BEST OF JAZZ & IMPROVISATIONAL MUSIC, 2020

 BEST OF JAZZ & IMPROVISATIONAL MUSIC, 2020

John Pietaro

from UltimateClassicRock

It would be a fool’s errand in a covid-damaged society to attempt a peaceably gathered year’s end “Best of” list, in jazz or any other genre or medium. But artists of jazz and all avant gardes have been especially susceptible to the considerable financial ebbing and health concerns of this period. Discussing this concept with my wife (and best critic) Laurie, I was caught by her knowing response: “It’s not so much a Best of”, she said, “but a TEST of 2020”. And with so much challenge about us this year, arts implosions being but a skimming of the national surface, I wholeheartedly agreed to offer my “Test of 2020”. It’s one founded on survival and resilience. It is also founded on the power of creativity, whether there is a market or not, as a model for the thriving of us all.

This year, in addition to watching beloved venues shutter (including Café Bohemia where my poetry/jazz series West Village Word was housed oh so briefly), seeing great byways of life and commerce silenced and feeling the struggle and pain of so many, I had to contend with the death of my mother and the rapidly progressing dementia which has leveled my father who is residing in a nursing home. The tremors cross-country were played out in the streets after glaring, violent police murders and the rise of the BLM movement, along with the slow, laborious onset of the election and ensuing insanity spewing from the White House and all walks of the right-wing. And of course, the fight-back against such insanity has too been happily on the rise.

Perhaps the one strength grown of this year from Dante’s fifth circle has been self-contained boldness. Artists of every stripe have poured themselves into practice and expression born of the lockdown and in spite of it. Musicians, dancers, spoken word artists and actors have premiered remote performances across the globe while increasing amounts of visual artists and non-performing writers have made grand use of the internet to present works recent and vintage. And a most welcome shift has been the numbers of remote performances encompassing all of the above. Critics, relying on this advanced viewry, have sought to find fresh means to convey our perceptions, including criticism of the connection’s sound and visual clarity, which reminds us of the shifts in quality of recordings in each epoch, from acoustic to electric recording processes, and 78 RPM to LP, Hi-Fi to stereo, CD to download and back to disc and “vinyl”. Here’s just one more demarcation and the technology has quickly kept up with it.

I’m happy to report that during the lockdown I completed a full poetry collection, The Mercer Stands Burning, published in November by Atmosphere Press, wrote numerous pieces for journals and magazines, completed much of a new short story collection and laid the ground work for And I Became of the Dark, a new album by my poetry/free jazz ensemble the Red Microphone. It was finally recorded on the cusp of December by an expanded line-up that I’m very excited about. Hoping this will be available via a noted underground label soon. It has been a tumultuous and memorable time.

So, in memory of those lost this year as well as the surging need for survival on every level, here is THE TEST OF 2020…

Album of the Year: 

Anne Waldman, Sciamchy (Fast Speaking Music)

Album, Duet:

Ran Blake and Christine Correa When Soft Rain Falls (Red Piano)

Ran Blake and Andrew Rathbun, Northern Noir (SteepleChase)

Album, Small Group:

Steve Swell Quintet Soul Travelers w/special guest Leena Conquest, Astonishments (RogueArt)

GRID, Decomposing Force (NNA)

Album, Large Group:

William Hooker, Symphonie of Flowers (Org Music)

Reissue:

Miles Davis, The Complete Birth of the Cool (Blue Note)

Unearthed Gem:

Oneness of Juju, African Rhythms (Strut)

Gray, Shades of…Anthology (Plush Safe)

Tribute Album:

Paolo Bacchetta, Yerkir, The Storytellers (Avand)  tribute to Paul Motian

Record Label:

ESP-Disk

577 Records

Radical Documents

Jazz Performance Video:

Liberation Music Orchestra, “Time/Life, We Shall Overcome”

Jazz Documentary:

Motian in Motion (Aquapio Films Ltd)

 Indie Performance Series:

Brackish Brooklyn

Remote Concert:

Gil Evans Project, Sketches of Spain, “Concierto de Aranjuez”, Jazz Standard at Home, Aug 6

 Pre-Covid Live Concert:

Vijay Iyer Trio with Wadada Leo Smith, Jazz Standard, February 1

Lenny White 70^th Birthday Celebration, Made in New York Jazz Café & Bar, January 4

“Jazz From Hell”: Kilter, ir, Titan to Tachyons, NuBlu 151, March 10

Covid-era Live Concert:

Composers Concordance, “We, the Whole People”, Michiko Studios, November 14

 Biggest Heartache:

