Jazz
It’s a worthy effort –- and, as a listener, how many times will you have the chance for real adventure inside a concert hall?
Swarms in the train station! Improv in the library! Video game hits and poetry! Must be Jazz Week–and there’s plenty more, including a major CD release by Argentinian bassist Fernando Huergo paying tribute to the land of the Albiceleste.
Jazz songs by composer John Harbison? An ensemble devoted to the music of Björk? A quartet taking over a theatre and breaking the “fourth wall”? Jazz Week 2012 stakes out territory on the permeable boundary where jazz encounters other genres and even other art forms.
A reprise of Fred Hersch’s Leaves of Grass highlights the key role of Boston’s educational institutions; plus, an abundance of performances celebrating CD releases.
Like other great artists –- Martha Argerich and Steve Lacy come to mind right away — pianist Kirill Gerstein approaches every note with a sense of how important that note is in relation to every one that has come before and every one that is to come after.
When the jazz composer is the soloist, which is usually the case, he or she ironically revives one of the most venerable traditions in classical music.
Chick Corea’s “The Continents: Concerto for Jazz Quintet and Chamber Orchestra” is filled with tuneful melody, shows off some superb playing by the soloists, breaks new ground in a number of ways, and achieves nearly all of its ambitions.
From James P. Johnson to Thelonious Monk to Jason Moran, inspired mentors carry the past into the future.
Art with a capital A has been put on such a pedestal that Craft with a capital C has been downgraded to a shabby or rustic sort of activity of which the practitioner should be a little ashamed. ’Tain’t so.
Dominique Eade’s two greatest gifts are her clarity of musical thought and her courage as an improviser. She does not try to be a cabaret-style interpreter or a ring-a-ding-ding swinger.
Arts Commentary: The Kennedy Center and the Boston Symphony Orchestra — A Tale of Two Crises