Unpacking "25 NYC Jazz Icons"

Update: Saturday, 6/4/11—This post has been updated with Ted Panken's latest response, and my response to that response (and yet another response from Ted!). Scroll down to read the newer material.

I'm happy that people have been checking out the list of NYC jazz icons that my TONY colleague Steve Smith and I put together. Ted Panken took the time to organize his reactions into a thoughtful blog post, and I thank him for this effort. Since Ted takes issue with the overall tenor of the list, it seemed appropriate to respond. I attempted to post the following as a comment on his blog, but I think it may have been auto-rejected on account of its length. Whether or not it shows up there, I wanted to post it here for the record; I've slightly augmented my initial comment to clarify a few points and to specifically address this remark of Ted's: "In my view — and it’s only my view — a few too many of the choices privilege an aesthetic of recondite hipsterism."

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Greetings Ted,

I appreciate your thoughtful response. Leaning too "avant" or "progressive" was a concern of mine, but in the end—and I speak only in terms of my contribution to the project—I had to go with my gut, as well as with what I know. I make no claim to a 360-degree viewpoint. When it comes to jazz in our wonderful city, I keep up with as much as I can, but obviously I have my biases and blind spots.

In a way, I was hoping for exactly this sort of naming-names rebuttal. Some of the artists on your list (Binney, Lovano, Reid, Ribot, Eskelin, Morris, etc.) are very familiar to me and came up during Steve's and my discussion leading up to the final selection. Others (Harrell, Malone, Lynch) are less so, and I look forward to doing some research.

As far as the use of the word "icons," maybe there's some hyperbole there. I guess that, word choice aside, what I personally was aiming for was a kind of representative cross-section. And per my admission above, we may have failed in that. In our defense, though, I think we made strong cases for our inclusions, leaving aside those we may have excluded; maybe that's the best a list-maker can hope to accomplish.

To address one specific point, our inclusion of Marsalis wasn't begrudging at all—we simply ranked him where we felt he belonged. Another point re: the nitty-gritty of the rankings: To me, the most enjoyable aspect of making the list was the fact that Steve and I each independently arrived at Paul Motian as our No. 1 when this project was still in its nascent phase. In a way, that fact should tell any reader of the list where we're coming from. A list on which, say, Wynton placed first would be a list written from a very different perspective, and it's a perspective I totally welcome. (Seriously, if anyone wants to make that list, I'd love to see it!) But going back to that issue of bias—let's just call it taste—as anyone who's stopped by my blog could probably tell you, I make no bones about my deep love for the mystery men of jazz (Andrew Hill, RIP), of which Motian is probably our greatest living example, and certainly our greatest living-in-NYC example.

With regard to some of the younger players on the list, if cheerleading for the likes of Jon Irabagon, Matana Roberts and Fieldwork makes me a proponent or enabler re: an aesthetic of recondite hipsterism, then so be it. I can definitely respect the fact that the essence of great jazz can sometimes get obscured when there's too much focus on the "avant," conceptually rigorous or future-minded, but I nominated these three (and several others on the list) simply because I feel they represent the best kind of progressiveness—one that forges ahead without losing the thread.

Anyway, our chief goal was to incite discussion and—if not ire—at least enough controversy to fuel some impassioned responses. I greatly admire your work, and I'm sincerely honored that you took the time to write up a thoughtful rebuttal to what we put out there. The fact that there's disagreement signifies that we are surveying an extremely broad landscape re: "NYC jazz 2011." On that note, I echo Nate Chinen and Ben Ratliff in saying, more or less, bring on festival season! (I caught one of our TONY "icons," Lee Konitz, kicking off the June jazz rush in high style this very evening at the Blue Note, on the recommendation of Jim Macnie, a writer who I bet could make an essential-NYC-jazz-artists list to put us all to shame.)

Thanks again, Ted, and welcome to the blogosphere. Icons aside, these blindfold tests you've been posting (Konitz, Motian and there's more on the site) are blowing my mind.

-HS

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Ted Panken's response, posted on his blog:

Thanks, Hank. Had you said “representative critical cross-section” rather than “icon” (and I realize that this is an article for an civilian magazine) I would still have disagreed with but wouldn’t really have had a reason to express high dudgeon. To call someone an “icon” denotes influence, of being an artist with acolytes, who has influenced a stream of musical expression or found a sui generis path from deep R&D on the fundamentals.