Covid-19

Harold Budd’s and Blue Gene Tyranny’s deaths

Keith Jarrett’s health

 Small Band:

GRID

 Large Band:

Sun Ra Arkestra

Liberation Music Orchestra

Artemis

 Musicians:

Up and Coming Musician: Devin Brahja Waldman (alto saxophone)

Multi-Instrumentalist: Daniel Carter, J.D. Parran

Trumpet: Wadada Leo Smith, Nate Wooley

Trombone: Steve Swell

Flute: Nicole Mitchell, Cheryl Pyle

Clarinet: Don Byron, Ben Goldberg

Soprano Saxophone: Sam Newsome

Alto Saxophone: Gary Bartz, Rudresh Mahanthappa

Tenor Saxophone: James Brandon Lewis, Ras Moshe Burnett, Ingrid Laubrock

Baritone Saxophone: Claire Daly, Dave Sewelson

Violin: Sarah Bernstein, Gwen Laster

Viola: Melanie Dyer

Vibraphone: Joel Ross, Bill Ware

Guitar: Bill Frisell, Mary Halvorson, Eugene Chadbourne

Pedal Steel: Susan Alcorn

Piano: Ran Blake, Vijay Iyer, Kris Davis

Double Bass: Ken Filiano, William Parker, Luke Stewart

Electric Bass: Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Steve Swallow

Drumset: Hamid Drake, Tyshawn Sorey, G. Calvin Weston

Percussion: Warren Smith

Vocals: Fay Victor

Spoken Word: Anne Waldman

Karl Berger & The Stone Workshop Orchestra

(photo by Don Mount)

Free Jazz as Cultural Revolution:

Karl Berger & The Stone Workshop Orchestra

By John Pietaro

The Stone stands quietly and without fanfare at the corner of Avenue C and East 2nd Street. The club is set in an old store front that still bears the markings of pre-gentrified Alphabet City. So unassuming is it that there’s no sign over its door proclaiming that a new experimental music space—one which features the free exchange of art and ideas--has taken back part of New York otherwise lost to the developers and yuppies. The Lower East Side , New York’s historic center of alternative arts and struggle, survived years of neglect and decay during which it was shunned by a larger society attempting to cut off its immigrant and poor population just until the ‘hood became fashionable. And as its boarded-up shops transformed into bistros, it ‘became’ the East Village and was sold to the highest bidder. And somehow post-modern saxophonist John Zorn made a grab to claim some of this prized territory for the movement. This community --where Beat poetry found its home, where the most radical of Left activists congregated, where jazz’s loft scene was birthed, where the punk movement began and where the post-punk avant garde coalesced into No Wave—has taken back one of its lost corners. There’s cause to celebrate but the Stone remains the Village’s best-kept secret. And the noise about it only seems to occur within.

Having enjoyed memorable performances in LES clubs and galleries back when there was a healthy scene harboring this kind of music, I well remember the once-affordable community and its phalanx of artists, anarchists, addicts, dealers, homeless, Hell’s Angels and poverty-stricken residents. No, they weren’t really good old times because there was too much hurt and yet the area held a strange beauty that’s long gone. Walking through the door of the Stone brings me back almost immediately. The space is tight, intimate. The lights are dim. The energy is whirling, barely contained in the walls about me. I felt it on my first visit: Musicians flow in, greeting each other with warm, jovial exchanges, laughs, and discussions about a recent tour with this or that one, the last gig with so-and-so, or baseball scores and small talk. Dressed down, unpacking their axes these men and women are as unassuming as the club itself. I walk over the uneven floorboards and find a spot near the back, next to the drummer and two upright bassists preparing for the evening’s excursion. I stand amidst a mini xylophone or glockenspiel, large and small frame drums, several small hand-held percussives, sometimes a dumbek, and a pair of crowded racks sporting woodblocks, temple blocks, cowbells and a triangle. Somehow I set it up in a manner that’s workable but not imposing to the tightly-packed band, which ranges from a minimum of 12 members to a more standard number of about 23. The immediacy of those around me seems to extend well beyond the physical.

