The weekend of June 15-17, 2012 – a sampling of Caribbean Jazz from the Woodshed

This past weekend in Caribbean-Jazz – a sampling

Another one of those busy times for paternal Jazz fans all over is Fathers’ Day. The Woodshed abounds with listings planned for that day, June 17. However, the Father’s Day concert of the Jamaica Ocho Rios Jazz Festival and Abstract Entertainment’s 2012 production of PanJazz, “Music – The Original Social Media,” stood out from the heap.

As a prelude to the Jamaica Ocho Rios Jazz Fest’s Father’s Day concert, a Dinner Jazz session was held at Glenn’s Jazz Club, Tower Isle, St. Ann in addition to the Sonny Bradshaw School Band Competition and Jazz Treasures at the Two Seasons Guest House, Treasure Beach, St. Elizabeth on the Saturday. Then on Sunday, June 16, Jamaican fathers celebrated the Closing Father’s Day concert in the Turtle River Pk., Ocho Rios.

More here…

This weekend, on Saturday, June 16, the eighth annual presentation of Abstract Entertainment’s Pan Jazz 2012′s production of Music – The Original Social Media took place at Frederick P. Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th & Broadway, New York City.

For this show, vocalists Alison Hinds of Barbados and Thandiswa Mazwai were backed up by an All-Star band led by Trinidadian trumpeter Etienne Charles, whose participation in PanJazz was his seventh overall and his fourth as musical director. Notable band mates were Jacques Schwarz-Bart playing saxophone, Leon Foster Thomas and Victor Provost of St. John, USVI playing steelpans.

Returning, after an exciting collaboration last year, was the legendary South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, St. Lucia’s famed guitarist Ronald “Boo” Hinskon and Suriname’s Etienne Stadwick. Appearing for the first time with PanJazz was the multi-faceted Martiniquan percussionist Mino Cinelo.

This year’s production was dedicated to Ralph MacDonald, Grammy award-winning percussionist, songwriter and producer.

Trinidad and Tobago had its Saturday night action too, mind you. Saxophonist Jesse Ryan fronted a band of Theron Shaw (guitar), David Richards (drums) and Rodney Alexander (bass) at the Fiesta Plaza, Movietowne.

The ever-present Blackberry Bro, Nigel Campbell, lamented that Jesse’s original compositions like “Algun Dia” although fleshed out with “dissonance, swing, improvisation, rhythm and time changes, alternative chording,” had little impact because local audiences, save for a selected core of a few dozen fans, are not comfortable with new music and do not reflect that accepting energy to the artist.

Also on Saturday, June 16, Trombonist Reginald Cyntje of St. Thomas, USVI helped promote an appreciation for African-American history and culture at the fifth annual Juneteenth celebration at Watkins Regional Park in Maryland.

Juneteenth commemorates the abolition of slavery in the US.

On the lighter side, Smooth Jazz saxophonist Eric Darius, whose heritage is traceable to Haiti and Jamaica (the birthplace of his father and mother), flamed the Red Cat in Houston, Texas while Shirley Crabbe, a descendant of the British Virgin Islands did her thing at Old 76 House in Tappan, NY.

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• The weekend of June 08-10, 2012 – a sampling of Caribbean Jazz at the Woodshed (woodshedentertainment.wordpress.com)

USA-Cuba Jazz Exchange? Cool! (updated)

Cuba

Published on October 08, 2010; update 1 on November 15, 2010

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra began its first trip to Cuba on Tuesday, October 05, 2010.  The visit, part of a cultural exchange with the Cuban Institute of Music, was at the invitation of Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés. Performances were  held in New York and Cuba.

But from October 05-09, JaLC Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis and the orchestra had a series of concerts for big bands and small groups and workshops too at Teatro Julio A. Mella.  They also conducted special Improvisation workshops at the National School of Music where Valdés is a faculty member; and staged the successful “Jazz for Young People” to teach the fundamentals of music.

The US leg of the exchange, consisted of two shows in three days in New York, October 21-23.  

The Frederick P. Rose Hall was the venue for one show, the “Jazz Meets Clave” program.  This show focussed on how American Jazz musicians have incorporated Afro-Cuban percussive rhythms into their canon.  The second show, on October 22 and 23 saw Valdés and the Afro-Cuban Messengers introduce the Allen Room to Chucho’s Steps, Valdés’ latest album. (Source: wsj.com) He also played the Village Vanguard on November 01 with the one-year old octet that was named after Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

The promotion of Chucho’s Steps in the United States marks the pianist’s first tour to that country in seven years. “Chucho’s Steps” is a tribute to sax legend John Coltrane’s landmark “Giant Steps,” a tune “that revolutionized the harmonic world of jazz,” he said to New York Daily News.