Nomenclature aside, your “Time Out” list raises a broader point, the “sore spot” I mentioned towards the end of my post, which is the exclusion from the canons of all too many of my brother and sister journalist-critics of artists who work within groove- and swing-based contexts, who put some blues into their expression, and who endeavor to let their imagination and creativity operate within the idiomatic parameters of jazz and Afro-Caribbean traditions — not to recreate or xerox those traditions, but to deal with them in a present-day context on their own terms. The “mystery men” who fascinate you reached that point through long apprenticeships spent working through these vocabularies (or, as Henry Threadgill discussed with Ethan, the various tributaries of European music and other American and World vernaculars) and allowing their voices to emerge in an organic way.

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My response to that response:

Ted,

Thanks for posting the comment.

I understand what you're saying about the dangers of privileging the outré over the bread-and-butter. And I'm very familiar with the history of, e.g., Motian, and what led him to his more abstract late work. At the same time, I don't feel like anyone that Steve and I championed can be accused of ditching tradition in favor of novelty or lofty conceptualism. Take your description below:

"…artists who work within groove- and swing-based contexts, who put some blues into their expression, and who endeavor to let their imagination and creativity operate within the idiomatic parameters of jazz and Afro-Caribbean traditions — not to recreate or xerox those traditions, but to deal with them in a present-day context on their own terms."

When I read that, the very first artists I think of are players such as Jon Irabagon, who engages in a very direct way with Sonny Rollins in his "Foxy" project and has a record ("The Observer") out with Kenny Barron, one of the elders whom you cited as an omission on our list. Additionally, the Mostly Other People Do the Killing band, of which Irabagon is a member, is one of the most historically minded jazz ensembles in NYC, right down to their parodies of classic cover art and liner notes. Or I think of Matana Roberts, whose "Coin Coin" presentations seem to me like a very conscious engagement with the work of Mingus, Max Roach and John Carter (and maybe even Wynton Marsalis), artists whose work grapples with cultural history and sociopolitical reality. And Jason Moran's ties to Byard, Hill, Abrams and others—not to mention Monk and the stride tradition—are well-documented. To their credit, I think a lot of the younger players who have been captivating the critics are doing so precisely *because* they're demonstrating a very deep awareness of what came before and doing so in very novel, personal ways.

There's definitely such a thing as throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to jazz "innovation," but I'd happily defend all the artists on our list (and again, I'll concede that "icon" may have been too strong a word—in the end, though, the choices and the text are the real content of Steve's and my piece) against such accusations. You'll find tons of groove, swing and blues in the work of the Irabagons, Robertses and Morans of the scene.

Thanks,
HS

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Ted Panken's response to the above is here. Apologies for such a convoluted post! Happy to field any questions on the whole exchange.

CThreePO: Fieldwork summons robojazz fury at the Stone

The Stone was sweltering tonight. I attended Fieldwork's late set and the heat and the music aligned to induce a very heavenly sort of delirium. Fieldwork is a band without a leader, still a rare thing in jazz. The members--saxist Steve Lehman, pianist Vijay Iyer and drummer Tyshawn Sorey, the latter of whom curates the Stone this month--are all well known for fronting various projects and generally being on forefront of contemporary-jazz bad-ass-ness. Together what they are is a machine.

All three musicians compose for the group, but I wasn't able to discern any particular diversity in writing style during tonight's set. (I plan to go back to the band's latest disc, Door, to see if that assertion really holds water.) The trio played about five longish pieces, all in the eight-minute range, and the style was very consistent. Let's call it robojazz, or something. Fieldwork specializes in vamps, of a sort, namely the most dizzyingly complex sort you've ever heard, played largely in straight (i.e., nonswung) time. It's the jazz equivalent of math rock, and it's a mode that maestro Tim Berne has excelled in for years. Check out Berne's bands Hardcell and Science Friction and then listen to Fieldwork and you'll see what I mean: Both feature a kind of asymmetrical funk grid sketched by lockstep piano and drums, with tart, intricate sax lines laid over top. (I don't want the Berne comparison to seem too reductive, since Fieldwork definitely carves out its own space within this territory. Its approach to vamping comes off as generally more oblique, with the three instruments orbiting each other in ultrasubtle ways, like parts in an elaborate mobile.) For me, jazz like this is like chocolate and peanut butter: I get the proggy rhythmic tendencies I so dearly adore in rock, and I get the daredevil improv and inspired looseness I love in jazz.

