Tag Archives: jazz

Live, from the Fillmore Jazz Festival 2012

10 Jul

Sunday was the first day of the Fillmore Jazz Festival 2012, the largest free jazz festival on the West Coast. Your intrepid reporter made the scene along with his trusty, if slightly vertically challenged, photographer and here are the impressions.

First Impressions

Coming into the festival, what strikes you is the number of commercial and rather incongruous stalls. Do people normally come to jazz festivals to pick up Moroccan oils? I do not know. I was here for the jazz and hopefully lunch of some sort. A long hike and a tuna fish sandwich later, I found my first performance.

Wayne De La Cruz B-3 Organ band with Pamela Rose

The woman singing, Pamela Rose, was highly enthusiastic, I will give her that. The music however was that sort of ‘almost there, but not quite good enough’ level of mediocrity. With music like that, there is not much you can do but walk away. Both the vocals and the band itself were nothing really special, although of the two the band was clearly the better one. They were all enjoying themselves though, and the audience sitting there seemed to like them. As long as everyone is having fun, there is really no need to quibble. I decided to see if I could find something better for myself though.

Verdict: Neither Pamela Rose nor the Wayne De La Cruz B-3 Organ Band seem worth the effort to follow them, but if they were on the radio when every other station is playing music for teenagers who watch Miley Cyrus, then I probably wouldn’t turn them off.

Contemporary Jazz Orchestra

The Contemporary Jazz Orchestra was not just good, they were excellent. These guys had everything that you could want from a jazz band. They had a good spread of songs; some classics, including a Bird composition, and some of their own as well. They tended to focus on their solos, which were uniformly excellent. The group as a whole provided a wonderful framework in which every member had a chance to shine. For a couple of numbers, they were joined by singer Kim Nalley, who more than held her own taking the front of the stage from such talented musicians. Without a doubt, this was my favorite band of the festival.

Verdict: While not quite good enough to get you to quit your high paying job and just go around the Bay Area following them wherever they perform, this is a band that you cannot go wrong listening to. I have yet to hear their albums, but if this performance was any indication of their quality, I had better track them down immediately.

Walking Around Again

After they packed up, my photographer and I had half an hour to walk around before the next performance and observe the crowd, which was surprisingly mixed. In attendance were the expected college students and somewhat, to put it politely, absorbed older music fans, but also were a lot of people who just wanted to be out of the house for the day. There were people of every stripe there and quite a few kids of all ages. I think that whoever you may be, this was as pleasant a way to spend a Saturday afternoon as anything you could find.

Walking along, we found a group playing outside a bookstore. I do not believe that they were part of the festival, although they were certainly better than the first act I saw. They were playing well, all told, but quite slowly. Honestly the musicians seemed a little out of it. We stopped to catch a couple of songs, but walked on soon enough.

Jai Uttal and the Queen of Hearts Orchestra

On the way back to California Street, we passed by Jai Uttal and the Queen of Hearts Orchestra, who had just started. About half a song later, we walked on. There is no way that I can write anything positive about this performance. The music was just so bad that not even a whole set of girls in saris on stage could save it, pretty though they were. This was simply not good.

Verdict: It is possible that I would listen to Miley-Cyrus-obsessed teenagers’ music before this.

Kim Nalley

With that, we came to what was probably the most highly anticipated performance of the day; Kim Nalley. The set started with the band warming up before she took the stage, and their playing was wonderful by itself. Of particular note was a piano solo from Kim Nalley’s sister who later provided backing vocals as well.

When Kim Nalley herself took the stage, she started with “Damn Your Eyes”, which was quite probably the best single song of the entire festival. Her entire performance was a tribute to Etta James, who died recently, and this was a good a start as could be imagined.

The next few songs, although greatly popular with the crowd, were not ones I personally enjoyed as I am not very fond of the style. While “Damn Your Eyes” was strong and personal, the other performances were much bouncier and lighter. Every now and again though, she would throw out a number of little facts and opinions, which she would put into little melodies of their own. This was an old-school performance and, in its way, quite excellent.

Besides, whether or not you really like her music, her voice is incredible. From her songs with the Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, we knew that she was well worth revisiting and her own performance only bolstered that view. I would have preferred that she sang with more jazz and less soul, but however she sings, she does it well. Strong, powerful and teeming with emotion, her voice could make a career out of anything. You wasted your trip to Fillmore Street if you didn’t catch her.

