Jazz 88.3 KCCK-FM

01/28/2025

01/28/2025

Culture Crawl 1023 “I Say O-DAY-see-us, You say O-DEE-see-us”

Riverside Theatre opens January 30 with “The Cure At Troy” by Seamus Heaney, directed by Adam Knight. In the studio before opening night we have Aaron Stonerook (Odysseus), Adam Knight (director), and Tim Budd (Philoctetes) to tell us a little bit about bringing this old tale into a fresh light.

Shows run January 30 through February 9. Tickets and more info can be found at riversidetheatre.org.

Subscribe to The Culture Crawl at kcck.org/culture or search "Culture Crawl" in your favorite podcast player. Listen Live at 10:30am most weekdays on Iowa's Jazz station. 88.3 FM or kcck.org/listen.

01/28/2025

HAPPY 38th BIRTHDAY to Eldar Djangirov!!!

Eldar Djangirov (born January 28, 1987), also known as Eldar, is an American jazz pianist. He was born in Bishkek, Kyrgyz SSR, Soviet Union to Tatiana, a piano teacher, and Emil, a professor of mechanical engineering, and is of Volga Tatar and Russian descent. He grew up in Kansas City, MO from the age of 10 and also lived in San Diego, California during his teenage years. As of 2007, he resides in New York City.

Career
Eldar began playing the piano when he was three years old. The first piece he remembers learning was "C Jam Blues". He later took classical lessons and was "discovered" at age 9 by the late New York City jazz aficionado Charles McWhorter, who saw him play at a festival in Siberia. The family relocated to Kansas City, drawn there in large part by the city's jazz history. During his Kansas City years, even before reaching his teens, Eldar already started building a reputation as a child prodigy, appearing on Marian McPartland's NPR show, Piano Jazz, when he was only 12 years old, being the youngest performer to appear on her show. Eldar attended Interlochen Center for the Arts in his young teenage years. Eldar attended St. Elizabeth's grade school and the Barstow School in Kansas City. Eventually, the family moved to San Diego where he attended the Francis W. Parker School (San Diego), and then to the Los Angeles area where he attended University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music. Eldar's playing style is characterized by prodigious technique and musicality. Downbeat noted in a review by Bob Doerschuk: "his command of the instrument is beyond staggering." He was signed to Sony Music at 18 and released 5 albums. His album, "Re-imagination," was nominated for a GRAMMY. Eldar has extensively toured throughout Europe, Asia and North America.

Eldar has been variously compared to Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock and more; yet he also seems to absorb harmonic expansiveness from McCoy Tyner and at times the lyrical sensitivity from Bill Evans. Eldar performed at Grammy Awards telecast and was honored the first time in many years as a jazz artist. Eldar has also been seen on Conan O'Brien, CBS Saturday Early Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live and CBS Sunday Morning.

Source: Wikipedia

01/28/2025

HAPPY 66th BIRTHDAY to Bill Ware!!!

An accomplished, vibraphonist, composer, bassist and producer, Bill Ware studied classical marimba at Montclair State University and jazz at the Harlem Jazzmobile Workshop under the tutelage of Barry Harris. In 1987, he joined the Jazz Passengers, the New York City avant-garde jazz septet founded by saxophonist Roy Nathanson and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, featuring guitarist Marc Ribot, and performances with vocalists Deborah Harry, Mavis Staples, Elvis Costello, Jimmy Scott, Cuba Gooding, Bob Dorough and others.

Ware’s trio, Vibes, which began as house band of the Knitting Factory’s ‘Late-Night Hang’, for which Ware’s vibes playing was lauded by All About Jazz as brandishing “…the touch of a resilient, serpentine stylist, a master of quiet spectacle.” In the 1990’s Ware’s Club Bird All-Stars held a three-month residency at Club Bird in Yokohama, Japan, and later perform widely and record the album Long & Skinny which remains a classic of the genre. Bill also delved into the burgeoning acid jazz scene as an original member of Groove Collective, the seminal acid jazz band dominating the Giant Steps scene in New York City. While with, Groove Collective, Ware was ‘discovered’ by renowned Steely Dan producer Gary Katz who introduced Bill to Steely Dan, and from 1993-95, Ware toured with the Dan for its first live dates in a generation, recording the album Alive in America along the way.

