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.

Figureheads, up close and consecutive: John Zorn and Wynton Marsalis

Two nights in a row, two evening-length performances by figureheads, not just of jazz but of The Culture. On Wednesday, I caught John Zorn's Masada Marathon at NYC Opera, a bonus track to his participation in the ongoing Monodramas presentation there; last night, just a few blocks south, I heard Wynton Marsalis present both a quintet and a septet at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Faced with such a seemingly stark duality, one is tempted to make grand pronouncements, to write a sweeping, op-ed type of thing, to choose a side. Better to talk specifics and let the conclusions flow as they may. Bottom line: I saw two very ambitious shows by two very hard-working musicians. There were pros and cons to both. There were clear points of parallel and divergence. Following are some observations, perhaps sprinkled with the occasional conclusion.

Zorn had his huge coterie with him, diversely skilled virtuosos from the community known as downtown, players who live at the intersection between Chops and Grit—in other words, pretty much exactly where you want to reside. Drummer Ches Smith, guitarist Marc Ribot (dear God—he was so loud and so mercilessly badass, wielding twang like a weapon), cellist Erik Friedlander (whose solo set was one of the night's triumphs), pianists Uri Caine, Jamie Saft (keyboard too) and Sylvie Courvoisier. These are the kind of players you would trust in pretty much any context.

It was a little frustrating, then, to hear them deployed for roughly four hours in the service of Zorn's Book of Angels oeuvre (a subset of his ongoing Masada endeavor), which seems to me like a willfully monotonous body of work. The story goes that Zorn wrote 316 pieces "in a flash of creativity during three months in late 2004." Hearing the music, it seems like "flash of productivity" would be more accurate. By Zorn's own admission, made during a mike break late in the Marathon, these compositions are skimpy by design, meant as improvisational fodder for his super-talented friends. So in practice, it's not that surprising that they can start to seem oppressive: dancing, klezmer-meets-exotica melodies, most laid over a sly bass vamp, with the occasional unison riff in five or seven. Zorn's decision to hammer on this aesthetic for a long period (both in real time—by my count, he's issued 17 Book of Angels records, spotlighting various ensembles, many of which played Wednesday's Marathon—and over the course of the concert) baffles me somewhat. During the event, I kept wondering: Why convene so many edgy masters, many of whom are great composers in their own right, and then straitjacket them within a fairly narrow soundworld? (Maybe a better approach would've been to let each band present a bit of its own music alongside their Zorn interpretations.) It's possible that the thought is to draw attention to the players precisely because of the samey-ness/mundane-ness of the material: "Watch these improvisational superheroes turn my humble lead into marvelous gold," or something like that.

Again, there was some fantastic playing. I loved the sultry, gently surreal spy-movie vibe of the Dreamers, as well as solo turns by Caine and Friedlander that were shocking in their command of dynamics and emotional contour. And the Electric Masada finale (with guest Mike Patton) was great, pyrotechnic fun. I left, though, really feeling the Marathon aspect of the whole thing—so saturated with that patented Masada vibe that I couldn't imagine wanting to see any of these bands again anytime soon. (To be fair, though, I did spend a good portion of yesterday spinning Book of Angels discs—the Marc Ribot/Trevor Dunn/G. Calvin Weston trio record Asmodeus is a monster and highly recommended for even the Masada-averse—so maybe this stuff is more infectious than I thought.) I remember feeling the exact same way when I heard various Masada projects at Symphony Space in June of 2000.

A Wynton Marsalis show at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall is oppressive in its own, totally obvious ways of course. The "Jazz, America's classical music" trappings are thick and somewhat cloying—"Welcome to the House of Swing," said Marsalis as he stepped onstage in a natty suit—and there's an aggressive upscaleness to the whole experience that's illustrated concisely in the high ticket prices. But you know all of this already. You've probably already bitched about it without ever actually experiencing it, as—I'm somewhat ashamed to admit—I have. As with John Zorn, it's easy to think you "get" Wynton Marsalis. There's so much baggage, so much zeal both for and against these men, that you forget that they're simply musicians and composers. They're also showmen, of course, and community builders, and one-man scenes. But you can, in fact, go see them play music and just let that be the thing and not worry too much about the meaning of it all.

That is the experience I had at the Wynton show. Last night, he presented first his quintet, then his septet, separated by an intermission. This wasn't just a couple sets of jazz; this was a luxurious concert experience, and I mean luxurious there not in the cheesy, "America's classical music" sense, but in the sense that the music itself was rich and deeply satisfying. The quintet, built around the beyond-sturdy bass of Carlos Henriquez, was great, a showcase for the many faces of Marsalis's writing, from daredevil Latin jazz (I wish I could remember the name of this one tune they played that featured a frantically snaking line played by Marsalis and saxist Walter Blanding) to straightforward ballad poetry. In the latter vein, one piece was a sax-less quartet, and I swear, everyone should have the experience of hearing Wynton Marsalis play an unadorned ballad in Rose Hall. For a few minutes, the whole "luxury" angle made perfect sense; plush opulence was all you could think of, and it wasn't a base opulence but an entirely wholesome one. You felt spoiled.

