ‘Metro Blue,’ my goal was to draw on my R&B influences growing up in the ‘70s. That is how it started, but it morphed into this Euro-jazz influenced thing. It completely went away from the original concept,” he said. “I was thinking to myself, ‘How can I come up with a theme and stay focused on the original idea? The way I did it was, I took three covers that were significant songs to me growing up. (Then) I could build originals around those three songs, I recorded those songs first, and that put me in the mind-set. As I wrote the remaining songs, they carried that theme.”

Why those particular songs?

“There’s a lot of music from that period that I love. I made a list of songs from that period and those three stuck out,” he said.

He became re-acquainted with the song “Move on Up” from the movie “Bend it Like Beckham,” which is used at the end of the movie.

“I was like, ‘I remember that song; that is a great song,’” he said. “‘Rock Steady’ I think was used in a car commercial. That painted that in my head.”

“Keep on Truckin’” contained the big, epic, orchestral sound and feel he was looking for, he said.

Elliot, who was named Best Wind Player at the 2010 American Smooth Jazz Awards, performs April 2 in North Central College’s Wentz Concert Hall.

A former horn section member of the legendary jazz band Tower of Power, Elliot has more than 15 recordings and thousands of live performances under his belt. He has had six albums reach No. 1 on Billboard’s new adult contemporary chart.

Elliot was born in Scotland and raised in Los Angeles. He picked up the saxophone at age 11, during summer school.

“I thought it would be fun to take up an instrument. I looked around at all the instruments and saw the sax, and it looked cool,” he said. “I liked the shape and thought it would be fun to give it a try. I am definitely a product of music programs in the public school systems. I am a big believer in those kinds of programs. When I do clinics in schools, I tell them music is a great thing, regardless of whether you are considering it as a career. It fills in so much in the kids’ development. It helps in math and other logical types of thinking as well as developing the creative side.”

His high school music teacher was a professional musician — he did recording sessions for Hanna-Barbera cartoons and movie soundtracks.

“He was able to offer insight into being a professional musician. That locked it up for me,” Elliot said. “My first year of high school, I thought, ‘This is what I want to do for a living.’”

He learned a lot from that teacher, including the maxim: no matter how good you are, there is always someone better. That is why although he values the title “Smooth Jazz Player of the Year,” he doesn’t set too much stock by it.

“I kind of look at it as a form of recognition and acknowledgement, and that’s wonderful. It’s a great thing to be acknowledged by my fans and my peers,” he said. “It’s wonderful, but it’s not the core reason why I do what I do. I love making music and if it touches people in a positive way, I have achieved my goal. But it was really nice and very unexpected.”

Elliot landed his first professional gig touring with Natalie Cole and The Pointer Sisters while he was still in high school. He played with the adventurous fusion band Kittyhawk and recorded with his Motown heroes Smokey Robinson, The Four Tops and The Temptations.

He later performed with Melissa Manchester and Yellowjackets, which led him to five years’ service with Tower of Power. He released his debut album “Trolltown” in 1986. His solo career took off with his cover of “When a Man Loves a Woman.”

For many years, Elliot was known for his near non-stop touring schedule. These days, he has cut back in order to spend time with his wife and their five children, ages 6 through 20.

However, the touring season starts now and continues through the summer, so he will be out on the road for awhile.

Other upcoming projects include a new, as-yet-untitled CD that will be out midsummer. Naperville audiences will probably hear a sneak preview of that new material, he said.

In addition to the new songs, audiences can expect a lot of fun and the high energy of a rock show, he promised.

“We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We try to have a lot of fun. We play jazz or jazz-influenced music, but we come from an R&B and rock ‘n’ roll background,” he said. “As a result, we put a lot of energy in our show and we try to convey that energy so it feels more like a rock show than a jazz show.”

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Herbie Hancock Salutes John Lennon, World Music in 70th Year: Interview

Herbie Hancock’s latest album takes its title from a John Lennon song that imagined a world with no national boundaries. Fittingly, “The Imagine Project” features an international group of musicians who recorded songs in cities around the globe.