The Irvine Barclay Theatre in Irvine, California was one of the first venues to receive “the Dean of Latin Jazz,” as Chucho is called.  That was on October 14, 2010.

But let’s go back to San Francisco’s Herbst Theater on October 11.  Rebeca Mauleon savoured the Afro-Cuban Messengers and wrote about the show on her blog, gotclave.blogspot.com:

“[…]Chucho tore into a two-hour plus set of unimaginable depth and diversity and had people on the edge of their seats with his extraordinary Irakere-era pieces, newly transformed for smaller ensemble, along with his take on jazz standards combined with the African-infused textures of his homeland.  From references to Brubeck, Ellington and Zawinul, Chucho demonstrated why he is regarded as one of the most compelling musicians of any generation as he paid tribute to these and other musical masters.  And for those of us die-hard Irakere fans, we were treated to familiar repertoire in a different light, while we got to revel in the largely acoustic format of this smaller incarnation.  In fact, the first several numbers featured Chucho and rhythm section only, minus any horns and vocals[…]”

Watch a video of the making of the CD and sample one of the tracks of the album here while reading the All About Jazz review.

How about that?  Cool, eh?

Monty Alexander’s “Harlem-Kingston Express”: next stop, New York

Jamaica

The ‘Harlem-Kingston Express‘ rolled into the Allen Room housed in the Frederick P. Rose Hall on October 2 and October 3.  At the wheel was Jamaica’s piano great, Monty Alexander.  The Express was scheduled for two shows on each night at the Broadway, New York location of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Remember ‘Lords of the West Indies‘ from 2008?  That was the sold out show that prompted the JaLC to recall Alexander for a repeat performance of his blend of Jamaican folk rhythms with Classic Modern Jazz using the double-band concept, which Alexander described for himself as “everything from the jungle to the bush.”

As for the double-band, there was the Jamaican reggae side in Glen Brown (bass), Wayne Armond (guitar), Carl Wright (drums), Carlton James (vocals, banjo) and Miss Matty Lou (folklorist) and the Modern Jazz side, Herlin Riley (drums) and Hassan Shakur (bass).  Cohering the halves was Trinidadian trumpeter Etienne Charles, and trombonist Clifton Anderson and Charles Dougherty (tenor saxophone).  Together, they connected Harry Belafonte to Bob Marley in one fell swoop.  (Source: jalc.org)

PanJazz 2008 Father’s Day Weekend concert, Lincoln Center, New York

Frederick P. Rose Hall at the Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York comes to life yet again this very evening of June 14, 2008 with the annual Steelpan Jazz Concert produced by Abstract Entertainment.  This evening’s concert, sponsored in part by the British Virgin Island’s Tourist Board, marks another first for AE, which has scored a coup in putting pannists Andy Narell, Garvin Blake, Rudy Smith and Robert Greenidge on the same stage and at the same time with master percussionist Ralph McDonald.

Narell is featuring calypso ambassador “Lord Relator” with his acoustic band.  The Caribbean All Stars will have pannist Rudy ‘Two Left’ Smith and MacDonald up front and center.  And Blake, a cutting-edge pannist from New York has the celebrated Vincentian composer, arranger and keyboardist Frankie McIntosh and a world cast of musicians with him as part of the Garvin Blake Quartet.

The line-up for this event includes Barbadians Arturo Tappin (saxophone) and Nicholas Brancker (bass) and Trinidadian trumpeter Etienne Charles.

The Pan Jazz Concert is a celebration of the Caribbean American Heritage this month of June.  Pan Jazz aficionados will revel with the 21st Century Band’s Caribbean Jazz Summit through Sunday, June 15 as they have since June 10.  The Century Band plays two sets nightly, at 07:30 p.m. and 09:30 p.m. 

21st Century Band is led by the United States Virgin Islands’ Ron Blake (sax) and Dion Parsons (drums, percussions).  They have drawn into their ranks pianist Carlton Holmes, a friend of Caribbean Jazz who works with young Anguillian students of Jazz; Cuban bassist Yunior Terry, brother of saxophonist Yosvany Terry who has been reviewed here; and panman Victor Provost.

After-hours jams will be anchored by Haiti’s Mozayik at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola at JLC.  Mozayik describes themselves on their website as proponents of “traditional Afro-Haitian rhythms (blended) with the instrumentation, melodic-harmonic sensibilities and improvisation of Jazz (under the influence of) Cuban and Brazilian Jazz…classical…gospel and funk.”     

Showtime for the Steelpan Jazz Concert is at 07:30 p.m. with a pre-concert reception at 05:30. 

After Hours jam with Mozayik is from 12:30 tonight as has been the case from June 10.