UNDER WESTERN SKIES, JAZZ HORIZONS

With great pleasure, I have transplanted myself from one coast to the other, from suburban New York to Marin County in California, where I will be for the next eight months.  So what follows is a brief and selective listing of musical events the Beloved and I might show up at . . . feel free to join us!

Clint Baker and his New Orleans Jazz Band will be playing for the Wednesday Night Hop in San Mateo on January 8: details and directions here.

Emily Asher’s Garden Party will be touring this side of the continent in mid-January, with Emily’s Hoagy Carmichael program.  On January 16, she, friends, and sitters-in will make merry at a San Francisco house concert: details here.  On the 17th, the Garden Party will reappear, bright and perky, at the Red Poppy Art House, to offer another helping of subtle, lyrical, hot music: details to come here.

Clint and Friends (I don’t know the official band title, so am inventing the simplest) will be playing for the Central Coast Hot Jazz Society in Pismo Beach on January 26.  Details are not yet available on the website, but I have it on good authority that the band will include Marc Caparone, Dawn Lambeth, Mike Baird, Carl Sonny Leyland, and Katie Cavera.

A moment of self-advertisement: I will be giving a Sunday afternoon workshop at Berkeley’s The Jazz School  — on February 9, called LOUIS ARMSTRONG SPEAKS TO US.  Details here.’

And, from February 21-23, the Beloved and I will be happily in attendance at the San Diego Jazz Party — details here — to be held at the Del Mar Hilton, honoring guitar legend Mundell Lowe and featuring Harry Allen, John Allred, Dan Barrett, John Cocuzzi, John Eaton, Eddie Erickson, Rebecca Kilgore, Ed Metz, Butch Miles, Nicki Parrott, Houston Person, Bucky Pizzarelli, Ed Polcer, Chuck Redd, Antti Sarpila, Richard Simon, Bria Skonberg, Rossano Sportiello, Dave Stone, Johnny Varro, Jason Wanner.  The sessions will offer solo piano all the way up to nonets, with amiable cross-generational jazz at every turn.  In a triumph of organization, you can even see here who’s playing with whom and when, from Friday afternoon to Sunday farewell.

In March, the Jazz Bash by the Bay in Monterey . . . make your plans here!

And — a little closer to the here and now — if you don’t have plans for a New Year’s Eve gala, check out ZUT! in Berkeley.  Good food — and Mal Sharpe and the Big Money in Jazz (with singer Kallye Gray) will be giving 2013 a gentle push at the stroke of midnight.  Details here.

We hope to see our friends at these events!

May your happiness increase!

“PANIQUE” SWINGS OUT at The Red Poppy Art House (August 16, 2012)

The band PANIQUE is a rare group, subtle and inventive, as their appearance at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco proved.  Click PANIQUE to be transported — in every possible way — back to their beautiful first set!

This imaginative quartet is Vic Wong, guitar; Benito Cortez, violin; Nick Christie, rhythm guitar; Daniel Fabricant, string bass.

Here is their second set.  I so admire the conversational eloquence of their solos, delightful ensemble interplay; their dynamics, tempos, and shadings, their love 0f melody.

WALTZ in C# MINOR / TOPSY (combining Chopin and Eddie Durham favors both of them):

MA PREMIERE GUITARRE:

Accordionist Gus Viseur’s SWING VALSE:

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY / THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER YOU:

SUITE YUGOSLAV:

DANSE NORVEGIENNE:

MINOR SWING:

Learn more about PANIQUE and their live CD here; visit Vic Wong on Facebook there.  And The Red Poppy Art House is a remarkable place, full of friendship and inspirations: click Poppy to find out more.

May your happiness increase.

“PANIQUE” MEANS JOY (Part One, August 16, 2012)

Don’t let this band’s scary French name make you run for the closet.

They are truly generous in their offerings of joy, as they proved lavishly last Thursday at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco.

This imaginative quartet is Vic Wong, guitar; Benito Cortez, violin; Nick Christie, rhythm guitar; Daniel Fabricant, string bass.