The collection of 10 songs, released in June, pairs Hancock with a group that includes American jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter, British guitarist Jeff Beck, Indian sitar player Anoushka Shankar, Brazilian singer-songwriter Ceu, South African-born rocker Dave Matthews and American singers John Legend and Chaka Khan.

Artists from 11 nations recorded in six countries using seven languages.

“This CD is clearly about globalization and in a way is a call to arms,” Hancock, who turned 70 in April, said by phone from his Los Angeles home. “We need to put into practice the idea of embracing other cultures. We need to be shaping the kind of world we want to live in instead of waiting for someone else or some other entities to do it for us.”

After touring Europe in July, the Grammy Award-winning pianist, composer and bandleader is performing this month in the U.S., including a 70th-birthday celebration concert on Sept. 1 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

Mumbai, Miami

Hancock, who has been a Buddhist for almost four decades, recorded the album in cities where his collaborators lived. “The Song Goes On” was taped with Shankar (along with Khan and Shorter) in Mumbai. Ceu sang the sultry ballad “Tempo de Amor” in Sao Paulo, while Colombia native Juanes recorded “La Tierra” in his adopted home of Miami.

Hancock said he hopes the album will help Americans better understand other cultures.
“We’re known for being arrogant, but some of it is through our own ignorance,” Hancock said.
While the CD isn’t a blockbuster, it has found an audience among jazz fans. “Imagine” peaked at No. 2 on Billboard’s jazz charts and is currently ranked No. 6. Commercial success wasn’t Hancock’s main goal, however.

“I wanted to make a record that didn’t sound foreign to Americans, but would be foreign at the same time,” he said. “That was a challenge, but I think I achieved it.”

Child Prodigy

In his 54 recordings, the Chicago native has etched a permanent mark on jazz, funk and rhythm and blues. A child prodigy, he performed Mozart with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when he was 11. His first recording, “Takin’ Off” attracted the attention of trumpeter Miles Davis in 1962. Davis asked Hancock to join his band of young lions, which included Shorter, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams.

In the 1970s, Hancock branched out into a blend of jazz and funk with his groundbreaking group, the Head Hunters, which produced the hit single “Chameleon.” His Grammy-winning instrumental, “Rockit,” one of the first pop songs to incorporate turntable scratching sounds, thrust him into the mainstream in 1983.

Although he continued to record jazz records, his genre- blending collaborations have earned the most praise. His 2007 tribute to Joni Mitchell, “River: The Joni Letters,” won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album and Album of the Year.

When Hancock takes the stage at the Hollywood Bowl next month, he’ll reunite with Juanes, Shorter and guitarist Derek Trucks to play songs from the “Imagine” sessions.

Classical CD

Hancock’s current touring band includes Greg Phillinganes, a former music director for Michael Jackson; guitarist Lionel Loueke; bassist/vocalist Kristina Train; and Grammy-winning drummer Vinnie Colaiuta. He’ll also perform some of his signature jazz compositions with Shorter.

Inspired by his concerts last year with Chinese pianist Lang Lang, Hancock said he may record a classical CD. But music doesn’t consume all his time and energy.

“I no longer perceive myself as being just a musician,” said Hancock, who holds the creative jazz chair at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “I perceive myself as a human being first, and being a musician is something I do. My concerns today are much larger than the field of music.”

For information on Hancock’s U.S. tour: http://www.herbiehancock.com/home.php.
(Patrick Cole is a reporter for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on this story: Patrick Cole in New York at pcole3@bloomberg.net.

By Patrick Cole - Aug 24, 2010 Bloomberg.com
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'The New Face Of Jazz': An Interview [NPR]

About a year ago, a curious new website appeared, claiming to represent The New Face Of Jazz. With so much of jazz's public image oriented toward the music of decades past, it seemed important to follow. But who was this new face? How would it be profiled? Why was it being done? Who was behind it?

