Trumpet innovator and virtuoso Marco Blaauw will be giving a two hour workshop at NYU on Saturday, July 20th, 2013 from 11am-1pm at Frederick Loewe Theatre, 35 West 4th Street, NYC. Sponsored in part by Analog arts.

Marco Blaauw is starring in a musikFabrik’s production of Michael’s Journey Around the World at Lincoln Center Festival from July 18th-20th.

“Sometimes music vibrates beyond the clouds, and we can no longer hear its echo,” wrote Karlheinz Stockhausen. “Very rarely is it truly infinite; then it makes us forget the earth.” Avery Fisher Hall is set to be transformed in the overdue American premiere of this seminal instrumental opera by 20th-century musical visionary Karlheinz Stockhausen in a production from the Wiener Taschenoper. A rich fabric of clarinets, trombones, violins, and percussion, marked by a truly exceptional trumpet concerto, gives life to the beautifully illuminated cosmos of director Carlus Padrissa’s celestial, state-of-the-art staging. Michaels Reise um die Erde (“Michael’s Journey Around the World”) is the second act of his opera Donnerstag (“Thursday”), part of his monumental career-capping seven-opera cycle titled Licht, only portions of which have ever been produced. The musicians of Cologne-based Ensemble musikFabrik, whose Stockhausen recordings have been received worldwide to broad critical acclaim, provide the propulsive sonic background of this unforgettable event.

“Everything I do has a touch of melancholy and a touch of chaos to it. I write sad songs and then I get the musicians destroy them” – Kenny Wheeler, interviewed on BBC Radio 4, 2010

Kenny Wheeler: Master of Melancholy Chaos
16th April 2013 to 5th April 2014 

A new exhibition at the Royal Academy of Music, London turns the spotlight on the quiet genius of a much-loved jazz trumpeter and composer, Kenny Wheeler.

Now 83 years old, Wheeler remains one of the most enigmatic and original jazz voices in the world. His career spans an extraordinary breadth of styles and historical events – a titan of the European Free Jazz movement, a long-standing member of John Dankworth’s Big Band and the composer of some of the most hauntingly beautiful compositions in the genre.

Tracing Wheeler’s varied career via seven milestone albums, the exhibition draws on many previously unseen items from his musical archive acquired by the Academy in 2012. Handwritten sketches and scores illuminate his creative process, from his very early arrangement of the jazz standard ‘Stella by Starlight’ to manuscripts from his latest big band offering ‘The Long Waiting’, among many other unique exhibits.

The displays are also enriched by unprecedented access to Wheeler’s personal memorabilia and recordings of recent interviews with him. Together these give glimpses of his famously self-deprecating personality, his wry and quick wit, and his quietly determined musical ambitions. Visitors to the exhibition will have a unique opportunity to see a letter from a nineteen-year-old Wheeler seeking work experience, hear about the children’s television programme that inspired his first album, and see one of the few remaining flugelhorns that Wheeler has not damaged or given away!

Wheeler enjoys huge and heartfelt acclaim from his many friends and collaborators in the jazz world. This exhibition is complemented by an exclusive video featuring behind the scenes footage of his latest Big Band recording session, and new interviews with singer Norma Winstone, saxophonist Evan Parker and trumpeter Dave Douglas recounting their musical memories both old and new.

Follow this link for a selection of images from the exhibition.

A lively events programme of performances, talks and family events accompanies the exhibition:

Family Play Day: Gnu Jazz!
Saturday 25th May, 11.00am–12.30pm
Museum Piano Gallery

Kenny Wheeler, Norma Winstone and London Vocal Project: ‘Mirrors’ album launch 
Pre-Concert talk by Pete Churchill, Academy professor of Jazz Composition
Saturday 25th May, 7.00pm and 8.0pm
Kings Place

Friends of Kenny Wheeler in conversation with Alyn Shipton 
Thursday 13th June, 6.00pm
Concert Room

Since its beginning in 2003, FONT has focused on the trumpet player and the realization of his or her creative vision, even when that vision is unconventional, experimental or out of the cultural mainstream. FONT continues to support bold and unique work by emerging and established trumpeters, and after ten years the festival is as vital as it ever was and its best years are yet to come.

Our Achievements

With an all-volunteer board and staff primarily of artists, The Festival of New Trumpet Music has done some amazing things:

• FONT has produced ten festivals and off-season events including concerts, panel discussions and workshops.
  Overall, FONT has produced over 300 concerts and engaged over 200 artists.
• FONT’s annual Award of Recognition has honored creative pioneers and revolutionary teachers who have
  made remarkable contributions to the field over their lives, often without receiving any recognition ever before.
• FONT has commissioned 28 composers to create new work for the trumpet, some of them established masters
  and others that had never received a commission before.