If the quintet set was merely very good, the septet set was dazzling. I'm not sure that I've seen a more straightforwardly enjoyable presentation of music in the past few years—in the sense that I wished everyone I knew was there with me, from my discerning-jazz-connoisseur friends (one was with me, fortunately) to my largely jazz-oblivious family and jazz-appreciating-but-on-a-case-by-case-basis fiancée. Marsalis's septet clearly works on an Ellington model—you hear that right away in the plunger-muted brass and the shrewdly deployed soloists and rich themes. But from all the knocks against Marsalis, which you may have swallowed and even parroted without really knowing the deal, you think his work is going to be MERELY traditional, MERELY retro. This was an entire set of original music, and while it did feel "classic" in some sense, it was far more stimulating than the average set of straight-ahead, head-solos-head jazz you'd hear nightly in many local clubs. Each solo felt like an event, not a chore or a mere inevitability, because it had been properly set up by the compositional material around it. Trombonist Vincent Gardner, subbing for an on-tour Wycliffe Gordon, was a particular marvel, wielding the plunger in a way that can seem old-fashioned when you hear it on your scratchy vintage recordings but that feels totally vital up close. And the two saxophonists—Wessell Anderson and Victor Goines—sounded devastating dueting on the lovers' suite "'D' in the Key of 'F.'" All of these pieces radiated with the classic jazz push-and-pull: soloist vs. ensemble. The context kept changing, not in a rapid-fire way, but in a way that kept you engaged. At all times, there was a reason to keep paying attention, and not just to hear what hotshot lick would flow out next. I left feeling energized rather than exhausted, as I had after the Zorn affair.

I really don't want to make any grand pronouncements about the experience of seeing these two figures in their respective elements over consecutive nights, though it's hard, since they both seem to stand for so much jazz-world baggage. Googling their names, I found this piece: "There are currently two dominant schools in New York City’s jazz scene. Wynton Marsalis leads the Lincoln Center’s traditionalist school while John Zorn is the cover-boy for Downtown’s avant-garde movement." Conclusion: "Who would you rather follow? I lean towards Zorn since I partially agree with what one of my high profile teachers told me: 'Marsalis has set jazz back 100 years.'" Well, I guess that settles it!

In terms of the actual experience of checking out these shows, though, micro-observations abound. You can't help but be struck by the similarities between Zorn and Marsalis onstage: For one, both soak up as much attention when they're not playing as when they are, through their hyperbolic goading of their colleagues' improvisations. You can't help but feel that Zorn could learn something from Marsalis in terms of composition: focusing on writing a select amount of patient, deep, wholesome pieces rather than dashing off hundreds of stylistically constrained sketches. On the other hand, you can't help but feel that Marsalis could learn something from Zorn re: how to exist in the world of art: opening one's self to as many connections as possible (I think of Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, favored collaborators of late) and wielding one's influence as benevolently and expansively as possible. What I mean there is that while Zorn did admittedly confine his collaborators to the Masada oeuvre during this particular Marathon, for much of the year, he's practically a benefactor to not just these players, but a ton of other avant-garde-minded geniuses trying to find their way in the NYC scene. If he didn't play music at all, but simply ran the Tzadik label and the Stone club, he'd be a local and international hero. "Play my music on certain nights," he seems to say. "But every other night, do your own thing, and I'll support the hell out of you." Marsalis, on the other hand, seems to cloister his players up at Jazz at Lincoln Center. You don't see them really standing on their own two feet, outside of that context; when you hear their names, you think of Wynton. The same is not true of Zorn buddies like Marc Ribot. They may return to the hive when called, but they spend much of their working lives outside of it.

So maybe what I'm saying overall if you're speaking strictly on the "Who would I rather spend a lengthy evening listening to?" topic, Marsalis had the clear edge. But if you look outward re: "Whose musical empire is the saner, fairer, more benevolent and culturally nourishing one?" you have to hand it to Zorn. These figures are not in competition, of course, and as outspoken as each one is, I honestly don't think either one wants to stand for anything in particular aside from his own unique endeavors. They stand for things (uptown/downtown, tradition/iconoclasm) only because they've been extremely successful at those things, and thus they're convenient shorthand symbols. It's nice, though, to cut through the hype and the preconception and the rhetoric and just sit there in the theater and say, "What have you got for me?" I'm glad I live in a city where that's easily done.

P.S. My friend Joe, who also attended both concerts, makes a smart observation re: the Zorn show, i.e., that no one there was enjoying the music as much as he was. However hammy or hucksterish he can seem at times (to me, that is), his kid-in-a-candy-store glee is indeed endearing. You get a similar feeling from Wynton.