Ralph Peterson 35th Annual Student Music Awards - Downbeat

Caught
Several times a season, the Los Angeles
Philharmonic kindly opens the portals
of its grand home base, Walt Disney Concert
Hall, to jazz programming. On March 11, programmers
served up a hearty and varied gathering
of artists who tilted away from the mothership
of jazz in any mainstream sensibility.
Pianist Billy Childs’ quartet collaborated
with new music group Kronos Quartet on
“Music For Two Quartets,” a 2010 commissioned
work for the Monterey Jazz Festival.
It’s another brave attempt in the pitfall-prone
business of bridging jazz and classical worlds,
though not entirely successful or fluid.
Though Bill Frisell’s lean-yet-rich Beautiful
Dreamers were the opening act, in some
ways they were more assured and artistically
focused than Childs’ group. Frisell, violist
Eyvind Kang and drummer Rudy Royston
boasted an advancing maturity, suggesting this
is one of the guitarist’s more intriguing groups.
Frisell’s trio is a familial extension of his
genuinely gossamer and irrepeatable years
with Paul Motian and Joe Lovano. Though
Kang leaned lower in range than most violinists
and Frisell sometimes kicked in an octave
divider for phantom bass tones, the lack of
bass presence is part of this group’s definition.
Royston applies the perfect touch, never over-
20 DoWNBEAt JUNE 2012
frisell Dreams up Personalized Disney Program
EARl GiBSon iii Eyvind Kang (left) and Bill frisell
playing to fill the space and handily shifting
between timekeeper and coloristic accentuator.
Frisell managed to personalize and revise
everything he touched, including a few originals,
the folk classic “Hard Times,” a surreally
jaunty “Tea For Two,” and, from his recent
John Lennon project, “Strawberry Fields Forever”
and “Give Peace A Chance.”
Pop snuck into the night’s mix when the
Kronos Quartet delivered the chugging,
minimalism-meets-rhythm-section boiler
room brawl in the alluring piece “Ahem” by
Bryce Dessner of The National. Childs’ top-
notch quartet with drummer Brian Blade,
bassist Scott Colley and saxist/flutist Steve
Wilson offered the closest thing to textbook-approved
jazz with “Aaron’s Song”
and “Hope In The Face Of Despair.” Having
already heard Childs’ “chamber jazz” experiment
Music for Two Quartets in an al fresco
context, it was interesting to note the warring
factors of jazz and classical thinking
shifted in a new setting. Here, the classical
factor nudged its way higher in the aesthetic
mix, perhaps partly due to the environmental
association. —Josef Woodard
AuM fidelity Artists take the Stage as Label turns 15
The Charles Mingus album Mingus Ah Um
stands as a landmark where the bassist integrated
adventuresome concepts and spiritually
fired practices. Brooklyn-based label AUM
Fidelity does not invoke this precedent lightly.
Since its inception, it has advocated for a small
cadre of mostly New York-based musicians with
evangelical fervor, and in June, will celebrate its
15th year at two major festivals.
Bassist William Parker, one of the label’s
original artists, will present three of his ensembles,
including his new big band Essence Of
Ellington, at Montreal’s Suoni Per Il Popolo festival,
and saxophonist Darius Jones will also
perform with his quartet. Jones, Parker and saxophonist
David S. Ware’s Planetary Unknown
quartet will convene on June 12 at New York’s
Vision Festival for the fest’s first-ever label
showcase. And AUM Fidelity’s forthcoming
summer releases by Planetary Unknown and the
trio of Joe Morris, William Parker and Gerald
Cleaver will brings the label’s history full-circle.
AUM Fidelity is essentially a one-man
operation. Owner Steven Joerg moved to
New York after college in 1989 to work for
the indie-rock label Bar/None. He took over
the management of another underground rock
label, Homestead, around the same time that
he began encountering free-jazz musicians at
from left: Muhammad Ali, William Parker,
David S. Ware and Cooper-Moore
the Knitting Factory venue.
“I was utterly transported,” he said. “No other
band in the world that I’d ever heard made
music close to this.” Joerg released records on
Homestead by Ware and Morris, who followed
him to AUM Fidelity in 1997. His collaborative,
profit-splitting business model is similar to smaller
rock labels, resulting in open but enduring relationships
with musicians. Though they work with
other labels, they keep coming to AUM Fidelity.
AUM Fidelity enables its musicians to practice
ecstatic free-jazz, but also branch out. Parker’s
explorations of the Curtis Mayfield songbook on I
Plan To Stay A Believer and ancient African and
Latin folk music on Long Hidden: The Olmec
Series are among the label’s most rewarding and
affecting releases. Little Women, another collective
that features Jones, Travis Laplante, Andrew
Smiley and Jason Nazary, fuses free-jazz and hard
rock at their most aggressive.
”I believe in the idea of focus, quality over
quantity,” Joerg said. “I’ve remained devoted to
artists that I’ve worked with since launching the
label because they are on the top tier of creators
of this music. For a man to spend most of his time
and money over the past 15 years on an endeavor,
the work that is created must mean something
very special to him.” —Bill Meyer
John RoGERS/JohnRoGERSnYC.CoM