Ware’s own projects in the new millennium include his Y2K Quartet which recorded Keeping Up with the Jones, also recording the Duke Ellington tribute Sir Duke as a duo with Marc Ribot. Bill also formed the band Groove Thing, with saxophonist Jay Rodriguez from Groove Collective and featuring Debby Harry in two albums including The Adventure, and This is No Time. Ware went on to independently produce Deborah Harry and continue to take the helm for his own studio projects including for his full electric band.

As a sideman, Ware joined Bobby Previte’s New Bump Quartet and among many other collaborations, Ware recorded two albums as a member of the Rez Abbasi Acoustic Quartet, whose debut release Natural Selection earned four stars in Downbeat, among other accolades. After thrilling audiences at the 2010 Newport Jazz Festival, the Quartet embarked on international tours and later released their second album, Intents and Purposes in 2015. In 2018, Ware was invited by renowned bassist and composer, Mickey Bass, to join his New York Powerhouse Ensemble, a bebop sextet playing all Bass originals where Bill enjoys the supporting chordal role.

Beyond performance, Bill has made important inroads as a composer in both contemporary classical music and film scoring. His orchestral adventures began with a request for orchestrations of the Deborah Harry – Jazz Passengers songbook for performances with orchestra. He has also composed three classical symphonies, multiple concerti, numerous soundtracks and other works, including several hybrid classical/jazz projects of various iconic classical works by way of Ware’s jazz orchestrations in collaboration with cellist, Sara Wollan.

Ware’s film compositions, alone and in collaboration with Roy Nathanson, include scores to Martin and Orloff, Raising Victor Vargas, Undefeated, Excess Baggage, Singularity, and Hal Wilner’s A Tribute to Harold Arlen. He also arranged the Jazz Passengers’ music for their live performances set to the Universal cult classic, the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

In 2019, Bill moved to the Hudson Valley, New York and began shifting his focus towards film scoring once again. He composed an original score for the animated German, silent film by Charlotte “Lotte” Reiniger, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) and in 2021 he composed and created a new original score for The Spanish Dancer (1923), a costume drama set in the Spanish court of King Philip the Fourth starring Pola Negri, commissioned by Milestone Films and the Eye FilmMuseum, released on BluRay in 2023.

In 2024, Bill took his Club Bird All-Stars into Van Gelder Recording Studio to record new compositions inspired in part by Bill’s film score work from the Covid-19 Pandemic. The newest iteration of the Club Bird All-Stars features guitarist Rez Abbasi, with Matt King on piano, Jay Anderson on bass, and Taru Alexander on drums.

Source: Malletech

01/28/2025

HAPPY 77th BIRTHDAY to Bob Moses!!!

A fine drummer, Bob Moses has received his strongest recognition as a colorful and adventurous arranger/composer for large ensembles. He played as a teenager with Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1964- 1965), formed the early fusion group Free Spirits with Larry Coryell (1966), and toured with Gary Burton's quartet (1967-1969).

Moses collaborated with Dave Liebman in the trio Open Sky, recorded with Gary Burton in the mid- '70s, and worked with Jack DeJohnette's Compost, Pat Metheny (recording Bright Size Life), Mike Gibbs, Hal Galper, Gil Goldstein, Steve Swallow, the Steve Kuhn/Sheila Jordan group (1979-1982), George Gruntz's Concert Jazz Band, and Emily Remler (1983-1984).

He recorded as a composer for his own Mozown label in 1975, but Moses' reputation as a writer rests primarily with his Gramavision releases, especially When Elephants Dream of Music (1982), Visit With the Great Spirit (1983), and 1994's Time Stood Still. Nishoma was issued in fall 2000.

