The Kansas City trumpeter Trent Austin is featured in the Jazz Winterlude series at Polsky Theatre on Sunday, February 19.
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Eddie Moore and Jaylen Ward entered NPR’s annual Tiny Desk Contest.
*Bobby Watson appeared on a sports podcast in advance of the Super Bowl.
*Seth Allen of Libations & Company tells Joe Dimino about his new music venue in Lee’s Summit.
*Joe Dimino spoke with Isaiah Petrie.
*The famed songwriter Burt Bacharach, a Kansas City native, has died.
*Tweet of the Week: Bob Kendrick- In it’s heyday, 18th & Vine was a cultural crossroad where Baseball & Jazz intersected! Guests got a taste of that era yesterday when they were treated to live music by some talented, young Jazz musicians! (video)
Are You Going With Me?
Original image of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts by Plastic Sax.
Our long municipal nightmare will soon be over. Pat Metheny is slated to appear at Muriel Kauffman Theatre on Thursday, June 15. The guitarist, one of the most artistically significant and commercially successful musicians to originate from the Kansas City area, will be joined by pianist Chris Fishman and drummer Joe Dyson in the current iteration of the Side-Eye project. Metheny last performed inside the city limits of Kansas City in 2012. His relentless tour schedule has made the drought particularly reprehensible. Welcome back, hometown hero!
Now’s the Time: Hermon Mehari
Two legendary musicians are performing in downtown Kansas City on Saturday, February 18. The rock icon Bruce Springsteen returns to the arena currently known as the T-Mobile Center. The new music innovator Laurie Anderson performs with Filharmonie Brno at Helzberg Hall. Meanwhile, a legend-in-the-making is featured at the Folly Theater. Hermon Mehari, Plastic Sax’s 2009 Person of the Year, is an ascendant star.
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*A band led by Hermon Mehari performed for the influential Seattle radio station KEXP.
*Late Night Basie, an all-star reimagining of the music of Count Basie, will be released on April 7.
*Butch Miles, a longtime drummer for the Count Basie Orchestra, has died.
*Tweet of the Week: MidContinent Library- Explore the “golden era” of Kansas City Jazz through historic images and audio recordings with Kent Rausch of the Vine Street Rumble Jazz Orchestra. Learn how unique circumstances in the 1930s and 40s led to an enduring Kansas City legacy….Jazz! Register: (link)
Album Review: Mike Dillon and Punkadelick- Inflorescence
The longstanding radio program Retro Cocktail Hour specializes in the charmingly quaint and amusingly outmoded jazz-based exotica associated with space-age bachelor pads. Mike Dillon, Brian Haas and Nikki Glaspie turn the concept inside-out on Inflorescence. The trio goofs on the ersatz vocalese of Yma Sumac on “Desert Monsoon,” the opening track of the new album, and toys with the French chansons of Édith Piaf on the closing selection “Never Been to Paris.” Everything in between is a wild-eyed percussive romp. The interplay between vibraphonist and longtime Kansas City troublemaker Dillon, keyboardist Haas and drummer Glaspie provides thrilling immediacy. But forget about elaborate cocktails. Fireball shooters from a gas station are a more suitable companion for the proper appreciation of Inflorescence.
Now’s the Time: Logan Richardson
Prior to a four-night stand at The Blue Note in New York City later this month, Logan Richardson is booked for a three-night run at The Ship in Kansas City on Wednesday, February 1, Thursday, February 2, and Friday, February 3. The saxophonist’s show at The Ship in 2022 was Plastic Sax’s Favorite Performance of 2022. The embedded video is a portion of Steve Paul’s documentation of the February 1 set.
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Joyce Smith of The Kansas City Star reports that Westport Coffee House, an important cog in Kansas City’s jazz scene, is for sale.
*Radio France looks back on the Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival.
*An archive recording recently released by Chris Burnett is reviewed at All About Jazz.
*Michael Shults is featured on Steve Kortyka’s YouTube channel.
*Marc Myers shares recently uploaded footage featuring Count Basie.
*Tweet of the Week: Jessica Moulin- Green Lady Lounge is so underrated in Kansas City. I can’t wait to listen to live jazz Friday and then play skee ball at Updown #ilovekc
Concert Review: Oran Etkin at Polsky Theatre
Original image by Plastic Sax.