And in their mix of standards and less-known material, they embody the great virtues of memorable swing improvisation: a speaking eloquence in their solos, delightful ensemble interplay; extraordinary subtlety in their dynamics, tempos, and shadings, and a real understanding of how deeply listeners need melodies.  Although the members of the group look youthful, they are mature improvisers with well-developed imaginations, ears, hearts, and wit.  But I will let the music speak for itself:

An opening built from two songs, played back-to-back (something other bands could learn from PANIQUE): DOUBLE WHISKY and J’AI CHERCHE APRES TITINE:

NUAGES, a little more briskly than it is often played, the change bringing the song into sharper focus:

DINETTE, so much more than a little table in the corner of the kitchen:

TROUBLANT BOLERO, Reinhardt — not Ravel:

COQUETTE:

An exploration of BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS that slowly unwraps itself:

JE SUIS SEUL CE SOIR (“I am alone tonight”):

I’LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS:

Learn more about PANIQUE and their live CD here; visit Vic Wong on Facebook there.

May your happiness increase.

KALLY PRICE MAKES IT CLEAR: SHE’S GOT TO BE A RUG-CUTTER (at The Red Poppy Art House, June 17, 2012)

This little treat of a swinging performance comes from the recent appearance of singer Kally Price — with accordionist / pianist Rob Reich, string bassist Dan Fabricant, and percussionist Beth Goodfellow — at San Francisco’s congenial Red Poppy Art House (on Folsom Street) on June 17, 2012.

This quartet, with Kally blazing away, does a superb job of bringing back the 1937-8 Duke Ellington band, complete with vocal trio, to this century:

The only problem I have with this hymn to swing-dancing is that the lyrics strike me as especially self-deprecating.  Can you imagine a past where Kally Price was — dare I say it — un-trucky?  Or that she ever, ever had to improve her jive?  Maybe it was some part of her distant past, but if her jive were improved I don’t think the Red Poppy would be standing as I write this.

See what you think.  And try to keep still while watching and listening to this foursome tell us not only what swing is all about, but offer incontrovertible evidence that Swing is here to stay.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta cut back a figure / So, Gate, I’ll dig you / Later!

May your happiness increase.

KALLY PRICE’S DEEP SOUL (Red Poppy Art House, June 17, 2012)

I’ve admired the singer / songwriter Kally Price for some time now, and think it’s a very good omen that she was appearing at the very cozily singular Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco (visit it here) three days after we arrived in California.  She was joined by pianist / accordionist / composer Rob Reich (of Gaucho and other groups), string bassist Dan Fabricant, and drummer Beth Goodfellow.  Kally doesn’t shout or scream or gyrate, but it’s clear that her singing and her songs come from deep within her — a powerful private soul that she shares most readily with us.  She doesn’t sing at her songs, or even sing her songs . . . she becomes them.  And the three other musicians on the little stage gave her empathic support and love.

Here are some of the highlights of their two sets.

After a terse, romping I GOT RHYTHM (mixing Fifty-Second Street, Mel Powell, Bud Powell, and Kansas City) that the trio played while I was getting my camera accustomed to the dark, Rob offered his own composition, an unnamed waltz that he said was somewhat spooky.  For the moment, then, it’s SPOOKY WALTZ:

Kally shared one of her songs — simple yet intense, apparently plain but full of oblique twists and turns.  She calls it MY JOB:

She is very fond of the great singers of the Thirties, and here’s a medley that connects Billie Holiday and Ivie Anderson, in LET’S CALL A HEART A HEART and LOVE IS LIKE A CIGARETTE:

Tampa Red’s ROCK IT IN RHTYHM, which everyone on the stand was more than able to enact with style:

Rob, Dan, and Beth offer a spirited GLADIOLUS RAG:

I associate FLAMINGO with the 1941 Ellington band and rhapsodic delivery of the lyrics by Herb Jeffries (still with us!); here, Dan Fabricant takes it on himself to reinvent those same lyrics: the effect is mesmerizing, more or less:

Kally returns for a fervent WILLOW WEEP FOR ME:

Her tribute to the late Regina Pontillo, THE HOPEFUL PLACE, a small devout masterpiece:

MELT MY HEART, a song with hymnlike intensity:

And finally her own LOVE FOR THE ASKING:

I hope the world keeps discovering Kally Price and her noble abetters.  I can’t decide if she sings with a powerful delicacy or a delicate power, but it really doesn’t matter.  We are so very lucky to have her.

May your happiness increase.