Wes “Warm Daddy” Anderson at Tula’s Monday

Earshot Jazz Festival 2011 presented a special jazz lesson from soulful, searing alto saxophonist Wessell “Warm Daddy” Anderson, with Phill Sparks on bass, Bill Anschell, piano and D’Vonne Lewis, drums.

A former member of the Wynton Marsalis Septet and charter member of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, alto saxophonist Wessell “Warmdaddy” Anderson blends traditional jazz, some bebop and swinging sounds in a blues-inflected style that has drawn flattering comparisons to Cannonball Adderley. For over a decade and a half, he was part of Marsalis’ efforts at Jazz at Lincoln Center, but he left in 2006 to join the jazz faculty at Michigan State University.

“Always one of the most popular members of Jazz at Lincoln Center, many fans of the venerable institution were saddened to hear about Anderson’s stroke in 2007. Following the stroke, much of the left side of his body was numb, and many speculated as to whether he would play again. Musicians who knew Anderson well, however, were not surprised when he returned triumphantly to the bandstand after just a few months.”

“is 2010 return to a New York stage at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola was applauded by fans and critics alike. Nate Chinen, reviewing the outing in the New York Times, wrote: “And how did he sound? Excellent, unchanged. His mellow, sweet-tart tone was a physical presence, and he gave it plenty of air, often holding a note for a long stretch, then taking a breath and modulating to another one … In his alto style, there’s no chasm between the chivalrous croon of Johnny Hodges and the roguish charisma of Charlie Parker.”

“Born into a musical family in Brooklyn, Anderson played piano from an early age, starting to study classical music when he was 12. However, two years later he switched genres and instruments. His father, a drummer, had worked with Cecil Payne and directed his son towards jazz. Hearing records by Charlie Parker prompted the shift from piano to alto saxophone. Anderson studied with various teachers, including several he met through the Jazzmobile workshops.

“In 1983, he was heard by Branford Marsalis, who urged him to pursue his studies, this time under Alvin Batiste. Five years later, Anderson joined Wynton Marsalis’ band, touring internationally, with the corresponding gain in reputation and audience awareness that this brought about. Anderson, who also plays soprano and sopranino saxophones, has also worked with Betty Carter, Ted Nash, Marc Cary, Victor Goines and many others. For this concert, he is joined by Seattle’s top sidemen.”

]]> http://eyeshotphotos.com/2012/01/04/wessell-andersons-quartet/feed/ 0 http://eyeshotphotos.com/2011/12/05/bill-anschell-trio/ http://eyeshotphotos.com/2011/12/05/bill-anschell-trio/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 20:20:39 +0000 admin http://eyeshotphotos.com/?p=1213

Bill Anschell  at Tula’s in the last performance of the Earshot Jazz Festival.

Earshot Jazz Festival 2011 presented the Bill Anschell Trio as its last performance on Sunday Nov 9th. closing out the three week long annual festival.Nearly 10 years have passed since Seattle native Bill Anschell returned to the Emerald City after spending 25 years studying, composing and performing across the country and around the world. The pianist, composer and arranger has played and recorded with a host of jazz greats, including Floyd Standifer, Richard Davis, Ron Carter, Benny Golson, Nnenna Freelon and Russell Malone. In 2005, Anschell received the Golden Ear Award for Northwest Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year, and in 2006 his trio was named the Best Northwest Acoustic Jazz Ensemble. He will lead a festival close-out celebration with a standards trio for Seattle, featuring bassist Chris Symer and drummer Jose Martinez. The festivities also include food, drink, gratitude and good cheer.

Grace Kelly Quintet at Tula’s in the last week of the Earshot Jazz Festival.

Earshot Jazz Festival 2011 presented the 19-year-old jazz wonder, saxophonist/vocalist Grace Kelly  who “plays with intelligence, wit, and feeling,” says one of her many fans, Wynton Marsalis.

Just five years ago at the age of 14, Grace Kelly garnered the first of her ASCAP Foundation awards and landed an invitation to perform with the Boston Pops. Kelly met this challenge by writing her first full orchestral arrangement and performing it in Boston’s iconic Symphony Hall. Since then, she has garnered accolades for many of the artists she has grown up revering. She has already performed and recorded with the likes of Dave Brubeck, Phil Woods, Harry Connick Jr., Jamie Cullum, Frank Morgan, Esperanza Spalding, Chris Potter, Cedar Walton, James Cotton and Terri Lynn Carrington, among many others. Perhaps her most intensive connection has been with Lee Konitz, whom Kelly has studied with since age 13.

Lately acclaimed for her recordings of “gospel jazz,” she was joined by Jason Palmer (trumpet), Doug Johnson (piano), Evan Gregor (bass), and JordanPerlson (drums).