What Makes Us Unique

As a festival focused on an instrument, rather than a genre, FONT has been able to achieve a flexibility and diversity in its programming that is rare in the music world. With an equally strong tradition of great players working in the jazz and classical traditions, the instrument has had a rare history as a major part of music made in concert halls, nightclubs, dancehalls, and in the recording studios of the United States and all over the world. It has been FONT’s goal to celebrate this aspect of the instrument by creating multi-genre programs featuring trumpeters working from the broadest possible spectrum of technical and aesthetic viewpoints.

FONT has also made a real commitment to celebrating not only the instrument, but the player as well. The Festival attempts break down racial and gender barriers in the music world by supporting women and people of color in its concerts and commissions, and to bring together well-known trumpeters in the primes of their careers with emerging artists. Our audience has responded to these efforts, and a community of listeners with similar diversity have shown its support for the festival over its history.

FONT’s Lifetime Achievement Award honors creative pioneers and veterans of the instrument who have made significant contributions to the field. In a world where recognition is rare for most musicians, FONT attempts to seek out some of the most significant trumpeters who have inspired entire generations of players and to give them a platform to continue their creativity through the later stages of their careers. By embracing an entire field of musicians, FONT has helped to nurture what is now an incredibly vibrant trumpet music scene.

Plans for the Future

The 2012 festival delivered on its promise to continue the excellent, genre-breaking programming for which FONT has become known. We opened the 10th Anniversary with Stephanie Richards’ Carousel Music, featuring 12 brass players performing new music by Richards at Jane’s Carousel at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Carousel Music was FONT’s first-ever outdoor, free event in a public space. The festival also included concerts by Dave Douglas, Taylor Ho Bynum, Douglas Detrick, Rob Mazurek, Adam O’Farrill, CJ Camerieri, and more. The fall festival was the centerpiece of FONT’s work in 2012, but efforts are already underway to expand FONT into a bigger and better organization.

FONT is working to expand its organizational resources. Recent new projects include the Villagers and Trumpet concert series, a partnership with the Village Zendo and co-curated by Aaron Shragge and Douglas Detrick. FONT also plans a mentorship program, an expanded offering of collaborative artist services and more vigorous fundraising in order to expand FONT’s capacity to bring more music to audiences in New York and elsewhere.

See you in 2013!

“Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus” is one of the recordings that changed my life. That 1960 album combined the technical virtuosity of bebop, the raw expressiveness of the blues, and the exploratory wonder of the nascent free jazz scene into one potent mix. I was in college when I first heard the record, and was leading a quartet with the same instrumentation (trumpet, alto sax, bass, and drums). It was both slightly devastating and deeply inspiring to realize everything I wanted to accomplish musically at the time had been done to near perfection thirty-five years earlier.

Trumpeter Ted Curson, the last surviving member of that quartet (with Eric Dolphy on reeds and Danny Richmond on drums, alongside the leader’s propulsive bass), passed away November 4th at the age of 77. Most remembrances (this one included) will start with his time with Mingus; too many will end there. Curson sometimes bristled at being identified only with Mingus, it was only one year of a six decade career. At the same time, he was part of one of the music’s classic ensembles, and of that he remained justly proud. (One of jazz’s many ongoing tensions: an improvised music that fetishizes recordings, where the evolution of an artist may be ignored through the celebration of a fixed remnant of his/her past.)

Because it is not just what Mingus brought to Ted Curson, but what Ted Curson brought to Mingus (and all the other music he made). He first emerged during a period where everything was in flux, where the idiomatic boundaries were wholly permeable, and that aesthetic openness fueled his whole life. His playing displayed his Philadelphia roots in hard bop (where he grew up alongside Lee Morgan), while maintaining the flexibility to work with avant-gardists like Cecil Taylor and the New York Contemporary Five (where he and Don Cherry split duties in the trumpet chair). He co-led a criminally neglected small ensemble throughout the sixties with tenor saxophonist Bill Barron; that group combined harmonic sophistication with innovative structures and impassioned playing in a way that rendered irrelevant the binary arguments between form and freedom.

Like many jazz musicians, he found more work abroad and split his time between Europe and New York. He cultivated musical communities in different corners of the globe, from a 40-plus year residency at the annual Pori Jazz Festival in Finland, to an eight-year stint leading a late night jam session at the Blue Note club in New York City, mentoring scores of musicians along the way. (He also cultivated an impressive handlebar moustache in recent years, giving him the look of a mystic wizard.) The only time I saw him live was at one of those Blue Note jam sessions. I was too shy to try and sit in, I just sat in the corner and marveled at the personality of his playing, still fresh and still evolving, four decades after the recording that first etched him in history.

