(aus dem Jazzinstitut Darmstadt)

2 – 15  June 2022 | Ausgabe 11/2022 (English)

We read the morning paper for you!

Dear jazz friends,

The Jazzinstitut's JazzNews keeps you up-to-date with news of the jazz world, which we collect, summarize, and issue via e-mail about once a week. This service can also be accessed on our website (www.jazzinstitut.de), where it is updated on a daily basis.

If you need bibliographies of the musicians named in our JazzNews, please click on our website’s Jazz Index page. This is a bibliographical reference to jazz-related books, magazines, journals and other sources that you can access without charge. If you don't find the name(s) you’re looking for, feel free to e-mail us! We will send you Jazz Index digests of articles about musicians as they make the news.

Now, have fun reading about the jazz week that was!

... brief news ...

Marc Myers talks to guitarist John Scofield about his youth in Ohio, about his first jazz album, a record by Django Reinhardt, about studying at Berklee College, about his own sound on guitar, about Billy Cobham opening up a road to fusion jazz for him, about influences from jazz to blues, as well as about his latest and first-ever solo album just released on ECM Records (JazzWax). --- Steve Krakow revisits the biography of pianist Denny Zeitlin who grew up in Chicago, received early support from Bill Evans and was signed to Columbia Records in 1963, then moved to San Francisco one year later to begin a psychiatric residency, exploring new electronic technologies later in the 1960s, writing music for films like the sci-fi horror movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", all the while maintaining private psychiatric practices in the Bay Area (Chicago Reader).

John Shand talks to drummer Eric Harland about how he left Manhattan School of Music to move back to Houston, Texas, for theology school, mainly in order to acquire enough biblical knowledge to have a legitimate conversation with his over-religious mother. He learned compassion along the way, he remembers, realizing that "there's something greater than just being an artist, and allowing that part of myself just to be present". Harland talks about his career since, about fear and self-doubt that he felt when he started playing with saxophonist Charles Lloyd, as well as about how to adapt the drums to different rooms in order to still "sound like the drums, but not be overbearing" (Sydney Morning Herald). --- Larry Blumenfeld talks to South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini about learning the art of traditional healers from his grandmother, about his compositions which he sees like prayers, about the importance of the spiritual messages of music in these days, about improvisation as "invocation of a past – a memory, and a vocabulary – as opposed to just the notion of embellishment, for instance", about his own road to jazz and what listening to John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" did to him, about the influence of South African pianist Bheki Mseleku, about his collaboration with British saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, about the real-life meaning of his music in the context of South African history, as well as about "the spirit of Ntu" which he defines as "a creative force that seeks to lead us to remember our essence" (Tidal).

Marc Myers talks to pianist Michael Abene about growing up in Brooklyn in a musical family, about picking up his compositional skills without formal training, about playing in Marshall Brown's Newport Youth Band at age 14, about performing with some jazz legends in Queens, about working with Don Ellis and Maynard Ferguson, about accompanying singers, as well as about recent gigs such as directing the WDR Big Band in Cologne and wanting to do more orchestral music (JazzWax). --- Rod Brakes talks to guitarist Bill Frisell and gets some tips for younger musicians: Listen; Don't judge yourself; Be present; Embrace mistakes; Practice is great (up to a point); Don't think of others; Be yourself; Destroy competition; Take chances; Learn to forget (Guitar Player).

Ethan Iverson talks repertoire in jazz education and lists and comments on 25 blues riffs, 5 I Got Rhythm riffs, as well as 100 standards (Doing the Math). --- Joe Heim talks to Matt Barton, curator of the Library of Congress' recorded sound collection (Washington Post). --- Mauretta Heinzelmann visits German bassist Eva Kruse at her home on a small Swedish island (NDR).

On the occasion of a concert by drummer Albert 'Tootie' Heath, John Stanton reports about the Heath Brothers family's roots in Wilmington, North Carolina (StarNews). --- Ron Grossman looks at different players of influence on  the Chicago jazz and blues scene like Mezz Mezzrow, Muddy Waters, and Willie Dixon (Chicago Tribune).

Nate Chinen reports about the reopening of Smoke Jazz Club in New York after it closed in mid-March 2020 due to the pandemic (WBGO). --- Samuel Lamontagne talks to trumpeter Josef Leimberg (Pop Matters). --- Nina Cherry remembers trumpeter Tiny Davis who "was thrown out of [Kansas City's] jazz scene for being a lesbian" (Kansas City Magazine).

