On TV Tonight

The Documentary Channel begins airing its four-part series on jazz, Icons Among Us, tonight at 9:00 Eastern. Ben Ratliff reviewed the series for the New York Times this weekend, calling it "a retort to Ken Burns’s 2001 television documentary 'Jazz.'" You can read more about the series at the Documentary Channel's website and the Icons Among Us website. I would watch, but Comcast has decided not to include the channel in my cable lineup (alas, there's always NetFlix). They recently took Fox Soccer and the MLB Network from me as well, so it might be time for a shake-up at Hot House Global HQ...


Video still via iconsamongus.com

Review

Take Five: A Weekly Jazz Sampler

A common gripe from my non-jazz-listening friends is that they often want to listen to jazz, but they don't have the time to figure out the good from the bad or start learning about the historically important recordings. This is essentially a lame cop-out ("I've got tons of CDs, I can lend you five good ones to start off with," is my usual reply), but now jazz fans have an essential resource that could break down even the most passive jazz resistor. Take Five: A Weekly Jazz Sampler from NPR and Jazz24 presents a simple introduction to jazz for the novice by selecting five songs every week, and streaming them via podcast.

Take Five's podcasts offer a good variety of music to sample. On any given week, the program could take a look at a particular subgenre (like hard bop, soul jazz, or fusion), important recordings from individual instruments (like vibes or flute), or best-of compilations (like the best of Blue Note, 2008, or modern piano trios). The lists can get creative and unearth some recordings that even advanced listeners have yet to check out, like this list of jazz tunes from the Civil Rights Movement - I didn't know Grant Green had written a tune commemorating the completion of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march.

So keep it in mind next time you run across a friend bemoaning the insurmountable barriers to loving jazz. They'll thank you later.

Subscribe via podcast feed or RSS feed.

Review

The Jazz Session

with Jason Crane

A few weeks ago, while wandering around the iTunes store, I stumbled upon The Jazz Session, a weekly jazz interview show available exclusively via podcast. Upon looking at the show's past guests, which include Sonny Rollins, Kenny Garrett, and Eddie Daniels, I decided to give the podcast a listen. I was not disappointed. The show is hosted by Jason Crane, a radio veteran and jazz enthusiast who has contributed pieces to All About Jazz. He is also a musician himself, which gives him an added advantage in talking to musicians about their craft.

Crane is quite adept at interrogating the craft of jazz through his interviews. Interviewing jazz musicians is an interesting challenge. Most musicians are quite thoughtful and channel a lot of intellectual energy into their art, but if the interviewer does not ask the right questions, or does not ask to clarify at the right moment, the conversation runs the risk of going over the head of the interviewer's audience. Crane does not suffer from this problem. He asks probing questions that require his subjects to consider the underlying principles of their music, and gets his interview subjects to clarify their answers so that the layperson can understand them.

Whereas most interviewers keep things simple for their audience (What do you think about sideman X? How did you like playing with Y?), Crane moves beyond the standard interview questions. For instance, in an interview with Jason Moran (episode 18), Crane asks Moran about how he structures a set with his band. This does not seem like an obvious question to ask, but it enables Moran to begin discussing his mentor, Jaki Byard, and how his teaching influenced Moran's playing. Perhaps Crane did not have that in mind when he asked the question, but a good interviewer knows which questions get the subject to open up an interesting discussion, so I am giving Crane credit for that here.

Most of Crane's interviews fall under the thirty-minute mark. Sometimes this leaves an interview feeling incomplete, but considering the format, that is a forgivable sin. Podcasts work best (for me at least) when they are somewhere around thirty minutes long. That way they are long enough to cover a lot of ground, but not so long that I need more than one sitting to complete an episode. I highly recommend the podcast for connoisseurs and nascent jazz fans alike. You can subscribe via the iTunes store or the show's RSS feed.

Review

Jazz Profiles with Nancy Wilson

A recent search through the podcast section of the iTunes store brought me to Jazz Profiles, a weekly series on "the greatest performers who have influenced the history of jazz," according to NPR's website. I subscribed to the podcast to check it out. I was sure that since it is produced by NPR, it would be at least good enough to add to my podcast routine, and probably quite enjoyable. I have listened to three episodes so far, and am pleased to say that it exceeded my expectations. Jazz Profiles provides an in-depth portrait of a different performer every week, using interviews with the performer and his or her contemporaries and students, along with generous samples of music.

The first episodes I listened to were a two-part series on Charles Mingus. The episodes spanned a good portion of his career, from his early days in Los Angeles, to the Jazz Composers Workshop of the mid-1950s, to his later years and the posthumous debut of his massive work "Epitaph." The episodes also delved into his legendary personality, presenting a few interviews to describe his fights with sidemen Jackie McLean and Jimmy Knepper. Series narrator Nancy Wilson also delved into the particularities of Mingus' bass style, something that often gets lost in discussions of his compositions and place in jazz history. In between are plenty of great samples of Mingus recordings, sometimes running for five minutes without any commentary. Listeners are given the chance to hear what made Mingus so great without any commentary over the music.

I also listened to an episode featuring the legendary (if somewhat obscure to casual listeners) stride pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith. Like the Mingus episodes, the Smith episode is full of listening samples from Smith's long career. Nancy Wilson also describes the Harlem rent parties of the 1920s which incubated the stride-piano style of Smith and his contemporaries. This socio-economic context fills in the technical discussion of Smith's style presented by one of his former students, Dick Hyman. Again, I was treated to some extensive recording samples of Smith's playing, as well as audio clips of Smith talking about his upbringing and the development of his style.

The episode on Smith represents the most redeeming aspect of Jazz Profiles. Whereas jazz history is often depicted as a series of evolutions at the hands of Great Men, Jazz Profiles (though it spends time discussing musicians from the pantheon of Great Men) fills in the gaps, exposing listeners to lesser figures like Smith, Gerry Mulligan, or Tommy Flanagan, who provided bridges between different genres while filling out and diversifying the jazz community. These figures, which are often not even mentioned in other venues of jazz appreciation, are often just as captivating and entertaining as the Parkers and Coltranes that frame most histories of jazz.

Jazz Profiles is highly recommended to jazz listeners who have learned the basics of the music, but are yearning for more information. Nancy Wilson is a more-than-capable narrator, presenting the information in a pleasing tone without sounding pedantic. Jazz Profiles will not provide the definitive take on any the artists profiled, but the program serves as a very helpful introduction and resource to some of the most important, and least appreciated, musicians in jazz.