In the following months, those questions were slowly answered as details emerged. And earlier this week, all was revealed with the release of a new book called The New Face Of Jazz. Subtitled "An Intimate Look At Today's Living Legends And The Artists Of Tomorrow," it's comprised of short profiles and personal statements from many of today's top jazz musicians. Its scope is impressive, from the hotly buzzed-about talent of today, to wise veterans of the scene, and great artists who enjoy very little press attention.

Author Cicily Janus spent the last few years of her life gathering interviews with all the artists in the book — and more — then compiling them all together. Over e-mail, I asked her to lay out the whys and wherefores of her project.

Continue reading the interview at NPR.org

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Jazz Veterans Spyro Gyra See Grammy Snub As A Compliment

For the past 35 years, Spyro Gyra has existed in its own jazz world. When leader and saxophonist Jay Beckenstein discusses the group’s longevity, the Buffalo native feels the group enjoyed the right amount of success to sustain a career.

“The best thing that ever happened to this band was having a hit single [‘Morning Dance’],” said Beckenstein, calling from Upstate New York. “And the second best thing that happened to this band was not having another hit single. We got established early on and had a lot of people know who we were. That was great, but the fact that the hit was a one-off, the rest of our career has basically been not about hits but just making the music we want. That’s worked great for us,

“At this stage in our career, we don’t find ourselves doing a nostalgia act. We’re basically making some of the best music we ever made. In fact, our last four CDs that we put out have all gotten Grammy Award nominations.”

In reality, talk of the Grammy Awards and Spyro Gyra should be a sore subject or even off limits for Beckenstein considering his act has been nominated 11 times without ever taking home the hardware. The latest bridesmaid experience came earlier this year with the group’s newest release, 2009’s “Down the Wire,” which was nominated for Best Pop Instrumental Album. So, yeah, Spyro Gyra has become the Susan Lucci of the recording industry.

“But she finally won,” Beckenstein said, laughing.

In reality, the 59-year-old brass musician takes the Grammy snub as a compliment to Spyro Gyra’s creativity and unique sound, which has been spread out over 25 albums that have sold more than 10 million copies.

“Our entire career has been marked by the difficulty people have in categorizing us,” Beckenstein said. “Are we a traditional jazz band? A smooth jazz band? Are we a fusion jazz band? Are we a jazz band at all? It’s been very, very, very hard to categorize us, so we find ourselves often up against people in the Grammy process that you couldn’t imagine. The last couple of Grammy Awards we’ve lost to Peter Frampton and The Beastie Boys. So it’s kind of cool to have this band that sells one-tenth of the records of these other people, and we’re nominated in similar categories. But we really don’t expect to win against people with that kind of name recognition.”

Still, Spyro Gyra has plenty of name recognition itself, with yet another tour bringing the act to Northeast Ohio for a show Saturday at the Summer Festival of the Arts. Looking to the future, how long does Beckenstein feel Spyro Gyra can continue to tour?

“I think the band has a really good support base and an international support base,” Beckenstein said. “We work in Manila as often as we work in Youngstown. We’re out there all around the world, so from the standpoint of people still being interested in what we’re doing, we’re really lucky, and I don’t see any particular shelf life. So as long as everybody in the band maintains their health, I don’t see it ending.”

By JOHN BENSON entertainment@vindy.com

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Herbie Hancock: After 54 Albums, Still Making Beautiful Music [Video] #jazz

By Denise Quan, CNN
Herbie Hancock has forgotten his glasses at home in Beverly Hills, and is waiting for his publicist to bring them to his rehearsal studio. "I had surgery and I don't really need them," he confides. "But nobody recognizes me without them."

The legendary jazz pianist was wearing his trademark spectacles when he stepped up to the podium at the 2008 Grammys to collect his "Album of the Year" trophy for "River: The Joni Letters" -- his homage to Joni Mitchell. But even then, things went awry. "I lost my speech. It fell out of my pocket. And then Quincy Jones reached down, and he grabbed it, and tried to slip it back under my coat." He cracks up at the memory.