Conclusions

This was well worth the trip on the first day. I wish that I could have attended the second as well, but the pressures of life made it impossible. Even if you don’t like jazz, there is plenty to do and the festival is very well managed. I will definitely go again next year and probably for many years after that.

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Rachael Price: The Good Hours

4 Jul

The Good Hours is a jazz album by 23-year-old singer Rachael Price, who is blessed with a voice comparable to that of the jazz greats (and uses this fact to great effect throughout this album). In fact, the first thing that will strike anyone listening to this album is how good Ms. Price’s voice is. You could place her tracks in between those of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday and they would not seem a hair out of place. Her voice is far and away the strongest thing about this album and, despite the occasional instrument solo, is all you are likely to remember.

If you doubt her vocal prowess, listen to her version of “Skylark” or “Mood Indigo” – they may as well be a capella for all the impact the band makes. She moves into Samba jazz for a single song in the middle of the album called “Lagrimas Negras”, which, although a weaker track, is quite a fun change. A dabble in Samba is all well and good, but Rachael Price is in essence a classic jazz singer who just happens to be releasing records now, and she shines most on classic jazz songs.

This album does have its share of swing though. The first track, “That Old Black Magic” starts things off well and the album keeps its bounce throughout. It has all of the energy and the simplicity of a 1920s swing record and manages to reconstruct much of the feeling those albums would bring up. However, possibly as a result of all that old-time feeling, this album does not challenge the listener, which could be a fatal flaw in a jazz record. There are exceptions, such as “The Trolley Song”, which has all of the verve of Billie Holiday singing “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”. However, the majority of the songs, while not as easy-listening as a Kenny G record, are far from cerebral.

Although this is Rachael Price’s album, the band backing her does a quite solid job throughout. There are a couple of nice solos; the vibraphone in “That Old Black Magic” or the piano in “The Trolley Song” come immediately to mind. They do not stand out, but they perform quite well and do all that could be asked from them. The piano especially frames her voice excellently, but like any frame, is a distant second to the picture itself.

“The Trolley Song”, “Skylark”, “Stairway To The Stars” and “Mood Indigo” are all exceptional performances and should be picked up if you have any love of swing jazz or just good singing. The rest of the album however is nothing really special. If you have exhausted your Fitzgerald and Lady Day collections but want more, then this is certainly worth picking up and even otherwise you will have a quite solid album on your hands, just not a very challenging one.

Verdict: The lack of challenge in the album and a number of weaker performances keep this from being a masterpiece. However, the stand-out tracks make the album worth a listen, or five.

– Nikhil

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Miles Davis: Blue Moods

25 Jun

Blue Moods is a beautiful album. It’s absolutely perfect for after a stressful day, cutting effortlessly through the knot of your tension – not like Alexander with a series of vicious chops, but peacefully. Very, very peacefully. Don’t get me wrong: peaceful as it may be, Blue Moods is not an album that can dismissed as just ‘easy listening’. What’s important to understand here is the fact that while its four tracks are restrained, it doesn’t mean that the songs are shallow or uncomplicated in any way.

Blue Moods is a quintessential cool jazz album by Miles. It’s full of those slow ballads that he liked, and the sound is like fat, iridescent bubbles rising in a smoky room and then popping, one by one. While Miles completely overshadows his supporting cast in this album, both Charles Mingus (bass) and Elvin Jones (drums) do wonderfully in a much more relaxed setting than they were used to. Mingus has a couple of nice solos as well, but these merely serve as breaks from Miles’ playing. This is his album; and despite the greatness of his supporting cast, one really cannot overstate that at all.

The first track “Nature Boy” in particular is wonderfully  slow and relaxed; it’s easily the best song on this album. In fact,  put “Nature Boy” in any album ever, and it alone would be enough justification to pick that album up.  However, the languidness of the song makes the albums’ transition into the more active “Alone Together” rather dissonant. (And it doesn’t help that “Alone Together” is probably the weakest track of the album either.) However, a nice vibraphone does a lot to save it. The two standout compositions, “Nature Boy” and “Easy Living” are weakened by their surrounding of merely good tracks. However, if a couple of tracks set an impossibly high bar, we should not complain that the rest fall short.

Verdict: This is not an album that must be picked up. Really, one would do just fine with “Nature Boy” and nothing more, but these are all rewarding tracks, and if you are looking for some relaxing cool jazz, this is as good a place as any other.

– Nikhil

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