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Earshot Jazz Festival 2011 presented the energetic Seattle quartet Hardcoretet who performed originals drawn from jazz, rock, soul, and improvised music, inspired by fusion supergroups as well as modern jazz outfits like Chris Potter’s Underground and Kneebody. It featured Art Brown (alto sax), Aaron Otheim (keys), Tim Carey (bass), and Tarik Abouzied (drums).

With Art Brown on saxophone, Aaron Otheim on keys, Tim Carey on bass, and Tarik Abouzied on drums, Hardcoretet presents original material written by each of its members. Brown, Otheim, Carey and Abouzied have all worked on a variety of projects over the years, encompassing a broad range of genres and sounds. From the free jazz sounds of Speak to the funky rhythms of Pocket Change, each group including members of Hardcoretet has proved to be prolific in the Seattle Jazz scene. Hardcoetet members have performed both nationally and globally, and the band has shared the stage with heavy hitters such as Bill Frisell, Cuong Vu, Mike Stern, John Medeski, Bobby Previte, and Charlie Hunter.

Hardcoretet’s second album, Do It Live, to be released at Tula’s during this year’s festival, further propels Hardcoretet on their way to becoming one of Seattle’s most exciting and unique mixed-genre bands. Their debut album, Experiments in Vibe, released in 2009, started the group on that path with a nomination for Mixed Genre Album of the Year at Seattle’s Lucid I/O Awards.

Influenced by artists from Miles Davis and John Coltrane to Soundgarden and Led Zeppelin, Hardcoretet’s sound is an amalgam of the best aspects of many genres. Combining elements of jazz, rock, soul and improvised music, Hardcoretet’s sound is similar to that of fusion groups like Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters and Chick Corea’s Return to Forever. Simultaneously, their modern vibe has been likened to the works of Chris Potter’s Underground and Kneebody. Hardcoretet’s compositions, combined with their vibrant energy, make for a show not to be missed. – Abi Swanson, from the Earshot Jazz Festival schedule program

Earshot Jazz Festival 2011 presented Evan Flory-Barnes Acknowledgement of a Celebration at the Kirkland Performance Center and it was my second time to see and hear it. As a  reprise of the 2009 Earshot Golden Ear performance of the year, Evan brought back his Earshot- and Meet the Composer-commissioned work for large-ensemble fusion of jazz, hip-hop, and classical music with dancers and break-dancers. I was taken with how much fun he seemed to be having this time. Here are some pictures from the performance. ans some of the words from the Earshot Jazz program guide by Steve Griggs

Check out the Earshot Jazz Festival Schedule to see what’s next in the 2011 Festival lineup.

“Evan Flory-Barnes stands six foot three, in suit and tie, in front of a thirty-five member chamber orchestra at Seattle’s Town Hall. He scans the musicians. Left. Right. He rubs his palms together. No baton. He smiles broadly and adjusts his jacket. He glances down at the score. His head tips back. His eyes close. He whispers in a slow tempo, “One, two, three, four …” as he conducts with both hands, fingers gently closed. The count off is more like a jazz ensemble leader starting a familiar ballad than a conductor launching a symphony debut.”

“Violas and cellos sway back and forth in unison between two notes. A celeste chimes like an old fashioned clock. Glissandos rise from a harp. Dense chords drift in from wind instruments. An oboe moans. French horns herald an opening melody. Acknowledgement of a Celebration, a ten movement, fifty-five minute opus commissioned by Meet the Composer, rises into the air.”

“The commission for Celebration requires four public performances. It premiered November 8, 2009, at Town Hall and was restaged in 2010 at Benaroya Hall. Flory-Barnes’ alma mater, Garfield High School, is being considered for the final yet to be scheduled performance. We will let you know when it will be performed next.”

“Celebration combines rhythmic loops, orchestral instrumentation, and melodic improvisation to propel a group of male break dancers and female modern dancers in spontaneous choreography. In the second movement, dancers lie on the ground while an oboe and cello solo over a slow drum pulse and bowed chords. One by one, feet and legs rise, twist slow motion in the air, bodies upended on heads and hands. Another movement matches a break dancer with a modern dancer in a contact version of Brazilian capoeira. Yet another section has side-by-side break dancers hypnotically stepping in unison then breaking into solos.”

“The scale of this work transcends the leadership of a single artist. While Flory-Barnes cultivates a growing reputation as composer, collaborator and catalyst, violist Brianna Atwell handles personnel and logistics for Celebration. Dancer Emma Klein organizes the gravity defying sliding, tumbling and spinning performers. Ryan Price leads the technical direction for the Kirkland performance space.”

