New Jam Session & New Night

Portland State University Jazz Department

 

Tuesday Night Jam Session

TIME/DATE: January 20th 8-11PM

The Cave

Alan’s Jazz Club “The Cave” at the Green Onion

636 SW Jackson St (at the corner of Broadway in the PSU neighborhood) 
Free parking after 7pm, across Broadway from The Cave in the metered slots in front of the tennis courts. Also, 2 blocks from The Cave in PSU parking structure (enter on Broadway or on 6th Ave between Harrison and Hall). 
CONTACT: 
Alan Jones - www.alanjonesmusic.com or the Green Onion – (503) 274-4294

Jazz Messengers Week

Friday, May 23, 2008

Jazz Messengers Week

1) Dis Here

2) Dat Dere

3) Lester Left Town

4) Whisper Not

The origins of the Messengers are in a series of groups led or co-led by Blakey and pianist Horace Silver, though the name was not used on the earliest of their recordings. The most celebrated of these early records (credited to “The Art Blakey Quintet”), is A Night at Birdland from February 1954,[citation needed] one of the earliest commercially released “live” jazz records. This featured Silver, Blakey, the young trumpeter Clifford Brown, alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson and bassist Curly Russell. The “Jazz Messengers” name was first used on a 1954 recording nominally led by Silver, with Blakey, Hank Mobley, Kenny Dorham and Doug Watkins — the same quintet would record The Jazz Messengers at the Cafe Bohemia the following year, still as a collective. Donald Byrd replaced Dorham, and the group recorded an album called simply The Jazz Messengers for Columbia Records in 1956. Blakey took over the group name when Silver left after the band’s first year (taking Mobley, Byrd and Watkins with him to form a new quintet with a variety of drummers), and the band was known as “Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers” from then onwards.

Two of the group’s most famous lineups featured Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone. The first was a quintet that existed from 1959 to 1961 and included Blakey, Shorter, Jymie Merritt, Lee Morgan, and Bobby Timmons. The second (1961–1964) was a sextet that added trombonist Curtis Fuller and replaced Morgan and Timmons with Freddie Hubbard and Cedar Walton, respectively. Shorter was the musical director of the group, and many of his original compositions such as “Lester Left Town” remained staples of Blakey’s repertoire even after Shorter’s departure. (Other players over the years made permanent marks on Blakey’s repertoire — Timmons, composer of “Dat Dere” and “Moanin’”, Benny Golson, composer of “Along Came Betty” and “Are You Real”, and, later, Bobby Watson.) Shorter’s more experimental inclinations pushed the band at the time into an engagement with the 1960s “New Thing”, as it was called: the influence of Coltrane’s contemporary records on Impulse! is evident on Free For All (1964), often cited as the greatest document of the Shorter-era Messengers (and certainly one of the most fearsomely powerful examples of hard bop on record).[citation needed

Blakey went on to record dozens of albums with a constantly changing group of Jazz Messengers — he had a policy of encouraging young musicians: as he remarked on-mike on A Night at Birdland (1954): “I’m gonna stay with the youngsters. When these get too old I’ll get some younger ones. Keeps the mind active.” After weathering the fusion era in the 1970s with some difficulty (recordings from this period are less plentiful and include attempts to incorporate instruments like electric piano), Blakey’s band got a shot in the arm in the early 1980s with the advent of neotraditionalist jazz. Wynton Marsalis was for a time the band’s trumpeter and musical director, and even after Marsalis’s departure Blakey’s band continued as a proving ground for many “Young Lions” like Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison and Kenny Garrett. Blakey continued performing and touring with the group into the late 1980s, and he died in 1990 in New York City, leaving behind a vast legacy and approach to jazz which is still the model for countless hard-bop players.

Biographical Info courtesy of Wikepedia

“BYOB”- Bring Your Own Blues

Jam Session Tunes for Friday, May 9, 2008

“BYOB”- Bring Your Own Blues

We will play 3-4 Blues compositions brought by YOU.

If you know a cool blues head, or a blues w/different changes. Bring at least 4 lead sheets, we’ll learn and play them at the session.

· Blues w/a bridge

· Minor Blues

· Tricky heads

· Unusual progressions

IMPORTANT- While all of you are composers, I’d like to use this opportunity to delve deeper into the existing jazz repertoire as opposed to playing your own originals.

“May Day Session”

Jam Session Tunes for Friday, May 2, 2008

“May Day Session”

Freedom Jazz Dance Eddie Harris

Mayreh Horace Silver

Work Song Nat Adderley

Haitian Fight Song Charles Mingus

May Day occurs on May 1 and refers to any of several public holidays in many countries. May Day is synonymous with International Workers’ Day, or Labour Day, which celebrates the social and economic achievements of the labor movement, including the fight for the eight hour day.

The choice of the 1st of May is a commemoration by the Second International for the working Americans involved in the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago, Illinois. As the culmination of three days of labor unrest in the United States, the Haymarket incident was a source of outrage and admiration from people around the globe.