Hancock turned 70 in April, and he's taking his birthday celebration on the road through the end of the summer. Thursday, he'll headline a concert at Carnegie Hall, playing fan favorites, as well as selections from his 54th album, "The Imagine Project." The disc includes collaborations with such pop stars as Pink, John Legend, Indie.Arie, Seal and Dave Matthews. Well-known world artists like sitarist Anoushka Shankar and Brazilian singer Ceu give an international twist to classic songs by John Lennon, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Peter Gabriel.

"Seven different languages are on here, because I started thinking, 'Okay, if I'm going to make a global record, it has to be about honoring cultures outside of our own," says Hancock.

The Chicago-born musician was able to immerse himself in local musical flavor by recording "The Imagine Project" in India, Ireland, England, Brazil and the United States. "This record right here is really about peace through global collaboration," he says. "It's time to stop complaining and start acting."

CNN caught up with the 12-time Grammy winner as he rehearsed new songs for his summer tour.

CNN: This is called "The Imagine Project." What does that mean to you?

Herbie Hancock: It means a lot of things. There's hope attached to that. There's adventure attached to it. Creativity.

CNN: Of course, all the songs are Herbie-ized. They don't sound the way the originals sound.

Hancock: You know why? They already have the originals. You can play them on your CD player. If I didn't do something special in some way, then why should I do it in the first place?

CNN: How did it feel to win the Grammy for "Album of the Year" at age 68?

Hancock: At the time that my name was called, I wasn't actually thinking about my age at the time! As a matter of fact, when [presenter] Quincy Jones said my name, it didn't even register. I didn't hear it because I was so dumbfounded and shocked.

CNN: Who did you think was going to win?

Hancock: Well, conventional thinking is that it would've been Kanye West, you know -- or Amy Winehouse.

CNN: Kanye probably thought he should have won.

Hancock: (Laughs) Kanye says a lot of things. That's kind of his persona as Kanye. In real life, he's not always like that. He's a nice guy. I hate to say that! Kanye, actually -- he's a nice guy.

CNN: Does his ego get the best of him sometimes? He once told us the reason he overreacts is because deep, down inside, he's insecure.

Hancock: I absolutely believe that.

CNN: Do you think most stars are?

Hancock: I think they are. They really are.

CNN: Do you still have insecurities after all this time?

Hancock: I do, but I think I have a better way of dealing with it.

CNN: What were you most insecure about? About your playing? Your composing?

Hancock: Well, when you get ready to walk out on that stage, and there are people out there who paid their hard-earned money to see you, you want to be able to give them something that they will be happy about having spent their money for. You want to give them something of yourself. Fortunately, I had great teachers like Miles Davis, who said he'd pay us to think outside the box.

CNN: You were one of the first to use the Vocoder (a vocal synthesizer that creates an effect similar to the Auto-Tune used today by artists like T-Pain, Rihanna, and Kanye West), and you got a lot of flack for that back in the day.

Hancock: (Laughs) I'm guessing I was either the second person or the third person, period, to use the Vocoder. I did an album called "Sunlight" (in 1977). It didn't really catch with the public at all, and it kind of died -- but then some years later, all of a sudden, everybody starts using the Vocoder, or Auto-Tune, the new type of Vocoder.

CNN: Don't you think it's a fad that maybe needs to go away?

Hancock: Talking about fitting into a box -- that has become part of the new box to fit into. That's kind of silly. We need to get past that. It's a great effect until it's overused, and then you don't want to hear it anymore. There's always so much more, you know. Let's keep looking to create much more.

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Esperanza Spalding - "Chamber Music Society" - Heads Up Release On August 17, 2010 [Interview] #jazz

(From The Press Democrat)
Star on the rise at Healdsburg Jazz Festival
Young singer-bassist Esperanza Spalding keeps turning heads
By JOHN BECK
Published: Thursday, June 3, 2010
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Since Esperanza Spalding played the Healdsburg Jazz Festival last year, she’s plucked her bass on stage at Austin City Limits, been profiled in the New Yorker, recorded a new album and signed on to star in a crime movie (although she won’t disclose the name yet).

