Not Sneaking in the Back Door

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The New York Sun

When we talk about jazz in the Fall of 2004, it’s going to be difficult to consider anything other than Jazz at Lincoln Center and its new performance facility Frederick P. Rose Hall. It may have taken a while but jazz no longer has to sneak in throught the kitchen door. We may have had our differences with Wynton Marsalis in the past (and I’m still not crazy about the name “Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola”),


but the debut of the first concert hall devoted to jazz is a major step forward in insuring that jazz receives the degree of respect it deserves. And there’s one thing that jazz needs even more than respect: good sound. Up to now, jazz has never enjoyed the luxury of concert halls in which the music can be heard accurately, without the echo and distortion it is subjected to in spaces designed for European symphonic music.


Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new hall, located in the Time Warner Building on the site of the old Coliseum at Columbus Circle, features three spaces — you could say that this is jazz’s first multi

plex. They are, in size order, the Rose Theatre, the Allen Room, and the aforementioned Dizzy’s. These are the equivalents of, respectively, a standard-size concert hall (such as Alice Tully), a more intimate recital room (like Carnegie’s Weill Hall), and a club (like Birdland).


The opening season (from Fall 2004 to Spring 2005) is an especially busy and ambitious one, programmed more like a festival than a concert series, with multiple events going on in all three rooms. On opening night, October 18, the protocol may be black-tie, but I’m going to wear my jogging shoes just the same, so I can sprint from show to show.

The main concert on opening night, in Rose Hall, is an all-star program featuring Mr. Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra — with a load of special guests, including Branford Marsalis, Joe Lovano, Kenny Barron, and Abbey Lincoln.You may want to TiVo the PBS telecast of the main event and catch what’s happening simultaneously in the other two rooms instead: the marvelous Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, led by Arturo O’Farrill, will be in the Rose Room, also with special guests. And since nightclubs have traditionally been the home of both jazz combos and the Great American Songbook, there’s no one more appropriate to launch Dizzy’s than Bill Charlap and his Trio.


The rest of the Fall looks equally auspicious. Dizzy’s will honor its namesake with a three-week festival celebrating the life and music of John Birks Dizzy Gillespie, including both compositions and musicians associated with that immortal innovator. On October 21, Bill Cosby will host a program, “Stand Up for Jazz,” with Mr. Marsalis and the Orchestra, and three superstar singers — Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves and Freddy Cole — will headline on the 22nd and 23rd.


Also not to be missed is the orchestra’s performance of the two most famous extended works of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, “Black, Brown and Beige” and “The Kansas City Suite” (by Benny Carter for Basie). From October 25 to October 27, Lincoln Center addresses both the roots and relatives of the music in three nights of the blues. And that’s just October — the first two weeks that Rose Hall is open.


The other good news is that the rest of the New York jazz world seems to be working hard to compete with the Columbus Circle activity. Maria Schneider’s Jazz Orchestra hasn’t played a New York club in some years, so her four-night stand at Jazz Standard (September 23–26) is especially welcome. Immediately after, drummer-composer Matt Wilson celebrates his 40th birthday (and his excellent new CD) there on September 28. Also not to miss at the Standard, the annual week of piano duos starring the brilliant Fred Hersch, beginning October 19.


Highlights at Birdland include Archie Shepp, a legendary master of both free jazz screams and beautiful balladry (September 29), the song-driven jazz of master player-composers Dave Frischberg and Jay Leonhart (October 13), and still another bassist, Dave Holland, with his great quintet (October 19).


Tribute packages seem to be the house order at Iridium. Cannonball Adderley will be honored by a crew featuring James Moody and James Carter, starting September 2. Bobby Watson (who also hasn’t played New York for far too long) will lead a tribute to Art Blakey, starting October 5. Miles Davis’s electric period will be remembered October 26, and Harry Allen and Mr. Charlap will give Stan Getz the treatment starting November 24.


Likewise, the Blue Note is celebrating Charlie Parker with the excellent quartet led by his longtime drummer Roy Haynes, beginning October 5. Even more impressive is the murderer’s row of tenor titans assembled to celebrate the Coleman Hawkins Centennial, beginning September 28: Jimmy Heath, Joe Lovano, Frank Wess, Joshua Redman, James Carter, Lew Tabackin, David Sanchez, Fathead Newman, and Eric Alexander — although, I imagine, not all on the same night.


The venerated Village Vanguard is bringing in the fine tenor Mark Turner both in his Fly trio (September 14–19) and with popular pianist Brad Mehldau (September 28), as well as collegiate favorites the Bad Plus (September 21). Smoking trumpeter Roy Hargrove will be at the Vanguard a bit later (October 5) and Eric Reed will be working with his own quintet (October 12). A few blocks down from the Vanguard on Seventh Avenue South, Sweet Rhythm is developing into a key room for exceptional jazz singers, starting with Grady Tate, the old smoothie himself, on October 1.


Lastly, two of the most anticipated events of the season are not performances, but books, by two of jazz music’s all-time greatest scribes: Giddins’s “Weatherbird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century” (November, Oxford University Press) and Dan Morgenstern’s “Living With Jazz” (November, Pantheon).The latter is actually the first full book from a remarkable critic and historian who has been expertly chronicling the music for over 50 years.


This year there’s more great jazz than anyone could possibly absorb, even taking in two or three shows a night. Thank goodness for my Metrocard.


The New York Sun

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