Karl Berger and Ingrid Sertso enter the room, gently reaching out to the musicians sitting in a two-rowed semi-circle. The band responds in kind, offering greetings, brief bits of humorous tales and other chitchat. But this is not a mere social call. Soon Karl seats himself caddy-corner at the piano and offers some basic ideas as to what the music will be like tonight. In some cases choosing pieces he’s worked on with the Orchestra before, in others, introducing brand new ones without warning, of course. The compositions are often his own but just as likely penned by the Ornette Coleman or Don Cherry, or other past collaborators. Many are drawn from the repertoire of world folk songs (Karl is especially fond of Turkish music). But it can never be said that there is anything assumed or pre-planned about this band’s music. There is NEVER a written score and when the band needs to learn a jazz head or other melody, it is simply played at the piano, at times slowly and repetitively, until the musicians are comfortable with what’s to come. Karl offers some info on the particular mode or the tradition in which the piece was developed as his hands lightly run over piano keys. The musicians are all veterans and adept at this kind of performance, but Karl’s advice and philosophical guidance are never taken begrudgingly. “Please let’s remember to pay close attention to dynamics in this passage,” Karl is wont to explain as he demonstrates the importance of the phrasing in a piece. Standing now, he raises a hand and gently fans it downward: “You can almost leave that last note out completely. In fact, I would like some of you to fade the phrase just before it ends to really exaggerate the emotion. Deeee-da. Deeee-da”. And the music, already inspired and executed beautifully, comes fully alive. By design, this band is geared toward the highest level of creativity, and the tools of such creativity--free improvisation, on-the-spot composition, modernist harmonies, world rhythms, technical expertise, and latter-day angst—are in constant demand here.

The Stone Workshop Orchestra’s sound is born of the moment, founded by the players’ instincts, skill and need to emote----and it’s then organized by Karl’s artful hand and facial expressions. Sculptor-like, he molds and shapes the aural force emanating from this collection of brass, reeds, strings and percussion set before him. Refusing to consider his part in this as conduction (“really, this is not so specific, I just cue and offer guidance, you do the rest…”), Berger none the less has developed an incredible language of his own; never losing sight of the musicians’ individuality, he plays the orchestra. Karl’s unique hand signals--and welcoming eye contact---bring in sections, soloists or the tutti ensemble, and in doing so, establishes range, tempo, volume, timbre and vibe. Through his cues the band knows the direction and shape as well as the duration of the notes to be played---but the specific notes remain our own. He guides orchestral accents behind the force of a soloist’s excursion, adding to the soundscape and fierce intensity. Karl then layers one solo over another and calls on this or that accompaniment—which ultimately is seen as just an important a voice in the mix and may very well take over the spotlight. Feel is paramount and interpretation is demanded.

So what of this orchestra? Since I began this weekly gig, it has proven itself as a wonderfully expansive vision of what a ‘big band’ could be. From early September till this writing, the line-up has shifted in membership with a solid core of regulars and a series of guests who are passing through New York while on tour. Each Monday I have seen new faces, heard new accents and reveled in new and exciting musical concepts. The musicians qualify as a united nations of Free Jazz, among them Karl Berger - Piano and Conducting, Ingrid Sertso - Voice, Thomas Heberer - Trumpet, Brian Groder – Trumpet, Steve Swell - Trombone, Rick Parker –Trombone, Avram Fefer - Soprano Sax, Stephen Gauci - Tenor Sax, Yoni Kretzmer - Tenor Sax, Darryl Foster – Tenor and Soprano Saxes, Esa Pietila - Tenor Sax, Dave Schnug - Alto Sax, Mercedes Figuera - Alto Sax, Blaise Siwula – Alto Sax, Mikko Innanen – Alto Sax, Jason Candler - Alto Sax, Ricardo Tejero – Clarinet, Michael Lytle - Bass Clarinet, Sylvain Leroux - Flutes, Frederika Krier - Violin, David Bakriges - Violin, Cecile Borche – Violin, Mossa Bildner - Voice, Kenny Wessel - Guitar, Harvey Valdes - Guitar, John Ehlis – Mandolin and Guitar, Adam Lane – Bass, Dominic Lash - Bass, Dave Perrott - Bass, Ken Filiano – Bass, Lou Grassi – Drums, Harvey Sorgen - Drums, John Pietaro - Percussion, Philip Foster – ‘Odds and Ends’. And the many others whose names have escaped me and I hope to meet again.

The performances of the Stone Workshop Orchestra now dwindle down and I contemplate this journey, one not only through avant music but the revolutionary art that begat the need for such an ensemble in this place and time. Karl has no intention of letting this band cease, though the end of season at the Stone will arrive on December 5—in the form of a blow-out pair of concerts which will include special guests including John Zorn. As winter’s chill arrives on the Lower East Side, the Orchestra’s shouts of musical liberation descend over the luxury condos and gourmet delis, declaring the legacy of fearless creativity. And in its resonance, the music tears away the cloud of conformity and clears the path for further generations of New Music.

-John Pietaro is a musician and writer from Brooklyn, NY. His websites are http://TheCulturalWorker.blogspot.com and www.reverbnation.com/radionoir