“The full title of the piece is Acknowledgment of a Celebration: Inheritance, Authenticity and Healing. Flory-Barnes explains the autobiographic title as the inner process to open one’s heart to life, family and self. This enables a compassionate, loving response to negativity. “My mother provided lessons of unconditional love and my father provided a way to practice those lessons.” Flory-Barnes father, a Vietnam veteran, struggled with substance abuse and died when his son was sixteen. “There were times I wanted to remove ‘Barnes’ from my last name,” he says.”

“Hints of the narrative arc in Celebration can be traced by the movement titles – Please Know This, A Boy’s Dream A Man’s Majesty, Dance of the Girl Obscured, The End of Old Days, Letting Go of What Isn’t Yours to Begin With, Marching Towards the Now, An Alarm Call to Presence, A Hero Driven by His Tears, Requiem for a Love Misunderstood, Return to a Home Unseen.”

“Chances to hear Flory-Barnes in the Pacific Northwest are becoming more precious as his career begins to take flight. Frequently on the road with Meklit Hadero, recent tours took him from Bumbershoot all the way to Kenya and Ethiopia. “Meklit’s music is deep and simple. We can stretch it and grow. She’s like Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, and Nora Jones – a modern song writer through an Ethiopian filter.” Deep throated, dark and musky vocals croon of flirty love and loss to catchy grooves.” – Steve Griggs Read more in the Earshot Jazz Festival Schedule

Near the end of the  performance,  Evan jumped down from the conductors podium and picked up a standup bass and dove into the music. After handing off the bass he moved stage center and joined in with the dancers.

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Emi Meyer and her Japan Trio performed at Tula’s as part of the 2011 Earshot Jazz Festival and I was taken aback with how wonderful she played and sang. The Kyoto-born, Seattle-raised pianist and vocalist, who won the Seattle-Kobe Jazz Vocalist Competition in 2007 and has topped Japanese jazz charts, appeared with Motoki Yamaguchi (drums) and Masanori Hattori (bass). In addition she had local guitarist MILO PETERSEN sit in and join them. Emi and Milo met last spring at a benefit performance raising funds for Japanese victims of the earthquake and hit it off.See the rest of the Earshot Jazz Festival Schedule

Born in Kyoto, Japan, and raised in Seattle, Emi Meyer’s culturally rich heritage has shaped the unique jazz-inspired pop sound heard on her three albums to date, including one recorded entirely in Japanese. Meyer began her musical career early in life, starting with classical piano at the age of 6 and eventually expanding to jazz “for the spontaneity it offered.”

It was her jazz background that paved the way for her win at the 2007 Seattle-Kobe Jazz Vocalist Competition – a contest between residents of Seattle and its sister city of Kobe, Japan. Following her win, Meyer had the first of many performances in Japan, where she has subsequently enjoyed a great deal of success, and she credits the competition with giving her the courage to ultimately pursue her musical ambitions. With the release of her first album, Curious Creature, Emi was invited to perform at the legendary Sundance Film Festival and shot to the very top of the Japanese jazz charts after her single “Room Blue” was chosen Single of the Week on iTunes.

She continues to evolve as an artist, and her latest work, Suitcase of Stones, is a refreshingly unique blend of jazz, pop and soul, using powerful lyrics carried effortlessly along by her signature melodies. The record was mixed and mastered by Husky Huskolds, who has worked with the likes of Norah Jones and Yael Naim. Japan Times praised Meyer’s performance on Suitcase of Stones, citing Meyer’s “gift for belting out warm, wistful songs with a hint of nostalgia.”

Fresh from a string of charity concerts to support the country that has given her so much, Meyer is joined for this Earshot Jazz Festival performance by Motoki Yamaguchi (drums) and Masanori Hattori (bass).It was her jazz background that paved the way for her win at the 2007 Seattle-Kobe Jazz Vocalist Competition – a contest between residents of Seattle and its sister city of Kobe, Japan. Following her win, Meyer had the first of many performances in Japan, where she has subsequently enjoyed a great deal of success, and she credits the competition with giving her the courage to ultimately pursue her musical ambitions. With the release of her first album, Curious Creature, Emi was invited to perform at the legendary Sundance Film Festival and shot to the very top of the Japanese jazz charts after her single “Room Blue” was chosen Single of the Week on iTunes.

Eric Vloeimans and his group Gatecrash, put on an amazing and mesmerizing performance at The Seattle Art Museum as the first week of the Earshot Jazz Festival opens. The stellar Dutchman’s Gatecrash chain-links lazy lounge, hard-core beats, spaced-out moods and Zappaesque meters.

Eric Vloeimans has joined the ranks of European jazzmen altering the art form with a mixture of dazzling skill and soaring imagination. Whether performing original compositions or making use of a wide variety of others’, he draws from a rich palette to achieve a distinctive personal style, at once sonically polished and stylistically daring. That, and also technically dazzling. Those attributes have won him numerous Dutch and European awards, including the prestigious Bird Award at the North Sea Jazz Festival and four Edison Awards for accomplishment in jazz performance and recording.