Oran Etkin resembled Victor Frankenstein at an audacious concert at Polsky Theatre on Sunday, January 22. Manipulating recorded sounds on a laptop while overseeing a mix-and-match quartet, Etkin seemed like a mad scientist teaching an ungainly mutation to hum “Kumbaya, My Lord.”
An explanatory video preceding the concert outlined Etkin’s Open Arms Project. The itinerant idealist’s band delivered a message of social justice and multicultural unity in a concert that refused to recognize national boundaries or musical borders. A gallery of 75 observed the sonic laboratory.
The band embodied Etkins’ inclusive world music philosophy. The multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Etkin, guitarist Vinicius Gomes, bassist Sam Minaie and drummer Alvester Garnett traversed the globe during 80 minutes of improvised music.
The delicate playing of Brazilian guitarist Gomes is heard to great effect on Home, a 2022 duet album with vocalist Song Yi Jeon. Yet the insistent style of Garnett, an American artist best known for his work with Regina Carter and Abbey Lincoln, didn’t always allow Gomes’ soloing room to breathe.
A concept initiated by Minaie, an Iranian-American who has recorded with Tigran Hamasyan, was unceremoniously nixed. Diligent researchers expect unsuccessful trials. The quartet transcended the failed experiments with several inspired moments including an evocation of Eric Dolphy that resounded like a priceless breakthrough.
Now’s the Time: Jack Wright
Jack Wright is a free jazz warhorse. The saxophonist has specialized in improvised noise for more than 40 years. Wright will perform with his frequent collaborator Ron Stabinsky and members of the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society at Charlotte Street Foundation on Tuesday, January 31.
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Paula Saunders, Amber Underwood and Angela Ward anticipate a cultural exchange in Chile in a television news report.
*Hermon Mehari looks forward to his performance in the Folly Jazz Series in a Kansas City magazine feature.
*Following a month-long stoppage, The Blue Room reopens with a jam session led by Matt Villinger on Monday, January 30.
*The Pitch relays an update from Chaz on the Plaza.
*Jakob Baekgaard composed an overview of Mary Lou Williams’ career for All About Jazz.
*Portions of the Miguel Zenón Quartet’s concert at the Folly Theater were captured by Joe Dimino.
*Tweet of the Week: Green Lady Lounge- In 2022, Green Lady Lounge & Black Dolphin musicians earned $942,582.81 in performance pay & credit card tips from fans. By the merit of their performances & demand from fans, these Kansas City jazz musicians showed their success & robust viability in the free market.
Concert Review: The Miguel Zenón Quartet at the Folly Theater
Original image by Plastic Sax.
Miguel Zenón substantiated the scores of accolades he’s received in the past two decades with a stunning three-minute unaccompanied alto saxophone solo soon after his quartet’s concert at the Folly Theater began on Friday, January 20. The majestic statement by the 2008 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation’s so-called genius grant encompassed everything that ever has been and everthing that ever will be in acoustic jazz.
Aside from a lovely reading of “El Vida es Sueno” that served as an encore, the entirety of the 90-minute performance consisted of material from the Grammy-nominated 2022 album Música De Las Américas. Zenón’s third Kansas City appearance possessed a dangerously high degree of intensity. Even the most committed Zenón fans amid the audience of about 200 might have felt no less drained at the conclusion of the Folly Jazz Series presentation than bruised and battered punk rockers after an evening spent in a mosh pit.
Zenón, pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Luca Alemanno and drummer Henry Cole didn’t offer any conciliatory platitudes. Burning like a regenerated Charlie Parker steeped in Puerto Rican traditions rather than Kansas City blues, Zenón is among the planet’s most indispensable musicians. The quartet’s rhythmic machinations caused much of the second set to resemble a cerebral form of salsa. Their performance wasn’t merely great. It was unadulterated genius.
Now’s the Time: Oran Etkin
Multi-instrumentalist Oran Etkin is joined by four of the world’s best musicians in the embedded video. His accompanists for a concert at Polsky Theatre on Sunday, January 22, will include the extraordinary guitarist Vinicius Gomes and the accomplished bassist Sam Minaie.