"Everything I do, I want to swing. I think music needs to swing no matter how abstract it gets. In fact, the more abstract, the more intellectual it gets, the more it needs to swing because that's the balancing factor." -Bob Moses

Bob Moses began playing drums at the age of ten and was composing music by the time he was fourteen. His father, Richard Moses, was a press agent for various jazz artists including Charles Mingus, Max Roacch and Rashaan Roland Kirk. He first sat in with Mingus when he was about 12 and in 1964 began playing drums on two of Roland Kirk's albums. Soon after he became an important part of the 1960s new jazz scene, playing in groups with guitarist Larry Coryell and later, in 1968 with the ground breaking Gary Burton quartet.

After touring with famed drummer Jack DeJohnette, and saxophonist Harold Vick in 1973, he went on to play with the Mike Gibbs orchestra in 1974 and rejoined Gary Burton's group in 1974. In 1975 he recorded the brilliant trio album Bright Size Life with Pat Metheny and the late Jaco Pastorious. He also started his own record label, Mozown Records, and released Bittersuite in The Ozone and the critically acclaimed albums, When Elephants Dream of Music (1982) and Visit With The Great Spirit (1983). These two albums firmly established Moses as a highly original composer and orchestrator in addition to his percussion prowess.

The author of the drum method book Drum Wisdom, Moses performs alongside John Lockwood, Damon Smith, Jaap Blonk, Don Pate, and John Medeski with guitarist Tisziji Muñoz.

Currently an instructor at the New England Conservatory of Music, Moses continues to be regarded as one of the most original and daring modern jazz musicians. His influences range from the early masters, Ellington, Monk and Miles Davis, to ethnic sources from Africa and Latin America. Often playing with special sticks and custom drums, Moses pays as much attention to his sound and tone as he does to the rhythm.

Source: All About Jazz; photo by RaKalam

01/28/2025

HAPPY 76th BIRTHDAY to Robert Wyatt!!!

An enduring figure who came to prominence in the early days of the English art rock scene, Robert Wyatt has produced a significant body of work, both as the original drummer for art rockers Soft Machine and as a radical political singer/songwriter. Born in Bristol, England, Wyatt came to Soft Machine during the exciting, slightly post-psychedelic Canterbury Scene of the mid-'60s that produced bands like Gong and Pink Floyd. Unlike many of the art rock bands that would come later (Jethro Tull, Yes, King Crimson), Soft Machine eschewed bloated theatrical excess, preferring a standard rock format that interpolated jazz riffing, extended soloing, and some forays into experimental noise. Wyatt, then Soft Machine's drummer, left the band during its initial wave of popularity. His solo career was built less around his abilities as a percussionist and more around his frail tenor voice, capable of breaking hearts with its falsetto range.

The End of an Ear
It was not long after his first solo release, End of an Ear, that Wyatt fell from an open window during a party, fracturing his back and permanently paralyzing him from the waist down. After months of painful recuperation, Wyatt reemerged with the harrowing Rock Bottom (1974) and the bizarre Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (1975), the former dealing explicitly with his post-accident life, the latter a series of surreal fables. And while the music on these records is trance-like and experimental, Wyatt shockingly recorded a straight version of the Monkees' "I'm a Believer" in 1974 that became a big British hit. Controversy ensued when the BBC's long-running weekly pop music program Top of the Pops refused to allow Wyatt to perform the song in his wheelchair. After a significant protest played out in the music trade papers, Wyatt did perform.

Despite his success, Wyatt remained quiet for much of the rest of the decade, breaking his silence during the punk era with a handful of singles recorded for the great English indie label Rough Trade. Again, going against audience expectations, he recorded a beautiful version of Chic's "At Last I Am Free." This signaled the start of a full-fledged career renaissance that included numerous albums and artists such as Elvis Costello writing songs for him. His albums were lush, at times almost meditative, and Wyatt's voice -- clear, emotionally charged, and always on the verge of breaking -- brought great depth and soul to songs that, if recorded by a lesser artist, would have sounded terse and tired.