In countries other than the United States and Canada, residents sought to make May Day an official holiday and their efforts largely succeeded. For this reason, in most of the world today, May Day has become an international celebration of the social and economic achievements of the labor movement. In some European countries, working people continue to use May Day parades as an opportunity to show disapproval with the government or to protest cuts in social programs.

“We Love Monk Week”

Jam Session Tunes for Friday, April 18, 2008

Bright Mississippi

first recorded on May 10, 1961 (Ingo at a concert in Berne, Switzerland. It is a completely original melody based loosely on the chord changes of “Sweet Georgia Brown.”

Green Chimneys

Another one of Monk’s later compositions, it was first recorded on November 14, 1966, although this particular take was not released until 1996. The take that was released initially was recorded a year later, on December 14, 1967 (Columbia CS9632). “Green Chimneys” is named after the school Barbara Monk attended at the time-a progressive private boarding school located in Putnam County, New York.

Nutty

First recorded on September 22, 1954, in a trio setting with Percy Heath (bass) and Art Blakey (drums), “Nutty” was among Monk’s more popular tunes. Perhaps the most famous recording of it is with John Coltrane, July 1957 (Jazzland JLP[9]46). A few writers have strangely tried to link the title to Monk’s alleged state of mind (!), but any such claims betrays an ignorance of the “hip” lingo of the day. In the 1940s and 50s (and even later), “nutty” commonly meant “excellent” or “cool”-like “insane,” “mad,” and “crazy.

Played Twice

First recorded on June 1, 1959 (Riverside RLP12-305), the title refers to the structure of the song itself. It is a rhythmically complex, sixteen-bar AABC theme based on a series of repeated phrases or “echoes” that fall in different places in the meter. And like many Monk tunes, it begins in one key ( C ) and ends on another (D).

Annotations courtesy of www.themonkzone.com

(http://www.monkzone.com/compositionshtml.htm)

A few suggested readings to learn more about Monk–for the serious jazz student (is that you?)

http://www.monkzone.com/revanaly.htm

http://www.monkzone.com/revanaly/Don%20Sickler%20article%20on%20Monk.htm

http://www.monkzone.com/biographyHTML.htm

Friday, April 11, 2008

Charlie Parker Week

Scrapple from the Apple

Yardbird Suite

My Little Suede Shoes

Other tunes Open from Charlie Parker repertoire

April 4th, 2008

Sweet & Lovely

Performer: Louis Armstrong

Performer: Junior Mance

 

How Deep is the Ocean

Performer: Blue Mitchell

Performer: Ella Fitzgerald

Bemsha Swing

Performer: Thelonious Monk

Mr. PC

Performer: John Coltrane & Eric Dolphy

Friday, March 8, 2008

Sugar – Stanley TurrentineAutumn in New York – Vernon DukeYes or No – Wayne ShorterIn a Mellowtone -Duke Ellington

Friday, February 7, 2008

 

Evidence – Thelonious Monk

Performer: Thelonious Monk

One Finger Snap – Herbie Hancock

Performer: Ensemble 9

Night and Day – Cole Porter

Performer: Stan Getz

Inner Urge – Joe Henderson

Performer: Madeline Eastman

God Bless the Child (vocalist) – Arthur Herzog

Performer: Billie Holiday

 

 

ERIC PERSON & META-FOUR

PSU Jazz Jam Session • Nov 2nd • 3:00pm

LV’s UPTOWN. Friday, Nov. 2 & Saturday, Nov 3 ($10.00 Cover Charge)

Eric Person is one man with two instruments, three bandmates, and many moods. This acclaimed New York saxophonist and flutist has garnered particularly high praise at the helm of the quartet Meta-Four. The group — including bassist Adam Armstrong and drummer Peter O’ Brien, and newly fortified by 23-years-old pianist Jarod Kashkin.

Person has played with such different acts as the intrepid World Saxophone Quartet, soul-rockers Living Colour, Israeli singer Ofra Haza, and drum legend Chico Hamilton. Elsewhere, he has joined an eclectic set of others, including the Dave Holland Quartet, McCoy Tyner, David Murray, Ben Harper, and John Hicks.

With Meta-Four, though, Person brings his personal quartet, so to speak. Despite occasional changes in its personnel, Person’s aim with the quartet remains fixed. “The music I make with Meta-Four,” he ventures, “is about finding a place where we can connect the line that runs through our personal concepts, and bring it to compositions with varied stylings, different rhythmic, harmonic, and stylistic implications.”

Rhythm Edge bears this out, galloping through a shifting field of moody set pieces, celebratory soloing, sweaty polyrhythmic asides, delicate ostinati, and — occasionally —a good, stern riff in unison. Cameos on the disc by trombonist Robin Eubanks, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, guitarist Cary Denigris, and percussionist Danny Sadownick only widen the palette from which these 15 songs draw. All told, the sum simply eclipses the parts.

But please don’t call it jazz.

“I refer to it more as an expression,” Person demurs, “modern, progressive expression. I’m interested in great songs, with strong arrangements, and with each song striking some kind of mood. Wasn’t Miles Davis the best at that?”

ericperson.com