Over at Mostly Music, bassist Ronan Guilfoyle has some really insightful thoughts about the joys and challenges of the New York jazz scene, its impact on players there, and the repercussions on the US jazz scene as a whole of having such an overwhelming percentage of the country's best musicians in one place. Since I agree with pretty much all of it, I'm going to just present a big excerpt:

On the one hand there’s an extraordinary concentration of great musicians in a very small area, making for a hothouse creative atmosphere and an abundance of players on every instrument who play on a very high level... On the minus side it has to be said there are just far too many musicians in New York for it to make any sense on an economic level. ... The abundance and availability of musicians and the lack of places to play drives the price musicians can charge for NY gigs down to below subsistence levels. ... A lot of the New York musicians I know work in (often menial) day jobs that have nothing to do with music, and the reality for them is that they’re not going to get out of that situation anytime soon.

Been there, done that. It's the biggest reason I left after 8 years--it was painful to be surrounded by so much creativity and yet be so burnt out by a demoralizing but necessary day job that I had very little time or energy left for the music. But that's not the only problem:

As a jazz scene New York reminds me of one of those huge edge of town malls that arrives in an area and sucks all the economic life out of the high streets of any town within 50 miles of it. Nearly the entire US scene is based there, and this ‘gotta go to New York’ mentality means that it’s almost impossible for a regional scene to hold on to its good players. They in turn all arrive in New York where they have to scuffle and jostle for financial crumbs. ... Let’s imagine that say 30 players of every instrument were to leave NY tomorrow and go back to their home cities and expend their energy there and develop their own scenes there, how much healthier would both those regional scenes be and how much better economically would the New York scene be for giving the musicians there a little more economic room to breathe?

I think this does happen to an extent--here in the Bay Area, for example, there are players coming and going from New York all the time, largely for the reasons he mentions above: going there to learn and test their mettle, coming back to have more time for music and feel like a human being again. But as much as I like it here, and know there are great players, how are we supposed to keep good musicians in town when all the clubs are closed and DJs have most of the gigs? Jam sessions are fun (here, I mean--New York, not so much) but they don't pay, not even for the house band.I also think he has a point about a higher level of musicians creating a better scene--I firmly believe that having bad jazz played in public is bad for jazz (since any given performance a passerby witnesses is likely to be his only exposure to jazz that year, and if it's bad, that person will be lost as a potential fan). Of course, you have to play bad jazz before you can play good jazz, and I wouldn't suggest developing players not be out there working through their shit--just that if there isn't plenty of good stuff to show people the music's potential (because most of the best players have already left for NYC, for example), then locals won't be inclined to go to jazz shows and the scene will wither.Anyway, lots of food for thought. Anyone agree/disagree? Ideas to rectify this other than (as Guilfoyle jokes) "forced repatriation"?

Hi folks, I've been MIA lately but it seemed like a good time to catch you up on music-related news--good, bad, and who knows.First the bad--you'll notice the Quintet's show scheduled for mid-January has been canceled, due to the unfortunate fact of the venue, Coda, following too many clubs to mention into nonexistence. This hits me, and the scene in general, particularly hard, as Coda was the perfect venue for jazz and related musics--the place looked great, treated the musicians well, paid decently, and took an interest in promotion, so of course it couldn't last in the Bay Area. I was asked recently in an interview to name my favorite venue, and I said, "I used to like Pearl's, until it closed. Then I liked Octavia Lounge, and it closed. And Anna's Jazz Island, closed. My favorite venue is any venue that's open." So we can tack another on to that sad list.  (Note the title of the Times article: "Death of Jazz Club Underscores a Changing Scene"--I wish that this represented changing. Seems like the same old same old to me.) Oh well--the hunt for places to play continues.On a more positive note, my album Contextualizin' has been featured on several "Best of 2010" lists recently--the first from The Jazz Page ("Another solid band out of the Chicago area"--close enough, maybe this'll get us a gig there?--"Ian and the Quintet have a nice sound that can appeal to music lovers across the jazz spectrum and beyond"), and the second from Arnaldo DeSouteiro's Jazz Station (I also made the trumpet and flugelhorn lists, with some very heavy company, and Adam Shulman was recognized in the electric piano category). Both give me the warm fuzzies, especially since the record was released so early in the year and has been off the jazz blogosphere's radar for a while. (This would be a good time to put in a word of thanks to Terri Hinte, whose tireless work getting the CD to the right ears has been a huge part of its success.)Another recent plus--my wife and I took an incredible 2-week trip to Japan this month, which was life-altering in at least a few ways. One revelation--I knew the Japanese were into jazz, but I had no idea how ubiquitous it would be. You hear it in cafes, restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, everywhere--and not just the Kind of Blue or Coltrane/Johnny Hartman they occasionally deign to play at Starbucks--I'm talking about some burning shit to accompany your yakisoba or stationery shopping experience. There are also a ton of jazz venues, at least compared to the Bay Area. I was fortunate to make it to a jam session at Intro in Tokyo, which runs every Saturday from 5pm to 5am (!)--that's no exaggeration, either--the trains don't run between midnight and 5, so why not jam while you're stranded? (I left at 3:30am, and the other musicians were surprised I wasn't staying for the whole thing.) Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and plenty of great players over there. I hope to go back as soon as possible. (I should mention that The Ian Carey Quintet would happily sell its own grandmother for some gigs in Japan. Just an FYI.)Finally, a quick update on what's next for me musically--I'm about to start a few months of heavy shedding (that's "woodshedding" or practicing, not shedding fur, although there might be some of that, too). On the agenda is writing new material for the group, hustling up some shows, working on my Okinawan sanshin and reminding the trumpet who's boss. (I'm joking. The trumpet is always the boss.) Stay tuned for updates, and fresh installments of "New to Me," which I hope to make a regular feature. And Happy New Year!