“He’s got the technical command you’d expect of a conservatory-trained virtuoso, and the kind of expressive potency that can only be learned on the improvising bandstand, but what’s most impressive about his music is that it’s so deliciously good-natured,” wrote Alex Varty of Vancouver’s Georgia Straight.

Vloeimans’ Gatecrash quartet is winning rave reviews for its “lush, exuberant melody,” and its “warm, plaintive, sometimes soaring, sometimes contemplative” sound – “one part jazz, one part late-19th-century Romanticism, with influences from the pampas of Argentina to the Portuguese coast.”

It derives those qualities from locked-in intuitive cooperation among its four members – Vloeimans, soundscapist Jeroen van Vliet on keyboards, Gulli Gudmundsson from Iceland on bass and effects, and emerging drum star Jasper van Hulten – all of whom inflect the band’s sound with surprise. Reviewers have cited Gatecrash’s “polished, sophisticated, under-the-radar music, exceptionally conceived and played,” and its leader’s “melodic style evocative of late-period Miles Davis.” The results are “breathable, seriously unpretentious, fun, beautiful, profound and just plain good” (All About Jazz).

– Peter Monaghan

Trio Commando made their public debut last noght at the chapel Performance Space opening up for Eric Barber, performing improvisations, excavations and conversations through a high powered trio configuration featuring Wayne Horvitz (piano), Samantha Boshnack(trumpets), and Beth Fleenor (clarinets/voice). Unexpected and brilliant set of music with exciting electronic and vocal intermixing.

Since arriving in Seattle in 1998, clarinetist/vocal percussionist/ composer Beth Fleenor has carved a place for herself as an energetic multi-instrumentalist and dynamic generative artist. Her robust sound, organic approach, and openness to experimentation in all forms, actively fuels a long and varied list of collaborations. Ranging from shows in nightclubs, festivals, schools and galleries, to prisons, parties and concert halls, Fleenor’s work has been featured in live music, theater, performance art, recordings, modern dance, film, sound art and art installations.

Samantha Boshnack has composed and performed with a plethora of Seattle-based musicians and groups since arriving from New York in 2003. The Bard College graduate uses a broad palette in her compositions, including jazz, rock, hip-hop, Balkan, and contemporary classical music influences. Her work has received acclaim from music critics around the world, and has received support from 4Culture, Jack Straw Productions, ASCAPlus, and the Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs.

Wayne Horvitz is a composer, pianist, electronic musician, and producer. He has toured widely, and has collaborated with musicians such as Bill Frisell, Butch Morris, John Zorn, Robin Holcomb, Fred Frith, Julian Priester, Michael Shrieve, Bobby Previte, Marty Ehrlich, William Parker, Ron Miles, Sara Schoenbeck, Peggy Lee, Briggan Krauss, and many others. A recipient of numerous commissions and awards, his various ensembles include The President, Pigpen, Zony Mash, The HMP Trio, The New York Composers Orchestra, The 4 Plus 1 Ensemble, Sweeter Than the Day and The Gravitas Quartet.

Presented by NONSEQUITUR, which supports a wide range of adventurous music and sound art through recordings, performances, and exhibitions since 1989. They currently sponsor the Wayward Music Series in the Chapel Performance Space at the historic Good Shepherd Center in the Wallingford neighborhood.

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I was blown away by Robert Glasper playing at Tula’s. Glasper’s music can be described as “experiments with space, rhythm and chord textures”, creating a vast array of sound. He has said that he tries to make the music flow in a way more like a hip-hop beat, trying to always leave the music open for someone to rap over.

Hailed as West Africa’s most exciting new talent, the singer/songwriter/guitarist from Mali, Rokia Traoré, with her eight-piece band, employs traditional song forms, her extraordinary voice, and instruments of Mali (n’goni, balafon, and kora), to express a bold, fresh outlook. In her songs of respect, traditions, and relationships, Traoré’s music and nuanced vocals are informed by her background in the Bamana people of the Upper Niger, and by her childhood travels as a diplomat’s daughter. She draws, then, from a broad palette of West African traditional and popular styles. As she has put it: “Tonalities that are foreign to my language call out to me, suggesting surprising melodies. Sometimes I pretend I’m a rocker singing in Bamanan! What’s important to me is to choose the right modulation with respect to the intensity of the note while preserving its delicacy, which gives all the colour to my singing.” Her rise to prominence has been rapid. In 1997, Ali Farka Toure heard her, and offered her guidance. In 1998 she recorded her first album, Mouneïssa, and by 2001 was awarded the Kora All Africa Music Award for Most Promising Female musician.