David Nicholas Somlo talks to drummer Chuck Wackerman, father of Chad Wackerman (Event News Enterprise). --- Jeff Tamarkin talks to pianist Edgar Winter about an album he recorded in tribute to his brother, the late blues-rock guitarist Johnny Winter (Relix). --- 91-year-old singer Nancy Harrow has no plans to retire soon (NY1).

The Chicago Tribune revisits photos from Louis Armstrong's visits to the Windy City in 1956 and 1961 (Chicago Tribune). --- The Deutscher Jazzpreis (German Jazz Award) will be presented in Cologne in 2024 and 2025 (Stadt Köln). --- The city of Moers, Germany (home of the moers festival) has initiated some jazz-informed murals, among them a five-story picture of saxophonist Fred Anderson at a local apartment building (Neue Ruhr Zeitung).

Denise Oliver Velez remembers Slugs' Saloon on New York's Lower East Side (Daily Kos). --- Japanese pianist and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto is battling stage 4 cancer as he revealed in an article about "Living with cancer" (Japan Times). --- Shannon Effinger watches a new documentary about the late trumpeter Roy Hargrove (Okay Player).

Obituaries

We learned of the passing of arranger Bill Walker at age 95 (New York Times), German drummer and critic Dago Vötter at age 80 (Bergsträßer Anzeiger), British promoter Victor Schonfield at age 81 (The Guardian, The Wire), German composer Volker Bräutigam at age 83 (Leipziger Volkszeitung), Austrian drummer Wolfgang Reisinger at age 67 (Kleine Zeitung, Die Presse, Der Standard), singer Pat Yankee at age 96 (Lodi News), Polish vibraphonist Józef Gawrych at age 83 (Facebook), French promoter Jean Bémer at age 89 (Republicain Lorrain), German oud player Roman Bunka at age 71 (Ahram Online), as well as trombonist Grachan Moncur III at age 85 (WBGO, The Guardian, New York Times).

From the World of Jazz Research

Armstrong & Company
Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies, in conjunction with The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation (LAEF), presents the 2022 Louis Armstrong International Continuum: Armstrong & Company, a virtual, Symposium and Concert set for June 13 - 19 at 9:00 am (ET). The participants include Sonny Rollins, Gary Giddins, Ned Sublette, Angela Davis, Robin D.G. Kelley, Nichole Rustin-Paschal, Terri Lyne Carrington, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Theo Croker and more, plus concerts by vocalists Nnenna Freelon and Quiana Lynell and a special award presentation to Ran Blake. More information and free access: Columbia University.

Last Week at the Jazzinstitut

(New) books we read
Among the books on our desk the last couple of weeks were "Ein bissl Bebop bevor ich geh'. Die Autobiographie von Heinz von Hermann", by Heinz von Hermann; and "Jazz-Echos aus den Sixties. Kritische Skizzen aus einem hoffnungsvollen Jahrzehnt", edited by Siegfried Schmidt-Joos (see the Jazzinstitut's book review page).

We remember ... Jürgen Wuchner
Darmstadt bassist Jürgen Wuchner passed away 1 May 2020, and the pandemic did not allow for a memorial bringing together all of his friends and colleagues. On 6 June 2022 that memorial finally took place at Bessunger Knabenschule, the cultural center where Jürgen had opened a jazz and pop school together with pianist Uli Partheil, where he organized the workshop Jazz Conceptions together with the Jazzinstitut, and where he was a regular at concerts, not the least because he lived just around the corner. The musicians performing at the memorial came from near and far: students from Jürgen's workshop ensembles, a band made up of musicians from the local jazz association he helped form in the 1990s, colleagues such as Rudi Mahall, Christof Thewes, Matthias Schubert, Norbert Dömling, Thomas Cremer, Norbert Stein, Felix Wahnschaffe and many others. All of them either played his compositions or performed in the spirit of Jürgen's improvisatory approach. We remembered... and we realized that Jürgen's spirit will remain with all of us who had the privilege of knowing him (see our obituary from May 2020).

Current opening hours of the Jazzinstitut
The Jazzinstitut is open to the public by appointment. We also offer research help by phone, e-mail or video-call. If you would like to schedule a video call, please send an e-mail to make an appointment and give us an idea what you want to talk about. We will then reply with a link for a Webex video session for your meeting.