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Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Robert Graham’s Charlie Parker sculpture receives an enhanced reality treatment.
*Nina Cherry commends Everyday Strangers in Kansas City magazine.
*Tweet of the Week: Pat Metheny- Pat Metheny Side-Eye on Tour in February with @thekingjames88 & @Joe_Dyson (schedule)
Original image by Plastic Sax.
I intend to purchase a $35 ticket to the Bessie, Billie and Nina: Pioneering Women in Jazz concert at Polsky Theatre. Performances by Tahira Clayton, Vanisha Gould and Charanée Wade in the Midwest Trust Center’s Jazz Winterlude series on March 6 will almost certainly be enjoyable.
Even though Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone merit the utmost respect, the booking is part of a pervasively discouraging trend. Honoring past heroes is commendable. Neglecting present innovators is detrimental. Angel Bat Dawid, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Esperanza Spalding are among the many artistically vibrant artists currently embodying the rebellious legacies of Holiday, Simone and Smith.
The conservatism of Jazz Winterlude is understandable. Past bookings by forward-thinking artists including Terri Lyne Carrington and Julian Lage received tepid public support. Curating a sanitized past is safer than presenting a divisive present.
Saxophonist Pete Fucinaro, a recent addition to Kansas City’s jazz scene, leads a band in renditions of Thelonious Monk compositions at Ça Va on Thursday, January 20.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*The prominent author and critic Terry Teachout, a one-time resident of the Kansas City area, has died.
*Joe Dimino documented a matinee performance by Bram and Lucy Wijnands.
*Tweet of the Week: KCMO Public Library- We are saddened to learn of the passing of arts critic and author Terry Teachout. The Library was honored to host him for several public programs including in Nov. 2013 for his book Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington. Watch it here.
Bobby Watson and Stephen Martin romp through an affectionate interpretation of Benny Golson’s standard “Stablemates” on the latter musician’s new release High Plains. Bold and assured, the selection exemplifies the impeccable form of swing that’s dominated Kansas City’’s jazz scene in recent decades.
Watson is one of several members of an elite consortium of notable Kansas City musicians joining Martin on his second album. The saxophonist’s vision is bolstered by Peter Schlamb (vibraphone and piano) and Ben Leifer (basses). Saxophonist Matt Otto produced High Plains and performs on one track. The Nebraska based drummer David Hawkins rounds out the group.
High Plains is suffused with Martin’s devotion to John Coltrane. Thanks partly to Schlamb’s wondrous invocation of McCoy Tyner, the band reaches Afro Blue Impressions-level intensity on “The Void.” Martin and his stablemates are less clamorous on the remainder of the album. Mainstream jazz- in Kansas City or anywhere else- doesn’t get much better than High Plains.
The 2020 release of Rock Chalk Suite, an Ellingtonian album inspired by the basketball program at the University of Kansas, will forever link The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to Lawrence, Kansas. The ensemble returns to the Lied Center on Tuesday, January 18.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Nedra Dixon and Pamela Baskin-Watson were awarded an Opera America grant to assist in the advancement of their “A God- Sib's Tale: A Folk Opera” project.
*Rashida Phillips of the American Jazz Museum chatted with Steve Kraske on KCUR’s Up To Date prgram.
*El Intruso’s 14th Annual International Critics Poll was published this week. My ballot includes votes for the Kansas City musicians Brett Jackson, Hermon Mehari, Pat Metheny, Brian Scarborough and Bobby Watson.
*Tweet of the Week: The Eldridge- POSTPONED! Look for a new date soon. Susan Hancock is roaring back to the Lawrence, KS music scene for the first time in two years! She is delighted to be joined by two top Kansas City jazz musicians, Roger Wilder, pianist, and Joey Panella, bass. #theeldridge #lawrence #music
The subversive artists of the Extemporaneous Music Society are picking up where they left off their extraordinarily productive 2021. The January 1 release of Quartet, Vol. 1 on Mother Brain Records is another provocative missive in the collective’s bold overhaul of Kansas City’s improvised music scene.
The album’s intentionally jarring contents will be familiar to those who encountered a concert by Seth Andrew Davis (electric guitar/laptop/electronics), Kyle Hutchins (saxophones), Aaron Osborne (bass/electronics) and Evan Verploegh (drums/percussion) at Charlotte Street Foundation last July.
The anarchic opening segment of the 32-minute “Of Other Mirrors” may cause even the most intrepid listeners to flinch. The confrontational blaring, obnoxious bleating and insidious braying seems designed to repel all comers. There’s a method to their madness. While retaining a harsh edge, the subsequent quieter passages reveal the quartet’s attentive interplay.
