Summary judgment: Royce Campbell

I just received a new CD from guitarist Royce Campbell, the third he's kindly sent me to review. While I owe him a longer writeup on his "Movie Songs Project" with Phil Woods, I wanted to share his name and my thoughts on his music sooner than I'll be able to do otherwise.
Campbell's latest release is "Solo Trane" (on Moon Cycle Records), a collection of John Coltrane tunes arranged for the guitar. Most musicians have enough trouble getting comfortable with Coltrane's often-complex harmonic ideas to skip trying to craft intelligent or creative arrangements -- it's all about the speed of soloing for too many Coltrane-wannabes. I've only had a chance to hear about half of the release, but it's clear Campbell is firing on all cylinders on these cuts. His treatment of "Naima" is magnificent; quietly passionate while still exploring all of the harmonic potentials of the song.
"Trane Track" gets a fun, strummed treatment to bounce melody and solo lines from ... I'm anxious to hear it again.
"The Movie Songs Project" (on Philology Jazz), a collection of movie soundtracks with bassist Bob Bowen, drummer Ron Free -- and a freelancing Phil Woods -- will satisfy bebop fans of such soundtrack faves as "Manha De Carnival" or "Laura." This group plays with classic cool, easily swinging while soloists tear through. Woods plays with a quiet intensity -- you can always count on quality improvisation with him, but he seems to be enjoying this outing a lot. I never thought of "Baby Elephant Walk" as much more than a novelty tune, but in the hands of capable musicians ...
The first listen I had of Campbell was his "Art of Chord Solo Guitar," which I wrote about for AllAboutJazz.com (you can read it here).
I found Campbell's solo work to be top-notch; it's great to see he isn't hindered in a band setting -- or by some of jazz's most challenging compositions.

A look at musicians' hard lives

If you'd like to get a pretty realistic glimpse of the life of a jazz musician, turn in to HBO's "Treme," set in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Several of the show's primary characters are musicians, jazz or other, who eke out a living in one of America's most musical cities. If you can't make it here, can you anywhere?
Wendell Pierce stars as trombonist Antoine Batiste, marching in funeral lines by day and gigging anywhere he can at night. In one early episode, a taxi driver holds onto his horn while Antoine checks in on a gig, getting an advance to cover the fare.
Rob Brown's New York-based Delmond Lambreaux walks out of a gig at Small's in one episode to head south.
The show has featured appearances by Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, Sammie Williams, Donald Harrison Jr., Galactic, Trombone Shorty Andrews, Deacon John, The Pine Leaf Boys, and the Rebirth and Tremé Brass Bands for additional local flavor.
The show doesn't gloss over some of the hard realities of being a musician -- for example, both Antoine and Delmond are estranged from their families initially (Antoine seems to have a couple ...), which adds a smack of realism.
If you really want to see life on a jazz tour, though, check out the blog saxophonist Froy Aagre wrote for Jazz.com here. There's a bit of culture shock as she discovers the difference between being a professional musician in Europe and one in America, but it's also great to see things through her eyes ... and ears.

Summer's near and jazz is in the air

Last night launched John Henry Goldman's summer series of perfomances at Labyrinth Books on Nassau Street in Princeton, which will continue each Wednesday night through July. If you missed it, you can catch John Henry, with Luke Abruzzo, Gary Schaeffer and Mike Ipri at Tre Pieni in Forestal Village at 7:30 p.m. Saturday night.
Friday, you can catch the VooDudes at the South Brunswick Jazz Cafe at 8 p.m., Dick Gratton at the Chambers Walk Cafe in Lawrenceville from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. And next weekend, enjoy the Wendy Zoffer Jazz Group at the Princeton Shopping Center from noon to 3 p.m. June 12, or help Stanley Jordan raise money for CASA Mercer County at the Salt Creek Grille in Forrestal Village on June 13 (the same day Fred Hersch and Joel Frahm are at the Lawrenceville School as part of the Princeton Festival).
There's so much great music to enjoy in Central Jersey -- be sure to get out and show your support for your favorite musicians.

Time to move on?

I'm about to betray my generation, but I have to say I'm growing tired of the music of my youth. This is something that many of my fellow baby boomers apparently haven't felt ... yet.

While I still dearly love listening to -- and regularly do -- the music I grew up with, from the Beatles to George Benson, and Deep Purple to Return to Forever, I am forever hunting down new music to enjoy.

In recent years, I've found some recordings that I think will hold up over the years, just the way "Sgt. Pepper's" or "Kind of Blue" has, and I've mentioned them in other posts.

But I find the inability of many people to hear and fully enjoy such new music to be completely mystifying -- how can you find satisfaction in a steady diet of 50 or 60 year old music?

Dare I say it? Those recordings and musicians were great, but were not perfect. And you can be assured the last thing Miles Davis would have wanted is for his fans to stop hearing new music.

Thanks to sources like Napster, emusic and CD Baby, it's possible to consume a huge amount of new music, releases from musicians you've never heard of, from all around the globe.

Many are uninteresting or dully conceived; many are dazzling and brilliant. Are they as ground-breaking as "Giant Steps" was? No ... but how often can you listen to that and still feel it's originality?

I don't know if Ray Barretto's "Time is, time was" will be a classic, but I know I love to hear it as much as I love hearing Weather Report's "Black Market."

I don't know if critics and listeners will treasure Stefon Harris and Blackout's "Urbanus" as much as they treasure Charles Mingus' "Ah um," but I know it gives me the same pleasure as the first times I heard Mingus.

Some musicians attain greatness through ideas that flash like brilliant meteors; others are great through the brilliance of solid and steady performance. It's not always easy to tell which is which, when all we see is the brilliance, but you'll never know if you've closed your eyes.

Need proof? Check out the documentary "Jazz in the Present Tense," by directors Lars Larson, Peter J. Vogt and Michael Rivoira. It's not available widely yet, but here's a review by AllAboutJazz.com editor John Kelman that details the film's highlights.

Mary Lou, we hardly know ya ...

The Princeton University Concert Jazz Ensemble will be paying tribute Saturday to Mary Lou Williams, possibly jazz's most overlooked genius, on the centennial of her birth.

Maybe it was her gender, maybe it was the company she kept (she worked for Dorsey, Goodman, Ellington ... you name it, anyone with a decent band in the 1930s wanted her arrangements), maybe she's just not had the kind of continuous presence many others have gotten; whatever the reasons, it's time to correct the oversight and give her her due.

Let's hope this concert goes a long way towards doing so. If it doesn't, it won't be because of the music: the jazz ensemble -- directed by Anthony Branker -- will play Williams' "New Musical Express," "Mary’s Idea," "Walkin’ and Swingin,’" "In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee" and other standards she wrote or arranged.

Tickets are $15 and can be reserved here.

If you want to sample Williams' work, check out the fun novelty boogie-woogie "47th Street Jive," or "Harmony Blues." On for a longer listen, try the "Zodiac Suite" from 1945. Later on, Williams took to writing gospel music, capped by the beautiful "Black Christ of the Andes" in 1964. She returned to writing jazz, releasing such gems as 1974's soul jazz outing "Zoning."

Mary Lou Williams' unerring ear kept her composing through five decades of music, and she was always able to bring something new to her work. She deserves wider recognition and appreciation, which Saturday's concert may help launch.