As much as Fieldwork foregrounds its collectivity on paper, it was hard not to feel that tonight's show was Tyshawn Sorey's show. Sorey has taken great pains--in the liner notes to his great 2007 release That/Not and in commentary related to his new disc, Koan--to emphasize his disinterest in flaunting his world-class chops on his records as a leader. And indeed, on the aforementioned sessions, he backs up that rhetoric completely. These are outstandingly restrained albums, to an almost ascetic degree. Sorey's playing in Fieldwork is another story entirely

A lot of jazz musicians you talk to will describe performances as "burnin'" or "killin'." I guess the metal equivalent would be something like "shredding" or "face-melting." Whatever your preferred terminology for this phenomenon of utter musical density and proficiency and decimation, it would apply in a major, major way to what this drummer was up to tonight. You know those percussionists who reproduce drum 'n' bass electronica live, and how it's kind of cool but also kind of a pointless gimmick? Sorey takes that level of ungodly coordination and proceeds to chop and screw it. He sounds like the world's smartest, most passionate, most paradoxically anarchic computer.

He starts slow and throws his whole body into it, grimacing as he nails a cymbal crash. It's all about the stutter, the suggestion of ultimate fragmented funk, rising into some unbelievably swift cyborg rhythm, like the turbo-speed apotheosis of a paradiddle. Cracking the snare, muted with (tonight) a wallet or a piece of paper. Hi-hat snapped taut for maximum crispness. Just impossible levels of groove, making it so that you have to move, like you're shaking off a bee that's stinging you. Sicker and sicker and sicker. The guy doesn't relent. And then there are the digressions: transferring the pattern to the bell-less ride, pulling up short on the high tom, rolling his way back over to the hi-hat for a breath-stealing choke. Basically what we're talking about is the airy buoyance of Tony Williams combined with the deadeye precision of Neil Peart, and neither aesthetic gets short-shrifted.

So yes, Fieldwork a collective, but it's damn near impossible to take your eyes and ears off Tyshawn once he gets going. Iyer's playing in the group is deep and mysterious. He's vamping but with notes chosen for maximum drift and eeriness. The combination of his dreamy chord haze and the tautness of his rhythmic grids is exceedingly odd. He plays a lot like a bassist in Fieldwork, trancing out on the robojazz ostinatos, sometimes insanely long so that you can't for the life of you figure out if they're repeating exactly or where the one is or what the hell is going on. All you know is that Iyer is in control and that eventually he and Sorey will stop without warning on a dime and you'll be shocked just like you were when the piece before ended exactly the same way. (This is another prime Tim Berne trick.)

Lehman's contribution tonight seemed like the slightest. That had a lot to do with the fact that it was hard to hear him. Sorey was punishingly loud at times and didn't seem to want to concede much in that department. But the saxist knows that he has a lot of work to do to pierce through the grid the other two lay down, and he slices in and out with torrid, punchy lines. A very edgy sound. At one point, he busted out some shredded-throat-sounding multiphonics, which made for a great contrast with the sleek futurism churning underneath. Lehman provides a crucial squiggly, mercurial texture, writhing over top of the solid steel.

There were moments of soft stillness, pieces of fruitful quiet. But like water in a draining bathtub, everything was always sort of tending toward that glorious pounding rigor, and every piece eventually did get to that point. By the third or fourth piece, there was a same-iness to the set, but honestly, I couldn't have cared less. The asymmetrical-robojazz vibe is like catnip for me, and I didn't want it to stop. If you've ever loved thorny yet propulsive fusion (Mahavishnu Orchestra), thorny yet propulsive electronica (good example escaping me--Autechre?), thorny yet propulsive classical (that one part everyone loves in "Rite of Spring"), thorny yet propulsive Balkan music (don't know enough to list a good example but I'm confident in my citation of the style), thorny yet propulsive prog (Yes), thorny yet propulsive math rock (Don Caballero)--any music where it's all about that holy confluence of brain and balls--you absolutely must behold the way this band aerates that aesthetic, makes it make sense with the cutting edge of postmillennial jazz.

Fieldwork represents the best kind of foregrounded virtuosity. There's heart and weirdness and unpredictability mixed in and however dazzling the music is, it isn't superficial. It really is that tight, that complex, that powerful and most importantly, that human.