Interview with Jack Walrath

October 4, 2012 – See full festival schedule here.

By Stephanie Richards

Jack Walrath performs at Jazz Standard Thursday, October 4th, 2012. A veteran of the international jazz scene, Jack Walrath’s talents have been utilized by Charles Mingus, Ray Charles, Muhal Richard Abrams, Ricky Ford, Sam Rivers, Joe Morello, Charli Persip, Miles Davis, and Quincey Jones, among many others. He has appeared in films, TV and Radio both as a sideman and leader since 1965, and has released 22 albums as a leader. In addition he has appeared on countless albums with others (Mingus-14, Abrams-3,and others such as Persip, Davis, Lou Rawls, Richie Cole, Ricky Ford, the Jazz Tribe, Joe Lovano, the WDR Big Band, Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Gruntz to name a few).

_________

SR: You’ve called your brand new piece that you’ll play at Jazz Standard, a FONT commission, a work of “extended composition.” What do you mean by this?

Jack Walrath: What Mingus meant by “Extended Composition” was a composition that may have had different movements, tempi, etc.  “Extended Composition” was basically going beyond the mere song form which, except for Ellington, perhaps, was the rule of the day.

The piece is in five movements and the working title is “Life’s Times”

1) INCEPTION

2) INCULCATIONS

3) ROMANCE

4) PRUDENCE

5) (CODA) DO NOT GO GENTLY….

All I can say is that it is my stuff that I have discovered.  The movements are connected by “idee fixes”, if you will, threaded through all the movements.  I use my own harmonic techniques that were inspired by North African, Greek, and all kinds of music that I have studied and experienced in my travels.  One piece also uses harmonies of my own derivation that have nothing to do with II-V-I or chords built in thirds.  I also make up my own scales.  I don’t want it to sound like I threw in the kitchen sink, but as I write it, I notice that I have been invoking musical elements that I have experienced in my lifetime—even going back to when I was ten years old and met Louis Armstrong.  It seems to be shaping up as somewhat autobiographical, even though it wasn’t originally intended to be that way.  Of course, I can’t get away from the blues, so that is a major thread in the piece.  I like to play with intervals, so that is in there, and yes, you can dance to it!

I hope that I don’t sound pretentious, but I don’t know how to explain it any other way.  In some ways, it is also a tribute to my idols, who showed me that the most important lesson is not to be like them!

SR: How did you come upon choosing the players and instrumentation for this work?

JW: I try to keep a consistent personnel in my groups.  This is, of course, very hard these days.  The guys have either traveled, played or recorded with me fairly consistently for the last 4 or 5 years.  Victor is a sub, but we have played in many bands together.  The first time I played with Victor was in the mid-seventies.  This was also his first day in New York.

SR: Your performance history includes playing with many great musicians that tend to embrace the legacy and roots of jazz and blues while focusing on moving the direction of music forward, and your personal works suggest the same.  Can you tell me a little more about your outlook on furthering the direction of jazz and improvisation?

JW: I have always seen jazz as innovative.  Unfortunately, this has become harder to achieve with the demise of working/traveling/steady bands and the apprenticeship system.  Jazz “education” is also a culprit.  The “rules” and “dogmatism” has kept it back. It has gotten to the point that often school teachers think that they are the cats.  Once a “professor” asked me, “DID YOU EVER PLAY THE ARBAN’S BOOK?”, to which I answered, “HAVE YOU EVER APPEARED ON STAGE?”  I once heard a “teacher” ask Woody Shaw, “CAN YOU READ?”  He answered, ‘CAN YOU PLAY?”  What I find ludicrous is that cats are going back to school to be teachers and their “teachers” are grading them on things that they may have actually invented.  I offered to teach Mingus courses in several schools that had them and was either told the they had somebody that did that or I don’t qualify because I don’t have a degree!  When I went to Berklee there was no degree.  I had eight hours a day of music.  Nowadays, I meet people with Masters degrees that don’t know what I learned in the first four semesters.

As far as the future of the music and improvisation, jazz must be seen a relevant again as an art form and not just a craft.  These are conservative times and so many play it safe.  We have been vamping for over fifty years now.  Perhaps it is time to start evolving again.  There are a lot of chords, forms and melodies that still haven’t been discovered as yet.  Jazz will always be around because people play it for the same reason people write poetry.  Also, they are some people in this world that love instrumental music and we don’t need hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of electrical equipment to make our point.

In celebration of its 25th season, Meridian Arts Ensemble has released a live concert DVD of performances from 1997 (Germany) and 2004 (Washington DC). The DVD demonstrates the groups’s breadth of repertoire and performance versatility with music from Renaissance to Rock.

Check it out here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/meridinartsensemble