It's that time of year when people start cranking out Top 10 lists like fruitcake, so I thought I'd toss my cake in the ring and do one myself.But since I usually come across new albums via used record stores and word of mouth, I decided my list would be not necessarily the best albums which came out in '10, but the best albums that showed up on my radar for the first time this year (hence "New to Me"). Some of them are actually new! (But most aren't.) Hopefully some of them will be new to you, too.So now, in no particular order, here are ten albums which made my year:David Smith Quintet - Anticipation (2010)Action-packed second album from the NYC trumpeter, who I really admire for both his ideas and his sound, which I can only describe as unabashedly "trumpety." (They manage to do a version of "Satellite" in 7 and sound pretty relaxed.)Sonny Rollins/Don Cherry Quartet - Stuttgart/Copenhagen/Tokyo/Paris 1963Picked up these 4 discs in one fell swoop after realizing I'd never really heard them, and that was a crime. They vary in sound quality, amount of filler material from other shows, etc., but all in all a good snapshot of a strange and wonderful band in what must've been an amazing time to be alive and playing jazz. If I had to pick one, I'd say Copenhagen is most interesting--Oleo! (Hearing Sonny and Ornette on his birthday bootleg reminded me of these a little.)Gary Peacock - Shift in the Wind (1980)Picked this up in a record store in outer Portland called Vinyl Resting Place (!) and proceeded to let it gather dust for a couple of years before throwing it on this spring. Great tunes (some nice ones from pianist Art Lande), well-thought-out mix of changes and free blowing, and a good chance to hear Peacock shining in a non-Jarrett trio.Donny McCaslin - Recommended Tools (2008)Great tenor trio album from one of my recent favorite improvisers. Saw him play many of these tunes live at SFJAZZ in June, which was even better.Keith Jarrett - Death and the Flower (1974)I've obsessed my way through pretty much every phase of KJ's career over the years, but for whatever reason the American Quartet was the last one I got around to. But after a reminder last year from Do The Math I finally picked up the Impulse box, threw it on the iPod, and went for a long run in the Oakland hills while listening to Death and... from start to finish. (The 22-min title track can be tempting to skip. Don't.) By the time it was over I'd found God, as much as possible for a cynical atheist. (BTW, try listening to a bunch of American Quartet, then put on the first track of Standards, Vol. 1, and you get a little sense of what it must've felt like to "come home" to those tunes.)Charlie Haden/Egberto Gismonti/Jan Garbarek - Folk Songs (1979)I've heard this band described as too new-agey, but I think it's way too intense for that. (And Gismonti is a serious badass.) Magico, the follow-up, is great, too. Arve Henriksen - Cartography (2010) & Chiaroscuro (2004)Tuneful ambient collages from this Norwegian trumpeter and sound artist. He managed to find a totally new sound in those old tubes somehow, and I'm hooked.Mathias Eick - The Door (2008)A subtle pack of grooving, well crafted straight-8ths tunes and good playing all around. Felt a little stereotypically ECM-y at first listen, but this record really grew on me.The Holly Martins - no. no. yes. no. (2010)Superhappening voice/alto/guitar timebending swinging power trio. FYI: Lorin Benedict is the new standard for scat singing. (Disclosure: friends of mine.)Kirk Knuffke - Amnesia Brown (2010)Another new-to-me trumpeter with a great, personal sound and ideas out the wazoo. I learned about this set of free-infused miniatures from Doug Ramsay, who hasn't steered me wrong yet.Honorable mentions go to: John McNeil & Bill McHenry's Chill Morn He Climb Jenny (brand new, but already getting in some serious listening on this one), every Steve Lacy album I own (I isolated all his solos and listened to the playlist on shuffle pretty much every day); and--why not--my own album Contextualizin', which came out in February. (I know, pretty shameless, but it really was the soundtrack of my year, and this may be the only Top 10 list it gets mentioned on.) UPDATE: I forgot to mention my friend Sunna Gunnlaugs' great album The Dream! Planning on listening to that more next year.By the way, there are definitely albums which are getting a lot of love this year (Vijay Iyer, Mary Halvorson, The Ideal Bread, etc.) which I just didn't get around to checking out. (More suggestions? Throw 'em in the comments.) With any luck I'll get to them next year, and remain pleasantly behind the curve!