Shleep
Always on the political left, Wyatt's radicalism increased exponentially during Margaret Thatcher's years as prime minister, as he maintained an unwavering support for Communism even as glasnost was nigh. Wyatt has comfortably worked in and out of the music business. He records when he feels like it, paints, writes, devotes time to political work, and continues to show no interest in the machinations of the music industry. He resumed recording with 1997's Shleep, for Thirsty Ear, and resumed his non-music-making activities such as painting, while supervising the remastering and reissue of his '80s catalog. In 2003, Wyatt returned to recording and released Cuckooland, a musically ambitious, loosely conceptual project that saw him collaborating with a large group of players including Annie Whitehead, Brian Eno, Gilad Atzmon, David Gilmour, Tomo Hayakawa, Karen Mantler, Phil Manzanera, and Paul Weller.

Comicopera
In 2007, Wyatt signed with the independent Domino imprint and released Comicopera, again with a large group, but whose core group included Anja Garbarek, Orphy Robinson, Yaron Stavi, Mônica Vasconcelos, Atzmon, Chucho Merchán, Maurizio Camardi, and Alfonso Santimone, with Paul Weller once more guesting; songwriting contributions came from Wyatt's companion, poet Alfie Benge, Garbarek, and Eno. After a three-year hiatus from recording, he cut ...For the Ghosts Within, also for Domino -- with the Sigamos String Quartet led by Rod Stephens, and Atzmon. It was released in 2010.

'68
In 2013, Cuneiform Records issued '68, a four-song set of Wyatt tracks that included two demos that had never been heard before with two other pieces that were later appended to appear on official recordings.

Wyatt's official biography, Different Every Time, written by Marcus O'Dair, was published by Serpent's Tail in October of 2014. As a companion, Domino issued a double compilation of the same name. The first was a handpicked selection by Wyatt of tracks with Soft Machine, Matching Mole, and from his solo albums, while the second featured his favorite collaborations. It was released in November.

Source: John Dougan, All Music Guide

01/28/2025

Once rock’n’roll reared up behind it in the early 1950s, jazz rarely found itself in the pop charts again. And when it did, it was hardly ever for the characteristic instrumental sound of jazz itself, but for a clever melody that was just too catchy to miss – such as Dave Brubeck’s and Paul Desmond’s Take Five (1961) or the guitarist Ronny Jordan’s 1992 funk remake of Miles Davis’s So What.

But one of the most unexpected pop hits by a jazz musician owed as much to its uniquely jazzy sound as to a melody people could hum in the bus queue. That was the West Country clarinettist Acker Bilk’s slow ballad Stranger on the Shore, which topped the charts in 1962.

Acker Bilk (28 January 1929 – 2 November 2014) turned up on television pop shows, imperturbably at ease with his goatee, waistcoat and bowler hat amid the quiffed teen rockers, and bridged two worlds that were then still close enough to be crossed – the youngish audience for trad jazz, and the teenage fans living in a pop climate in which skiffle, swing and primitive rock still clearly had a common ancestry.

But if Bilk’s hit was possible because a late-50s trad jazz revival was still running in parallel with rock-driven pop, it bore little resemblance to the successful records being made by his contemporaries Kenny Ball and Chris Barber, with their tight and effervescent music for jiving, or, in Barber’s case, a hybrid of traditional jazz with a powerful shot of rhythm and blues in it.

The strings-backed melody of Stranger on the Shore was romantic and dreamy, like drifting in a boat on the sea, but the appeal of the record really lay in Bilk’s delicate, vibrato-shimmering mid-register clarinet sound. It sounded tender, generous, luxuriously relaxed, and it reached out to so many jazz and non-jazz listeners alike as to make Bilk the hottest commercial property of the British trad jazz movement. He called Stranger on the Shore his “old age pension”.

Bilk’s career began with a much more fundamentalist approach to the preservation of early jazz styles, playing a much harsher and more rugged-sounding clarinet in the revivalist band of the trumpeter Ken Colyer, which rigorously devoted itself to the pre-20s New Orleans ensemble style, with its emphasis on collective improvisation and discouragement of soloists’ bravura. But though Colyer’s highly authentic music appealed to buffs, Bilk was a showman with an instinct for popular appeal.