Ever since shooting out of Portland and blowing through the Berklee College of Music, the chatty 25-year-old singer-bassist has turned heads — from the old guard to curious, non-jazz fans. Her personal blend of jazz is all over the map, punched up with Latin (especially Brazilian) rhythms, pop stylings and sassy vocals like “I know you wanted me too/Before she got to you.”

Still riding high on her popular second album, Esperanza, that peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard jazz chart, she’s jazz’s latest It Girl — whether she agrees or not.

“I’m still surprised that people consider me jazz,” she says. “People say, ‘Oh you’re jazz, you’re jazz.’ It’s cool. But it might not be like that forever. But as long as I get to work and go play, I don’t care what people call it.”

Before she returns to the Wine Country next week, Spalding took time out to chat about new music, the future of jazz and the undeniable magic of improv.

Q: So these days, you’re splitting time between New York and Austin?
A: I’ve got a place in New York in the Village, so I’m right in the heart of everything, and I come here (to Austin) to R&R and play the piano as loud as I want and drums and whatever.

Q: I want to make sure I’ve got this right: Chamber Music Society doesn’t come out until August, but judging by recent reviews, you’re already playing songs from the follow-up Radio Music Society on tour?
A: No. We just did a couple of previews like that. I just needed to go into the studio and record a few of those songs to deliver to the label because we might pre-release a couple as sneak peeks. So I thought the best thing to do would be to play it and hear what was working and what wasn’t working. On a couple of gigs we showcased a lot of the new music, but now — we can’t give it all away — we’re gonna go back to playing stuff from Esperanza and some new arrangements of older stuff.

Q: How’s life after the big New Yorker profile?
A: The same as before, I guess.

Q: I imagine it’s somewhat of a rite of passage for any artist or musician.
A: I think all of it’s great. You never know, maybe there’s some little podunk town in Wyoming and they happen to read about my music in the local paper and it really means a lot to them. That’s really important, too. Maybe the main thing is that the exposure in the New Yorker enables me to wind up in more places where people can discover the music. I don’t walk down the street and people go — ooh! I’m still a jazz musician.

Q: Do you ever get sick of talking about the future of jazz? I get the feeling you want to take it in a whole different direction.
A: I don’t care what direction it goes en masse. That’s not my job or my concern. My purpose is to create really excellent music as I see it and I hear it. Because of my background and my taste, I draw a lot of inspiration from and I love to play within the context of improvised music. And in our culture, that music is jazz. Things happen naturally in this world and culture and there’s a rise and fall of movements and tastes and cultures — and that’s all OK. That’s all part of the ebb and flow of life.

Q: Can you give me an example of something on Chamber Music Society where the improv took it in a whole different direction that really surprised you?
A: Yeah, probably the last track on the record. It’s called “Short and Sweet.” It was always a really short song and we’d play this melody and vamp on the intro and vamp on the outro and that was it. When we played it on the record, I think we did one take, and we just went off on the trio exploration and it was very melancholy and celestial, like it was floating further out into the cosmos somehow.
That was completely unexpected. I didn’t intend that to be part of the song. But then when the whole string ensemble comes back in, it snaps you back to earth and back to the title. That’s the only song on the piece that we really stretched that far away from what was written or what was created for the ensemble.

Q: That’s gotta be liberating, both playing and when you listen back to it.
A: It was really weird. Literally, none of us knew what was happening. We’re like listening back and going, “Oh OK, I guess the time is there.” But when we were playing it, it was really out there.

Q: It sounds like an out-of-body experience.
A: It kind of was — an out-of-context experience. I felt like I was experiencing — mildly experiencing — what people like Herbie (Hancock) and Ron Carter and Wayne (Shorter) spoke about, searching for that moment where they didn’t know what was happening, so they could be totally free with each other — right in that moment. That’s pure sound.