I've seen a few examples on the jazzerwebs lately of that well-known species of jazz fan who, while passionate about his own particular area of interest (say, Lithuanian swing revivalists of mid-1936 to late spring of '52, or Archie Shepp's bossa nova period), is nevertheless vehemently dismissive of anything falling outside that area. (For prime specimens, see A Blog Supreme and this video by Tyshawn Sorey.)

My initial response to the first guy pretty much sums up my thoughts about this phenomenon: "There are as many restrictive definitions of jazz as there are curmudgeonly jazz fans (seems like their numbers are growing--or is it that the number of non-curmudgeonly fans is shrinking)? These types of arguments can go on infinitely--[Esperanza] Spalding is a hell of a lot more straightahead than Chris Botti, for example, but he gets referred to as a jazz artist all the time. You can argue over where to draw the line until the cows come home (and the audience leaves), but don't expect it to accomplish anything for the music."

As I think about it more, though, I think the reason these voices ring so loudly (especially to musicians) is that the audience for jazz is already so small that to be attacked from inside what one would presume to be one's own camp makes it more unpleasant--and often using the same critiques (no melody, too intellectual, whatever) that someone ignorant of all jazz would use. (With friends like these...)

Maybe that's because jazz is so varied and heterogeneous, at the same time that the audience is so narrow, that once people declare themselves "jazz fans" they feel that all music presented under that banner should conform to their idea of what "jazz" should be. Most likely they traveled a long path of exposure and absorption to feel like a genuine jazz cognoscenti, and maybe being confronted with something that surprises them or once again makes them feel like a neophyte feels like an attack on their identity. I don't know.

I do know that if someone called himself a rock fan because he loved Bruce Springsteen, then went to a Metallica show and told the band they should play some real rock, like Springsteen, he would be rightly viewed as an idiot who should learn more about a band before going to one of their shows.

Or put it this way--art is subjective and you're entitled to your opinion. There's no reason to be a jerk about it to someone who's spent his or her whole life learning to play, though.

Lee Mergner of the happily resuscitated JazzTimes recently published (and A Blog Supreme mentioned) a list of "jazz-related things to do before you die (or Keith Jarrett kills you)"--an unfair jab, really, as it's been years since Keith has murdered anyone, unless you count the fatwa he ordered after Umbria.Anyway, the list had a few I've done:

• "visit the Village Vanguard and soak up the history" (I think that was history I found on my shoes);
• "walk on hallowed ground at Congo Square in New Orleans" (actually it was more like stumbling--3 hurricanes will do that to you);
• "memorize at least one solo from a famous jazz record and hum it for someone who might actually recognize it" (welcome to my college social life); and
• "Buy the CD of a local jazz musician playing a gig where no one pays attention to the music, ever" (That was me. I bought 1000 of them. Most are still in my garage).

Following JT's lead, I came up with a few more musician-centric suggestions of my own:

• Make a waiter call his boss at 1am to get the band paid
• Be told by a relative he only likes "real jazz, like Al Hirt and Kenny G"
• Take out thousands of dollars in loans to prepare for a career which pays tips and sometimes beer
• Listen to Trane's first recording and feel ecstatic joy at how crappy he sounds
• Get a request for "Summertime," within 5 minutes of finishing playing "Summertime"
• Consider renaming your band "[Your Name]'s [Exotic-sounding word]" to get more gigs
• Consider hiring a DJ, tubist, theremin player, hog-caller, and bearded lady to appeal to the indie crowd
• Get shredded at a jam session by some kid from Lithuania who looks 14 years old
• Get asked by a club to play something "jazzier"
• Get into a physical fight about straight-8ths odd-meter jazz
• Practice Bird tunes in all 12 keys on a NYC rooftop, get yelled at by neighbors
• Quit music in heat of passion and then come crawling back
• Buy 20 copies of my CD and use them as coasters, doorstops, cat toys, or pizza cutters

There were also a few good suggestions from Twitter's peanut gallery, including the notorious Jazzfamoose ("Realize that Del's Frozen Lemonade is so much better than who's on the mainstage at the Newport Jazz Festival," "Get berated by Lorraine Gordon at the Vanguard" (done that!), "Have your CD get reviewed by @natechinen & still sell less than 500 copies in 2010"), and improviz ("Contact Mingus by Ouija board"--I wouldn't recommend that, I think he can still punch you from beyond the grave). Got your own? Throw 'em in the comments.