Born Bernard Bilk in Pensford, Somerset, he was encouraged by his parents, William and Lillian, to learn the piano as a child, but preferred football and boxing. He took up the clarinet while on national service with the Royal Engineers in Egypt. He acquired the nickname Acker (north Somerset slang for “friend”), and on his discharge in 1950 worked at the Wills to***co factory in Bristol, formed his own band, and moved briefly to London with his wife, Jean, to join Colyer in 1954.

The change did not suit him, however, and he returned west to open a jazz club in Bristol – the Paramount – and founded his own Paramount Jazz Band. Bilk returned to London in 1957 as the trad boom swelled, toured Germany, and made his first recordings as a leader. In 1960, he reached No 8 in the UK charts with Summer Set, a theme inspired by his home county and co-written with the pianist Dave Collett.

On the road, the Paramount Jazz Band delivered a raw and bracing repertoire of blues and ragtime, but as the skiffle and trad jazz boom accelerated in Britain, the publicist Peter Leslie spotted Bilk’s potential and gave the band its trademark uniform of Edwardian clothes and bowler hats.

A series of hits for Bilk and the band followed, culminating in the clarinet-and-strings combination Stranger on the Shore. Bilk had originally written the tune for his daughter, Jenny, and the disc was to sell over 2m copies and become the theme music to a television drama series of the same name. Within two years, the Beatles were to transform pop music in Britain, and the jazz bands retreated to the devoted attentions of a niche audience. But Bilk, ever adaptable, transformed himself into a cabaret artist, developing enthusiastic audiences across Europe, though he took care to keep up with his jazz. In 1962, he played a Royal Command Performance and toured the US.

Bilk revealed that he was more open to later jazz styles than he seemed. In 1968 he recorded the album Blue Acker with such British bebop luminaries as Stan Tracey and Kenny Wheeler, and the following year he was in an A-list of soloists including the modern saxophonists Joe Harriott and Don Rendell on Tracey’s We Love You Madly album, dedicated to Duke Ellington. Lake Records reissued both albums as a compilation in 2005.

In the following decade, Bilk continued to record regularly, often repeating the evocative Stranger formula, setting his haunting clarinet sound against a string orchestra – he even had another hit in 1976, with Aria. The Paramount Jazz Band’s lineup stayed remarkably consistent, and the version that included the trumpeter Mike Cotton and the trombonist/vocalist Campbell Burnap lasted into the 90s, when Bilk cut back on playing to concentrate on a less strenuous long-time enthusiasm, for painting.

But he continued to record, in amiable rambles through timeless material with like-minded partners, including his fellow clarinettist Wally Fawkes. He emerged from throat cancer treatment in 2000, was appointed MBE in 2001 and showed that he could still turn it on in live performance well into his 80s.

Bilk’s trad reunions with Barber and Ball, such as the 2009 appearance at London’s IndigO2, confirmed that his deep, honeyed sound still flowed and his deadpan gags retained their flawless timing, even if he might rather wearily don the famous bowler hat for the inevitable Stranger on the Shore.

Source: John Fordham, The Guardian

01/28/2025

Tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott (28 January 1927 – 23 December 1996) looms among the towering figures of Britain's postwar jazz scene, exerting equal influence as a performer and as the owner of the world-famous club bearing his name.

He was born Ronald Schatt in the east end of London on January 28, 1927 -- his father, dance band saxophonist Jock Scott, separated from his mother shortly after his birth. After first purchasing a cornet from a local junk shop, Scott then moved to the soprano saxophone, finally settling on the tenor sax during his teens; at a local youth club he began performing with aspiring drummer Tony Crombie, and soon began playing the occasional professional gig. After backing bandleader Carlo Krahmer, Scott toured with trumpeter Johnny Claes in 1945, joining the hugely popular Ted Heath Big Band the following year; however, changing economics made the big bands increasingly unfeasible, and as the nascent bebop sound developing across the Atlantic began making its way to the U.K., he and Crombie traveled to New York City to explore the source firsthand. Scott would regularly return to New York after signing on to play alongside alto saxophonist Johnny Dankworth on the transatlantic ocean liner the Queen Mary.