Jazz-oriented listeners are likely to gravitate to the contributions of Hutchins. His Dolphy-esque playing provides an analog counterpoint to industrial grating on “Of Other Mirrors,” the glitchy futurism of “Under a Strange Legend” and the somber malevolence of “So Many Stars Take Care of Me.” Viva la revolución!
Stan Kessler, Plastic Sax’s 2013 Person of the Year, was recently inducted in the Kansas Music Hall of Fame. Sons of Brasil, Kessler’s long-lived Brazilian jazz group, appears at Sail Away Wine on Tuesday, January 11.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Pat Metheny’s Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV) placed #29 in the The 2021 Jazz Critics Poll. My ballot is here.
*Brian Scarborough’s Gettin’ It Done: Steve Davis’ Improvised Trombone Solos, “a comprehensive collection of transcriptions from (Davis’) 20212 release,” was published January 1.
*Tweet of the Week: KU School of Music- #KUMusicHistory: Did you know the KU School of Music is home to the Richard F. Wright Jazz Archive, a collection of over 40,000 items? The holdings cover all major jazz periods from the 1920s and 30s as well as the many genres following World War II.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
Published in 2018 as part of the University of Nebraska’s Expanding Frontiers: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Series, Queering Kansas City Jazz: Gender, Performance and the History of a Scene possesses an admirably confrontational perspective.
Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone, also the author of the 2015 study Queerness in Heavy Metal Music: Metal Bent, argues that the established canon of scholarship by the likes of Terry Teachout, Nathan Pearson, Frank Driggs, Chuck Haddix and Stanley Crouch is marred by conscious or unconscious “heteronormative” and/or race-related biases.
Insisting an essential component of Kansas City’s jazz history has been unjustifiably marginalized by incomplete analyses, Clifford-Napoleone makes a case for overlooked entertainers including Edna Jacobs. She suggests “sex tourism…(was) an integral part of the jazz scene” in her investigation of Pendergast-era jazz-adjacent nightclubs like Dante’s Inferno and blues-fueled brothels.
Unfortunately, Queering Kansas City Jazz is written in the jargon associated with contemporary academia. Clifford-Napoleone’s disruptive ideas are often expressed in dense passages complicated by words and phrases such as intersectionality, reterritorialization and non-normative gender performance.
The occasionally baffling idiom doesn’t negate Clifford-Napoleone’s healthy skepticism. In decrying the institutional “disciplinary monotony” that inhibits artistic vitality and diminishes public enthusiasm for jazz in Kansas City, the author’s rejection of accepted wisdom points to new possibilities.
Aficionados of mainstream swing can ring in the new year with the Jim Lower Trio in the Orion Room at Green Lady Lounge on Friday, December 31.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Chris Burnett listed his ten favorite albums of 2021 at Jazz Artistry Now.
*The man behind this site shared selections by Hermon Mehari and Pat Metheny in a survey of his favorite music of 2021 on radio station 90.9 The Bridge. (Stream available soon.)
*Tweet of the Week: Dylan Pyles- Psst. There are no safe indoors events right now.
Original image of Tyree Johnson by Plastic Sax.
1. Mask off
Kansas City never entirely embraced pandemic precautions. Much of the populace treated official mandates as gratuitous suggestions. Even so, Kansas City’s live music landscape shifted during the difficulties. The good news is that new jazz-friendly venues replaced many of the rooms that didn’t survive.
2. Saying the quiet part out loud
Some readers of Plastic Sax are annoyed by this site’s penchant for disclosing disheartening attendance figures. Pat Metheny acknowledged the town’s limited appetite for jazz in an interview with In Kansas City magazine.
3. Fiver
Many observers insist that the customary absence of cover charges at performances of jazz devalues the music. Green Lady Lounge, Kansas City’s most popular jazz venue, instituted a five dollar admission fee this year.
4. Underground surge
Thanks largely to the initiatives of the enterprising young musicians Seth Davis and Evan Verploegh, avant-garde jazz and experimental music was much easier to find in 2021.
5. 3333
After relocating to 3333 Wyoming Street, the Charlotte Street Foundation became a welcoming home for left-of-center improvised music.
6. The beat goes on
The storied drummer Carl Allen replaced Bobby Watson as Endowed Chair of Jazz Studies at UMKC. Much of the jazz scene’s fate rests on Allen’s ability to attract and develop promising talent.
7. Dunn good
Gerald Dunn, the person who has become the institutional memory of the American Jazz Museum and has long served as an essential component of Kansas City’s music scene, was named a Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalists Association.
