Capital New York

The 'J-Word': In a year of controversy, the best Jazz albums tested the parameters of the term

It's not every day that one sees an artist like Nicholas Payton, who plays brilliantly and made many fine records, publicly engage in what would appear to be an act of self-immolation. But his frustrations resonated with many musicians. They applauded his assertion that jazz was a construct that had been imposed on them by the music industry. But what would they replace it with? And would this really give them more power with club owners and label executives? More

Postedsdf

By Devin Leonard

Rob Garcia trades in his 'trad' roots to become one of New York's great jazz drummers - and composers

Garcia is a fine drummer and a gifted composer. He writes songs with unusual time signatures. But Garcia and his band members play them with a casualness that would dazzle the old masters. The beat rarely lands where you would expect, but the groove is always right there.

The drummer also writes melodies that are disarmingly simple and child-ike. They linger in your mind like those of Monk, Shorter and the Tin Pan Alley composers whom Garcia also deeply admires. More

Postedsdf

By Devin Leonard

Protest music: A young Brit channels the rage of Mingus, brilliantly

The British jazz pianist John Escreet lives in a sparsely furnished apartment in Flatbush. He keeps it very tidy, for a 25-year-old. There was, on a recent visit, almost nothing about the appearance of the place that squares with his jazz persona, which produces compositions with titles like “Civilization on Trial” and “Avaricious World."

But then he picks up a book from a stack on the table that sits right beside the upright piano he works on at home. It’s the memoir of a child soldier who fought in Sierra Leone’s bloody civil war. There’s another by a self-described “economic hit man” who claims to have wreaked havoc in third world countries to benefit American corporations. Soon, Escreet is talking about how the escalating tensions between North and South Korea could spark a nuclear war that, he said, might wipe out much of the human race.

“The way people act towards each other right now, it might be for the best,” Escreet said with a shrug. “That’s what’s going to happen in the end anyway. Maybe nuking each other sounds pessimistic. I don’t fully believe that, but ….” More

Postedsdf

By Devin Leonard

The Leonard Family's top 10 jazz and rock albums of 2010

Devin: I don’t know about your family, but this is the time of year when the Leonards are feverishly trying to finish up our Top 10 Albums of the Year lists.

It’s something my son, Colin, and I have been doing for the last few years. I’m the middle-aged jazz critic. He’s the collegiate avant-rock expert. His sister keeps threatening to contribute a list of her own, but we’re still waiting. More

Postedsdf

By Devin Leonard and Colin Leonard

Maria Schneider navigates between the beautiful and the merely pretty

The music of the most important composer in the jazz world, Maria Schneider, has a kind of beauty not usually associated with the genre.

“I don’t try to make music that sounds interesting,” she said when when we went with her on a bird-watching trip to Central Park earlier this year. “It’s that thing Wayne Shorter said to me about Miles Davis. He said Miles loved music that didn’t sound like music. I think that exactly the idea. More

Postedsdf

By Devin Leonard

City Portraits: Tomasz Stanko's New York songbook

The son of a judge who also played violin, Tomasz Stanko, the Polish jazz trumpeter, was determined at an early age to be an innovator.

“In Europe at the time, that was not typical,” the 68-year-old trumpeter, who looks like a smaller and more svelte Elvis Costello with his goatee and prominent glasses, said. “We are always saying, ‘He’s fantastic. He plays like Miles. Or he plays like Coltrane.’ We follow. But I felt that it I really wanted to do something serious with this art, I have to build my own language.” More

Postedsdf

By Devin Leonard