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*A blogger reviewed Bobby Watson’s concert at Yardley Hall.
*The Defender offers an unconventional perspective of Kansas City’s jazz heyday.
*Seth Davis is characterized as an “improv-aholic” in his appearance on Classical KC’s Sound Currents program.
*A Jackie Myers gig was documented by Joe Dimino.
*Tweet of the Week: NPR Music- For nearly a century, jazz musicians have debated what gives songs that swing feel. The secret may lie in subtle nuances in a soloist's timing. (link)
Book Review: Count Basie and Albert Murray’s Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie
Original image by Plastic Sax.
The timeless sounds produced by the band overseen by William Basie in the 1930s might be the most immediately enjoyable music ever produced in the New World. Take "Miss Thing". Everything about the brash 1939 recording is intelligent, sexy and yes, incredibly swinging.
Published a year after Basie’s 1984 death, Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie, contains the backstory of “Miss Thing”: “it was named for Rubberlegs (Williams) himself, who was… a female impersonator as well as a dancer and a very raunchy blues singer.”
Almost every page of the out-of-print book contains at least one similarly scintillating anecdote. The conversational tone of the “as told to” volume assembled by the notable jazz writer Albert Murray enhances the wildly entertaining if not entirely complete portrait of the essential American artist. As Basie liked to say, it’s a real killer-diller.
While Basie assiduously avoids revealing details about his personal predilections- “I just don’t see the point of going into things like that” he asserts in Good Morning Blues- Basie was admirably candid about musical and business matters.
For instance, he’s more than willing to confess his limitations as a keyboardist. One of the running bits of Good Morning Blues involves Basie’s fear of being shown up by technically superior pianists including Art Tatum and Mary Lou Williams.
Basie’s reverence for his peers can make Good Morning Blues slow going. A reader is obligated to put the book down in order to queue up not just the dozens of recording sessions Basie dutifully describes, but also music by a cast of characters ranging from the titanic Duke Ellington to the earthy comedian Pigmeat Markham.
Details about Basie’s interactions with other legendary figures such as John Hammond, Jimmy Rushing, Fats Waller, Lester Young are dazzling. Basie was a lifelong music obsessive. Although his sound evolved through the vaudeville, big band, bop and rock and roll eras, his enthusiasm never waned.
Kansas City’s civic boosters will cringe at some of Basie’s perspectives, beginning with his characterization of the town as “the sticks.” Yet locally based readers will lap up Basie’s descriptions of boarding houses and clubs in the Jazz District, the “lily-white” Fairyland Park and area landmarks such as Jenkins Music and Municipal Auditorium.
Basie recalls “(t)hey always did like farewells and homecomings in Kansas City.” The ongoing vibrancy of his music and the genial tone of Good Morning Blues makes the prospect of closing the door on Basie’s legacy in his one-time stomping grounds absolutely unthinkable.
Now’s the Time: Miguel Zenón
One of Charlie Parker’s most vital acolytes performs at the Folly Theater on Friday, January 20. Alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón has become an established component of the jazz pantheon since his appearances at the Blue Room in 2014 and as a member of the SFJazz Collective at the Folly Theater in 2018.
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image of Judith Shea’s “Storage” by Plastic Sax.
*Rod Fleeman discussed his new album with Steve Kraske on KCUR’s Up to Date program.
*Nina Cherry caught up with Marilyn Maye.
*A television station reports on concerns related to the latest round of development plans for the Jazz District.
*Snippets of a Jackie Myers performance at Ophelia’s were captured by Joe Dimino.
*More than 500 albums received votes in the 17th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll. Kansas City is represented by Bobby Watson’s Back Home in Kansas City (#106), Steve Cardenas’ Healing Power: The Music of Carla Bley (#125), Pat Metheny’s Side-Eye NYC (#347) and Hermon Mehari’s Asmara (#414). My ballot is here.
*No Kansas City establishments are among the 106 venues listed in Downbeat’s 2023 International Jazz Venue Guide.
*Tweet of the Week: StrayhornProject- Congratulations to Caden Bradshaw from Kansas City, winner of our ‘Strayhorn; An Illustrated Life’ book raffle. Caden is an up and coming jazz pianist himself. We will continue to wish him well on his musical journey! (photo)
Faux Fest
Original image of Brian Haas and Mike Dillon at the Brick by Plastic Sax.
