Category: Music

Help the kids swing

My step-son plays trumpet in the jazz band at Fontainblue High School. They have been invited to participate in the Swing Central High School Jazz Band Competition and Workshop that is part of the Savannah Music Festival. Swing Central allows them to work with artist/clinicians like Marcus Roberts, Wycliffe Gordon, Marcus Printup and others. As part of their invitation, Wycliffe Gordon is coming to Mandeville to work with the band, and while he is here he will do a public master class and clinic, and a concert with the FHS Jazz band. As part of the concert, he will also play a set as a quartet with Fred Sanders (piano), Roland Guerin (bass), and Troy Davis (drums).

The concert is March 4 and is going to help raise the money the band needs to pay for transportation and lodging on their trip. Besides ticket sales, the band is also seeking individual patrons and corporate sponsors. The estimated cost of the transportation, food and lodging for the trip is $11,000, but the chance for 15-18 year old aspiring musicians to hang out with world class players is priceless.

All of the information is at the band’s website, and I’ll post direct links to the patron form and concert poster below.

Concert poster

Patron form

If you feel moved to help out, or are in the area and can attend the concert, the students will greatly appreciate your support.

Wycliffe Concert Poster.jpg

Louis Moholo @ Zeitgeist in New Orleans on Sat 2/13 @ 9PM

I now present, in its entirety, Andy “Scatterjazz” Durta’s announcement of a great show that will happen this Saturday night (2/13) in New Orleans.

…as David Baker, the bebop teacher from Indiana, used to shout to his classes:

” PEOPLE !!!!! ”

perhaps the gig of the spring (besides last Sunday’s game!) and beyond is
THIS SATURDAY. FEB. 13th at ZEITGEIST (1618 Oretha Castle Haley) at 9:00pm.
Yes it is a ridiculously busy day and night. Yes you can and should, nay must, slide it in between Endymion and the M.O.M.S. ball and the Superhero ball and whatever else is on your plate.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime event, it is one night only, there was no choice in dates, and it will never happen again….and I NEED your attendance and support !!!
————————————————————————
**** South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo
w/ Dennis Gonzalez’ Yells at Eels
(award-winning mind-blowing music from Dallas and around the world)…
with special guest Tim Green…
@ Zeitgeist— Saturday Feb. 13th —- 9:00pm sharp. ****
——————————————————————-
Louis Moholo (actually, Louis Moholo-Moholo) is one of the major figures of South African music and international creative music of the last half-century… a pivotal figure in the ‘Township Jive’ scene of Cape Town, South Africa in late 50’s and early 60s, he was a youthful contemporary and collaborator of such folks as Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela… He was the leader of the great exodus of jazz stars to London from South Africa during apartheid in 1964, when the pressures against being a mixed-race jazz group (eg: the legendary Blue Notes) in Cape Town became too great to bear… he (along with the rest of the Blue Notes– Dudu Pokwana, Chris McGregor, Mongezi Feza…) became the anchor of the tremendously fruitful axis of South Africa-British free-swing that produced such groups as Assagai, The Brotherhood of Breath, Isipingo, Dedication Orchestra, Vive La Black, etc…. also a regular collaborator with English jazz-prog groups like Soft Machine, and all the major figures of the English scenes such as Evan Parker, Keith Tippett, Elton Dean, Lol Coxhill, Maggie Nichols, Phil Minton… and other major improvisers like Peter Brotzmann, Misha Mengelberg, David Murray, William Parker… as well as the great Cecil Taylor and a 30 year working relationship with our own Kidd Jordan… and everyone else under that sort of sun… his music is creative and open yet always deeply rooted in the South African swing.. not unlike some of our great creative drummers in New Orleans who, no matter how out they might go, are also rooted in parade and street beats… Louis Moholo has never been to New Orleans, and it is likely that he never will be again.. he is now over 70 years old and once again living in South Africa after 40 years absence…he will be in New Orleans just over 12 hours, before he flies to Dallas to board a flight back to his homeland… Do come make him welcome, and support this sort if undertaking if ever there is a chance for you to so!!!