Despite his travels Scott remained a linchpin of the growing London bop scene, and in late 1948 he co-founded Club Eleven, the first U.K. club devoted to modern jazz. During this time he developed the lyrical but harmonically complex style that would remain the hallmark of his career, first backing drummer Jack Parnell before finally forming his own band in 1953. The nine-piece group made its public debut in conjunction with a London appearance by Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic touring r***e -- working from arrangements by trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar, the Scott band's debut proved a landmark moment in the history of British jazz, in many respects heralding the true starting point of the postwar era. Not all of Scott's instincts were sound -- in 1955, he briefly assembled a full-size big band, to disastrous creative and commercial results -- but when he officially dissolved the group in 1956, he was a household name throughout Britain. In 1957 he co-founded the Jazz Couriers with fellow tenor saxophonist Tubby Hayes, scaling to even greater heights of fame. The Jazz Couriers amicably split in 1959.

Around this time Scott began to again entertain the notion of a London-based jazz club in the tradition of the landmarks dotting New York's 52nd Street -- along with Pete King, a longtime collaborator who'd recently retired from active performing, he borrowed the money necessary to lease the building at 39 Gerrard Street and on October 31, 1959 opened Ronnie Scott's Club for business. Scott himself co-headlined the opening night along with Hayes and Parnell -- sales were promising, but the venue only began reaching true critical mass in 1961 when it hosted its first American act, Scott favorite Zoot Sims. In the months to follow, Ronnie Scott's was the setting of performances by a who's who of American tenor icons including Dexter Gordon, Roland Kirk, Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt, Ben Webster, and Sonny Rollins. In late 1965 the club moved to its present location on Frith Street, where before the end of the decade it would host everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Albert Ayler, becoming the epicenter of London's jazz community. Although the club consumed much of his time, Scott continued touring with a quartet featuring pianist Stan Tracey -- during the late 1960s, he also spearheaded an eight-piece group with whom he created the most idiosyncratic and experimental music of his career. At the time of Scott's death on December 23, 1996, his namesake club was perhaps the most famous jazz venue in all of Europe.

Source: Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide

01/28/2025

One of the early pioneers of jazz, Big Eye Louis Nelson (January 28, 1885 – August 20, 1949) (no relation to trombonist Louis Nelson, although they sometimes played together) was an early inspiration for Johnny Dodds and Jimmie Noone and was for a period the teacher of Sidney Bechet. Born Louis Nelson DeLisle -- he eventually dropped his last name -- he played accordion, guitar, banjo, violin, and bass early on; he was mostly self-taught on clarinet other than some lessons from Lorenzo Tio, Sr. and Luis Tio in 1904.

One of the very first jazz clarinetists (as opposed to ones who merely played preplanned counter-melodies or stuck to reading music), Nelson performed with the who's-who of early jazz, including Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and Oscar Celestin. Nelson spent his early life in New Orleans, leaving for Chicago in 1916 to join Freddie Keppard and the Original Creole Orchestra but returning two years later. He was with many bands including the Imperial Orchestra, the Golden Rule Orchestra, the Imperial Band, the Superior Orchestra, and the Eagle Band. Nelson worked with John Robichaux's Orchestra (1918-1924) and Sidney Desvigne; from 1939-1949 he led his own group at Luthjen's.

Because he did not leave the South, Nelson did not record much. His career reached back to the beginnings of jazz but fortunately he was documented a bit in 1949, just a short time before his death. He is on the erratic 1940 Kid Rena sessions and was captured in 1949: twice in the studios for American Music (once under the leadership of Wooden Joe Nicholas) and on a live date at Luthjen's that year (which was not released until 1992). All of the 1949 sessions (except a few alternate takes) are included on the American Music CD Big Eye Louis Nelson DeLisle. Fortunately he is in pretty good form on these historic performances that are his recorded legacy.

Source: Scott Yanow, All Music Guide

01/28/2025

01/28/2025

01/28/2025

On 'Mode For Joe,' Joe Henderson delivers an exciting glimpse of the future while managing to keep one foot in the hard-bop past.

01/28/2025