Read the original article: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20100603/ENTERTAINMENT/100609888?p=1&tc=pg

 

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George Benson interview: love songs are one of the things in life that last

Guitarist and singer George Benson talks about romance, his wife and his long friendship with Michael Jackson. By Celia Walden telegraph.co.uk

Twenty minutes into my interview with George Benson, the sun, moving out from behind a cloud above the Metropolitan Hotel, focuses its full glare on the musician’s face, turning his eyes a deep tortoiseshell. At that moment, Benson puts down his cup of Earl Grey and starts to sing. “If I had to live my life without you near me, the days would all be empty, the nights would seem so long…” His voice oozes richly through the air; by the end of the first phrase, I fear I may start to levitate with pleasure.

The Grammy Award-winning vocalist – whose hits include Give Me The Night, Lady Love Me and Turn Your Love Around – has been weakening female knees from the age of six, when he wooed the schoolgirls of Pittsburgh with his ukulele. Following the deaths of Barry White and Luther Vandross, Benson has been handed the “love God” mantle, and his album Classic Love Songs is out now, but the 67-year-old is keen to point out that he sees himself as a missionary of romance – not sex. “I’ll happily devote the rest of my life to nothing but love,” he says in his rich, bass rumble, having given me a Carry-On-style once-over and told his PR man to “knock, before you come back in”.

“Love songs are one of the great essences of life, the only thing that’s lasting. Barry White spiced up the scene with an approach to music that was quite different to anyone else’s, but I’m a little more…” he bares a rack of white teeth, “… sober. Luther and I would joke about how many children the two of us were partly responsible for in this world, but I’ll always draw the line if someone writes something too sexually suggestive for me,” he says. “I just don’t feel I have to do that. Lionel Ritchie sang three songs about a lady and they were all smashes.”

It isn’t, he assures me, because he is a family man – a father of seven who has been married to the same woman, Johnnie, for 45 years – or a religious man, who conducts bible studies, that he has always objected to lubricious lyrics. “Although imagine turning up at someone’s door to preach and they’ve got me singing in the background, telling them to 'do it to me one more time’,” he grins. His stance is a reaction to what he sees as an implicit racism within the music industry which has become more pronounced in recent years.

“They don’t like anything now that doesn’t shock you from bar one. Why can’t you have a song that sneaks up on you, suggests 'it’ even, without having to spell things out? MTV is becoming like a porno channel now. It is using us African Americans in a barbaric sense. People think that because you come from 'the jungle’ you can’t do romance, because only clever people can do romance. That is simply not true.”

When a young Benson, originally a guitarist in the Wes Montgomery jazz tradition, was seduced into a more soul-led, commercial genre, some purists said the guitarist was “a traitor to jazz”. But he remains a highly respected figure for whom the most talented songwriters of the last half-century – including James Taylor, Smokey Robinson and Bill Withers – have written.

For Benson, the real schism in jazz happened well before his “defection”. In the Fifties and Sixties, when jazz moved from good-time party music to high art, Charlie Bird Parker, one of the guitarist’s early heroes, was already making industry heads uneasy. “Here was a guy who, they claimed, 'was going to destroy jazz’. And, in fact, he did: jazz as they knew it. He changed the parameters, proved that African Americans could be a lot more intellectual than we had been given credit for, that we weren’t just folk who relied on our instincts and thumped along to the gospel vibe. Parker was akin to Stravinsky in his intellect and he taught me a great lesson, which is that nobody is going to get love from across the board.”

Miles Davis, who employed Benson in the Sixties on the album Miles in the Sky, didn’t attempt to seek love from any quarter. “I always knew when to leave, because I’d see him getting fired up over autograph hunters who would come up and say things like, 'Do you remember 25 years ago when you did that thing?’ Only Miles didn’t want to be reminded of what he did 25 years ago, so he’d just shout 'shut the ---- up’ and refuse to sign the autograph.”

As a child prodigy raised in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Benson was earning a living by the age of seven playing the guitar in a local nightclub. He recorded his first single, She Makes Me Mad, at the age of 10 in New York, at which point his mother insisted on a career hiatus. “My mother saw what was happening and cut it all off just in time, so that I got the chance to be a child again.”