I've recently found myself with some listening time I can count on each day, so I figure it's time to pay more focused attention to a handful of tracks and put together another of my Subway Playlists (that's a set of tracks I listen to every day for a few months, to try and absorb on a deeper level than random listening allows, so named because I originally listened to them on my subway ride--some more background here). This one is a little long (although I like iTunes' option to set markers for the beginning and end of playback on a track--I won't tell you where I've done that, to protect those bass players fine musicians whose solos were sacrificed for time). Here goes:

1. Steve Lacy/Roswell Rudd – "Think of One" (from Early and Late, 1962) A recently unearthed studio recording from the "School Days" band, which is one of my all-time favorite groups, period. The sound! The swing! The ideas! The counterpoint! The Monk! (I would kill to take a time machine back to when these guys were playing every night, but I was lucky enough to see Lacy & Rudd in New York in the 90s--read my memorial post for Lacy here.)
2. Donny McCaslin – "Recommended Tools" (from Recommended Tools, 2008) I first saw Donny in the 90s in NYC, but recently got into his playing in a big way after reading about a workshop he did at Banff--was able to see him tear it up with his current trio at SFJAZZ and take a quick but really informative lesson (in which he walked me through how the melody for this tune came to be). What I like about this track: ideas, ideas, ideas!
3. Keith Jarrett – "Semblence" (from Facing You, 1972) Still possibly my favorite Keith album for sheer inventive energy. This is a tricky tune I first came across on Gary Burton's 70s classic Times Square, presented here in a much more loose and organic way. (I play this sometimes with the Quintet when we're in the mood for a workout.)
4. Charlie Haden/Jan Garbarek/Egberto Gismonti – "Cego Aderado" (from Folk Songs, 1979) Came across this album in a used record store in Portland; it promptly sat in my "to listen" pile for 2 years, but since I finally put it on I've been wearing it out (along with its slightly more ethereal follow-up, Magico). Outstanding writing, blowing, interplay. This group has been accused of being too new-agey but I don't hear it; this is joyous, serious improvisational music, and Gismonti is an underappreciated badass.
5. Conlon Nancarrow – "Player Piano Study No. 43" (from Juergen Hocker's YouTube channel) Have been a fan ever since I saw a retrospective by Continuum in college; recently came across the whole amazing player piano series on YouTube. Lorin Benedict mentioned that his favorite was #43, so I picked that one, but they're all great.
6. Keith Jarrett – "Spiral Dance" (from YouTube--Hannover, 1974?) More Keith?! I know, but this one is totally different! It's the Euro Quartet, burning on a live version of the Belonging hit--on the studio version, only Palle D gets to blow, but here everyone gets a turn. (I confess I cut out the 5-minute free intro, which is interesting, but not something I need to hear every day.)
7. Hank Jones/Joe Lovano – "Budo" (from Kids, 2007) After Hank Jones passed away in May I made a mental note to pick up a record of his, and this was the first one I came across in the used CD bins. It's a keeper--Hank managing to sound simultaneously stately and burning, JoLo once again convincing you that even if he was standing there with no horn in his hands, somehow the same sounds would be coming out. (I need to learn this tune.)
8. Thad Jones – "Yes Sir That's My Baby" (from Mean What You Say, 1966) Another Jones brother: this was recommended to me by my friend and former teacher Bill Kirchner. The head is mock-corny in that Thaddish manner, but the solos are happening. People focus on Thad's writing, but I've been meaning to dig further into his individualistic and unpredictable playing for a while.
9. Steve Coleman & The Five Elements – "Ascending Numeration" (from Alternate Dimension Series I) This tune was introduced to me by Lorin B. and Eric Vogler, both of whom are longtime followers and/or collaborators of Mr. Coleman (they also recorded a fantastic variation on it with their new band The Holly Martins). It's extrapolated from Coltrane's "Countdown," and involves inverting the root motion as well as each chord's interval structure, with the added bonus of a wild metric pattern. Someday they will force me to play it, so I'll take any head start I can get.
10. Kurt Rosenwinkel – "Flute" (from The Remedy) I was late getting to this album, after OD'ing on his previous 4 studio records, but there is a lot going on here. Like slash chords? This is your bible.
11. Ornette Coleman – "EOS" (from Ornette on Tenor) I've listened to the Ornette Atlantic box a ton, but the person I, uh, borrowed it from somehow left out the disc with this album on it, so I heard it for the first time just recently. Classic early OCQ with everyone in fine form; as I get older, I find Don Cherry gets more and more inspiring.

Not a lot of early jazz in this one! No Louis, no Bird, no Bach, for a change (though they'll probably be back in the next one). Suggestions for my next edition? Leave 'em in the comments.