8. Missouri uncompromised
Carolyn Glenn Brewer’s new study Under Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City 1965-1972 provides essential insights into a previously under-documented era.
9. Next level
Hermon Mehari’s progression as a refined practitioner of European jazz and the ascension of Lucy Wijnands’ career were among the most notable artistic developments by artists associated with Kansas City.
10. Rest in peace
The passing of organ kingpin Everette DeVan was the most prominent of several heartbreaking deaths.
EDIT: THIS PERFORMANCE HAS BEEN POSTPONED
The accomplished guitarist Steve Cardenas performs with pianist Jon Cowherd, bassist Ben Allison and drummer Allan Mednard in the embedded video. Cardenas will be joined by bassist Forest Stewart and drummer Brian Steever at recordBar on Tuesday, December 28.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Pat Metheny is a Kansas City music blog’s Artist of the Year.
*JazzTimes published a Count Basie-themed listicle. Something Else! published an appreciation of Pat Metheny’s debut album.
*Tweet of the Week: Carl Kincaid- What a fantastic night. And privilege. Seeing #BobbyWatson with some of Kansas City’s (indeed, the world’s) greatest players in The American Jazz Orchestra at the epicenter of Jazz, #TheBlueRoom at 18th and Vine. Got him to sign my copy of his #GatesBBQ Suite too. So cool. #jazz
Original image by Plastic Sax.
The artistic vitality of Kansas City’s jazz scene isn’t dependent on charismatic celebrities or prominent institutions. Instead, a few dozen diligent journeyman musicians are responsible for the resilience of the music.
Few artists are more representative of these unsung heroes than Rod Fleeman. The guitarist’s work with the famed vocalists Karrin Allyson and Marilyn Maye is his primary calling card, but he’s often found working under less glamorous spotlights.
While Fleeman’s contributions make even the humblest gigs seem sublime, he shines like a luminous star when surrounded by exceptional musicians. His Saturday matinee booking at Green Lady Lounge is among Kansas City’s best-kept secrets.
The unassuming Fleeman possesses a tiny fraction of the fame attained by the Lee’s Summit native Pat Metheny. The former teenage acquaintances took different career paths. Yet every Fleeman appearance contains solos capable of dazzling discerning Metheny enthusiasts. That’s among the many reasons Fleeman is Plastic Sax’s Person of the Year.
Previous recipients of the designation are Charlie Parker (2020), Logan Richardson (2019),Peter Schlamb (2018), John Scott (2017), Eddie Moore (2016), Larry Kopitnik (2015), Deborah Brown (2014), Stan Kessler (2013), Doug and Lori Chandler (2012), Jeff Harshbarger (2011), Mark Lowrey (2010) and Hermon Mehari (2009). Bobby Watson was named the Plastic Sax Person of the Decade in 2009 and again in 2019.
Bobby Watson leads a big band at the Blue Room on Thursday, December 16. The embedded video captures the Kansas City icon performing his composition “Wheel Within a Wheel” at an Atlanta jazz club on Halloween.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Joe Dimino shared a brief tour of The Soul of Jazz: An American Adventure exhibit at the American Jazz Museum.
*Steve Paul documented a portion of Hermon Mehari’s homecoming concert.
*Downbeat magazine checked in with Pat Metheny.
*Tweet of the Week: Jesse Dayton- While driving thru Kansas I’m reminded why Kansas City had such an explosive jazz scene. (image)
*From a Kansas University School of Music press release: The 2021 DownBeat Award-winning Jazz Ensemble I, directed by Dan Gailey, has been invited to compete at the Jack Rudin Jazz Championship at Lincoln Center in January 2022. Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) announced its second annual Jack Rudin Jazz Championship, a two-day invitational competition featuring ensembles from ten of the most well-regarded university jazz programs in the country. Students will perform on the Rose Theater stage on January 10-11, 2022.
Newvelle Records has an intriguing business model. The high-fidelity albums released by the French label are initially available only as premium vinyl offerings. The digital moratorium on Steve Cardenas’ 2017 album Charlie & Paul ended last week. The rest of the world can finally hear the elite improvistations a cadre of audiophile enthusiasts have relished for several years. Intended as a tribute to Charlie Haden and Paul Motian, the album features the former Kansas City resident Cardenas (guitar), Loren Stillman (saxophone), Thomas Morgan (bass) and Matt Wilson (drums). The quartet’s freewheeling interpretations of compositions by the late bassist and drummer are extraordinary. Cardenas magnanimously provides ample space for his colleagues. Morgan sounds particularly magnificent. The closing track "There in a Dream" is representative of the refined tone of Charlie & Paul.