Michael Jackson, with whom he later became close, wasn’t fortunate enough to have his ascent to stardom tempered in the same way. “Where Michael came from was incredibly awful and I guess the family were trying to escape it and had all the potential right there. I have to give my mother credit for taking me out of the game when I was 11 years old. I was poor and raggedy, but I went back to school and got a little bit of an education and when I came out I got back into music.”

It wasn’t until 1978, having recorded a number of albums with jazz heavyweights and achieved financial success, that Benson got to know Jackson. “We met for the first time in London. We were both studying to be ministers [Jackson was a Jehovah’s Witness at the time] but from that point on the world just ate him up. I did feel sorry for Michael: apart from the adoration, he wasn’t getting the benefits of being famous.”

Benson says he has been able to relish those benefits for one reason. “My whole life, I’ve never worried about being No 1, because that’s the guy they’ve got to get out of there. When Michael was at No 2 in the charts, he was making just as much money as he would have been at No 1, but as soon as he got there, the whole world came down. Meanwhile, the only time people know I’m still alive is when I’ve got a record coming out.”

In his lifetime, he sighs, finally reaching for the shortbread finger he has been eyeing since we sat down, he has seen fame destroy some talented people, and yet he remains optimistic. “I like Simon Cowell – look at how many great artists have come out of the UK because of him. Those shows keep our minds on the art of making music. You can be as great as you like but if nobody ever hears you, what’s the point?”

Had they existed in the Pittsburgh days, would he and his ukulele have braved one? “Oh no,” he smiles. “I’ve always hated rejection; I only want to go out there when I know I’ve got it right.”

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Christian Scott Live Chat on Justin.tv March 21st

Join Concord Jazz star trumpeter Christian Scott for a live online chat this Sunday, March 21st at Justin.tv. Christian will be taking questions live online from 1pm EST on his Justin.tv channel about his upcoming new album and 4th full-length for Concord Jazz, Yesterday You Said Tomorrow, which hits stores March 30th and features the single, a cover of Thom Yorke's (Radiohead) 'The Eraser'.
Tune in and watch it here:
http://www.justin.tv/christiantv2#r=41k2KHE~ Or, live on Christian's Facebook page at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/CHRISTIAN-SCOTT-QUINTET/103828640754

Christian will kick off his nationwide tour in support of the new album on March 23rd at the Berklee School of Music, MA. The tour includes a performance at the Nokia Theater New York, NY with Al Jarreau, and an appearance with Marcus Miller for the opening of the Miles Davis exhibit in Montreal on April 28th.

Yesterday You Said Tomorrow will be available to stream in full during release week at AOL Music from March 30th.

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Marc Myers Interviews Dave Brubeck [Three Parts]

Interview Part 1
Interview Part 2
Interview Part 3

Marc Myers is a New York journalist and historian. His thoughts on jazz and jazz recordings appear on jazzwax.com daily. He is author of three books, including "How to Make Luck: 7 Secrets Lucky People Use to Succeed," which has been published in 11 countries.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Take Five (1961)
Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Joe Morello and Gene Wright


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Marcus Johnson – Poetically Justified (and interview)

Marcus Johnson’s refreshing blend of seductive, romantic, and charismatic offerings coupled with punctuations of funk in the appropriate places has been a hallmark, a musical triumph of sorts, for the accomplished pianist/keyboardist. Johnson is heralded as one of the most competent players in the field of smooth jazz, and no better witness to this fact exists than the grateful residents of the Washington, DC, metropolitan area where the Ohio-born, DC-raised virtuoso frequently pays homage. His love for and commitment to the area is truly remarkable.

Johnson’s latest project, Poetically Justified, continues the glorious journey that he embarked upon some 10+ years ago. Undaunted and unfailing in each of his efforts, this latest simply adds yet another exclamation point on an already exciting and illustrative career. The tunes here, whether fresh originals or covers, all bear the distinctive Marcus Johnson cool. Vocalist extraordinaire Maysa Leak joins Johnson on a couple of tunes here, and saxman Najee drops by, as well, just to add a flavorful touch to this delectable quality smooth jazz stew.

This is an original post by Ronald Jackson at smoothvibes.com
Continue reading the interview here..

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