———————- and his collaborators for the evening???—————–

Dennis Gonzalez, who is no slouch himself in the world of sound art….. Dennis is one of the most in-demand and beautiful trumpeters in international creative music… A master soloist, composer and bandleader, in the mid 70s he founded the “Dallas Association for Avant-Garde and Neo-Impressionistic Music,” and has been touring the world regularly as a performer and teacher since that time, recording over 40 albums on nearly a dozen top labels for new music spread across the planet. In addition to his longstanding mash-ups with players uch as Henry Grimes, Andrew Cyrille, Reggie Workman, Nels Cline, Louis Moholo…. he has also had a three-decades long recording and performing party with New Orleans’ masters Kidd Jordan, Clyde Kerr, Jr., Alvin Fielder, and Tim Green… He also has some tenebrous ties to Michael Ray and the Cosmic Krewe, but that was before my time here and you will have to ask someone else to explain…. his group Yells at Eels also consists of his sons, Stefan (percusions) and Aaron (bass) Gonzalez (who were here last spring with the award-winning Portuguese group “Humanization 4-tet”)…and as Tim Green told me when i asked him for a quote last year before their visit.. “Those kids are AWESOME”
——————————

this is a ridiculously special event… the timing is not ideal, in midst of carnival and Endymion night.. but there was no other option.

anyone interested in jazz, edgy jazz, South Africa, African music as a whole, music made in the quest for freedom beyond the sound barrier, or just master artists, would be witnessing a unique and deeply special concert…

please let me know if i can clarify any further…. Louis Moholo has been in the U.S. to play a very few concerts with a group led by outstanding Norwegian saxophonist Frode Gjerstad, and then a show in Dallas with “Yells at Eels”, then this show in New Orleans, then he flies home to South Africa… a master of this level is rare to have come through… in fact, there are three true masters here for this event, and two budding ones… i do hope you can come!! as always, your host rene at the Zeitgeist will have funky international snacks and beverages for your consumption. SPREAD THE WORD!!!!
cheers, andy durta.. www.scatterjazz.com

Bindu Tour diary – installation 2, or name dropping

We played the first gig of the tour tonight. It went very well considering that we made the record in May, and haven’t played together since. We ran some stuff at sound check, and the great musicians in the band did what great musicians do. Every cat in this band is absolutely world class, and it is a great pleasure an honor to make music with them. I’ll try not to assume that you know who I am talking about. The band is Hamid Drake on drums, Jeff Parker on guitar, Josh Abrams on bass and guimbre, Jeb Bishop and myself on trombones, and Napoleon Maddox on all manner of vocally created musical sounds.

Tomorrow we travel to Milan, where we play Sunday morning.

I have always heard about how these European festivals can turn into big musician hangs. Tonight we split a show with Kahil el Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble with special guest Neneh Cherry. Ernest Dawkins and Corey Wilkes were in Kahil’s band, along with Matthew Kent and Franck Orall. Also hanging out were William Parker, Billy Bang, Nasheet Waits, Flip Barnes, Rob Brown, and Rasul Siddik, plus a bunch of other cats that I didn’t get to meet. We are all staying at the same hotel, and ended up at the bar across the street after the gig. Neneh told me that her father, Don Cherry (the great musician and trumpeter, not the hockey guy), used to play the the Dr. John record with the Meters as the band (“Right Place Wrong Time”) all the time. Pretty cool.

studio story

Stories: Sinatra, Herman and Manne – Rifftides:

“Interviewer:
Have you ever gone into the studio and had someone say, ‘I want you to sound like the guy who did the drums on … ?’

Shelly Manne:
I did a date with Jimmy Bowen, the song was ‘Fever.’ I had never worked with Jim, but I had made the original record of ‘Fever’ with Peggy Lee. It actually said on my part, ‘play like Shelly Manne.’ So I played it just like I played it originally. The producer stormed out of the control room, walked over to me and said ‘Can’t you read English? It says ‘play like Shelly Manne.’

When I told him I was Shelly Manne, he turned around and went back into the booth. I think he’s selling cars now.”