I attended a cutting-edge jazz festival in Kansas City on Wednesday, January 4. What’s that? You didn’t know about the event? Well, since Kansas City hasn’t hosted a proper jazz festival in five years, I’ve taken to curating one-night festivals for myself.
On Wednesday I spent five hours at three venues taking in an immensely rewarding blend of touring and locally based artists. The faux festival got off to a rough start at Westport Coffee House ($10 cover). When guitarist Seth Andrew Davis thanked members of the audience for attending, the Bay Area keyboardist Scott R. Looney sneered “three people!”
The other musicians seemed to brush off Looney’s disappointment in the turnout. Looney, Davis and the New York based percussionist Kevin Cheli began by playing what sounded like devilish variations on the cartoon music of Raymond Scott.
Looney, bassist Krista Kopper and drummer Evan Verploegh toyed with extreme dynamics in the second set. In staving off mere anarchy by holding the center, Kopper was the most valuable contributor to a third set featuring all five musicians. The first stage of the festival concluded with an improvisation on what may have been an inverse version of Miles Davis’ “All Blues.”
The second phase of the bespoke festival transpired at Green Lady Lounge ($5 cover). I joined about 75 revelers for a set by OJT, the popular venue’s de facto house band. Seated directly behind drummer Sam Platt, my appreciation of the ways in which guitarist Brian Baggett and organist Ken Lovern apply their roots in rock to update the organ jazz trio tradition was strengthened.
Funkadelick headlined the fake fest at the Brick ($10 cover). Drummer Nikki Glaspie had the night off, so the peripatetic Mike Dillon and Brian Haas, the keyboardist best known for his groundbreaking work with Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, operated as a duo for most of their nearly two-hour set.
Dillon manned his expansive rig like punk-jazz’s answer to Carl Palmer as he and Haas interpreted the entirety of the forthcoming album Inflorescence. The tandem was later joined in musical roughhousing by guest drummer Arnold Young. A violent interpolation of the Stooges’ proto-punk classic “I Wanna Be Your Dog” typified the raucous attack.
Drawn to the pocket-size stage like a moth to a flame, I posted up front and center for most of the riveting performance. The approximately 50 people seated behind me couldn’t have been pleased that I obstructed their sightlines. I didn’t care. After all, it was my festival.
Now’s the Time: Bobby Watson
Bobby Watson leads a locally based quartet at Yardley Hall on Sunday, January 15. The titanic saxophonist was named Plastic Sax’s Person of the Decade in 2009 and again in 2019.
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*When he wasn’t raving about the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society, the author of Plastic Sax played jazz and jazz-adjacent music including tracks by Matt Villinger’s All Night Trio, Anna Butterss and “Ode to Mary,” Moor Mother’s tribute to Mary Lou Williams on a best-of 2022 radio program.
*Soirée Steak & Oyster House, a restaurant in the Jazz District that occasionally features jazz performances, is the beneficiary of a crowd-funding campaign.
*Mike Dillon chatted with Joe Dimino.
*Tweet of the Week: Mo- My friends and i trying to take pictures at @GreenLadyLounge last night (meme)
*From a press release: CD Release Event at Green Lady Lounge on Saturday, January 14, from 2:30 to 5:30 pm.: After decades of working as a sought-after sideman and invaluable collaborator for the likes of Karrin Allyson, Diane Shuur, Marilyn Maye, and the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra, guitarist Rod Fleeman has released his first album as a leader. Saturday Afternoon Live at Green Lady Lounge captures Fleeman, bassist Gerald Spaits, and drummer Todd Strait performing a set of original material at Kansas City’s most popular jazz venue.
*From a press release: Jazz/Punk Raconteur Mike Dillon & Punkadelick are on tour, performing locally for a CD Release Party at The Brick, Wednesday, January 4… Punkadelic is a trio featuring Mike Dillon (Ricki Lee Jones, Ani DiFranco, Les Claypool) on vibraphone, marimba, Prophet 6, congas, and bongos; Brian Haas (Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey) on Fender Rhodes, piano, bass Moog and melodica; and Nikki Glaspie (Beyonce) on drums, cymbals and vocals.