Oregon Music News

“Let’s sit over here where I can see my saxophone,” Joe Manis said as we settled down on a Wednesday night beneath the cavernous ceiling of Sam Bond’s Garage in Eugene to talk about life and music an hour before his band, the Joe Manis Trio, took the stage to dissolve the walls of the venue with  jazz that can soothe one moment and scathe the next.

Clearly, this is a man who loves his saxophone. Yet, as we speak about his background at the University of Oregon and the New England Conservatory of Music, where Manis received his Masters degree, he recalls instances when “people don’t even know what instrument I play. It’s kind of scary.”

At a time when three minute encapsulations of endlessly repeating pop hooks are accessible in less than a minute from iTunes, Joe Manis is in the unenviable position of playing instrumental jazz improvisation to audiences whose attentions spans are increasingly driven towards the packaged, flashy veneer of modern music.

“Music is just changing,” Manis says. “People download everything now. But they just download the single, not the whole album. People don’t buy CDs. Sometimes it seems like live music is something that annoys people if they’re going to a bar, or it seems like a novelty. Especially, if it’s not bass, guitar and vocal.”

Speaking in these terms, it could be easy to dismiss Manis as unwilling to embrace music’s modern, techno-centric direction. Yet, his calm demeanor and soft voice hold no snobbery or rancor, only a sad acceptance that the majority of the music world does not share his passion for the music that makes up his life. The music that he loves.

“We definitely need people listening. That’s something that’s lacking,” Manis continues. “But that’s what I love about Sam Bond’s. This is my favorite place to play, no question about it. There is such a cool vibe and the sound is great. Plus, you can play anything you want.”

On this night, the bar is half full. Paper pagoda lights hang from the ceiling, casting a hazy pall over the scattered bar scene. Colorful, almost tacky art, haphazardly decorates the walls that echos with the Trio’s flawless jazz. It’s like a caviar taco.

The Trio, which features Manis on tenor, Kevin McDonald on stand-up bass and Ryan Biesack on drums, mix jazz classics from Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane with original compositions by Manis that juxtapose tight grooves with free-form solo sections.

Manis spends much of the show relaxing against the wall, letting his band members explore a song’s musical possibilities before leaping back in with blistering sax lines or melodic accompaniment.

He honed this sense of musical space and ensemble mentality while playing with his other group: the Cherry-Poppin Daddies.

“With the Daddies, it’s about being a solid member of a section and hitting your cut-offs, articulations and dynamics. On any given night, I’ll probably have maybe 12 bars of solo. For some people who would be a downer, but I just don’t view it that way. It’s a challenge and it has helped me grow as a player.”

With the Trio, however, Manis lets it rip, wrenching sounds from his instrument that range from reedy screams to mellow moans. He balances this with a finely tuned melodic and rhythmic sense.

During the second set, Manis invited alto sax player Hashem Assadullahs and trumpet player, former U of O instructor Josh Deutsch, in from New York, to the stage. The ensuing musical interplay between the three players was the highlight of the night. With their instruments, they conversed on stage like old friends, harmonizing, soloing or simply listening and appreciating.

For Manis and the people who enjoy hearing him play, music is the product of dedication, passion and attention. It is not always easily grasped, but it is an experience that is always changing, revealing revelations and rewards at every corner.

Pharoah Sanders at the Newmark. PJF photo by Fran Kaufman

Count your blessings, name them one by one.  

Hearing great music wonderfully activates the memory. How sloppy this piece would become if I burdened you with all the musical associations the two final concerts of the Portland Jazz Festival, 2010, evoked.  

Pharoah Sanders.  

The big issue, of course, was how long one can sustain the harrowing energy this approach to music entails. What would Coltrane sound like 30 years on?  

Well, the show went off with “Favorite Things,” a fairly thin vehicle for some of the most astonishing improvisation that has ever occurred. Wes Montgomery opted out (I saw him with Coltrane at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco) because he got tired of playing the same two chords, but this was a sweet tribute.  

The powerful Coltrane quotes were there, the independent treatment of the song was there. It was a very promising start.  

L to R Hans Glawischnig. Sanders, Justin Falkner. PJF photo by Fran Kaufman

Since none of the selections were called, I’m proud to announce that the next selection was “Say It (Over and Over Again).” Searching for the name of that tune on Rhapsody was a fine reminder of Sanders’ huge output. You can see why that song would become embedded in Sanders’ head. It is a sweet, tranquil line, relief from the tumult of his fundamental inclination.  

Quickly, jazz history must be evoked. Who else but Sanders and Sonny Rollins is still standing from the Golden Age? James Moody, Clark Terry, Hank Jones, and Lee Konitz. But who else? You’ll think of a few but the point is made and there seemed to be some recognition of this at the Newmark Sunday afternoon.  

George Page was a colleague of mine in commercial television during the 70s. He had a jazz show on KBOO and billed himself as “The Master Blaster.” George is elsewhere but I’m confident that he would step back when it comes to Blasting if Pharoah was in the room.  

Has the Blast lasted? It has but you had to give it some time. Sanders, these days, is clearly pacing himself. He exploded when and where it served his purposes.  

The cunning of the man was revealed in his choice of associates. In addition to pianist William Henderson, Sanders plucked bassist Hans Glawischnig and drummer Justin Faulkner from the Mingus Big Band and had a local (via New Orleans) Devin Phillips share tenor duties. Much has been made of Faulkner, who is 18 years old, and rightfully so; he could kick a band with one hand and, when he got going, appeared to have been seized by a more or less benign epileptic fit.  

No one, prior to the Golden Age and beyond, has teased so many strange sounds out of a tenor saxophone than the Pharoah. Echo effects, warbles, ululations and splintered multi-sonics abounded. Others have gotten percussive sounds from the instrument by just fingering the pads (not blowing) but his are really loud. I kept looking at the bass player to see how he was doing that but he wasn’t (at that moment) doing anything.  

Bassist Glawischnig (pronouncing that name isn’t as hard as standing in for Charlie Mingus) is a great lunger. His very clean figures fairly jump out at you and, on a very long arco solo, he played bass like a fiddle. Henderson contributed to the band’s big bottom with his left hand while his right, given an opening, was all fluid.  

And, when there was a pause and he struck a few very bright notes, joy arrived. It was party time, “African High Life.”  

Phillips waiting for his idol to finish a solo. PJF photo by Fran Kaufman.

Before that, Phillips was sorely tested. He had been invited to introduce Sanders, his idol. He brought his horn but I’m not sure that he expected to play. But he did, and had to follow a Sanders’ solo that was a vintage head shaker. Tentative at first, he dug in. Asked later whether he had been worried, he told a friend that he wasn’t thinking but that he was now going home to sit down and brood about the event.  

Read the OMN Sanders/Phillips backstory.  

In conversation, the most reticent of men, Sanders was frisky as an old colt on stage yesterday. He pranced and danced, then conducted a community sing that would have made Pete Seeger envious. He had the sold-out crowd saving the children and loving the mothers and fathers before going tribal with huge African shouts.  

I entered the Newmark sick with the flu, left feeling damn fine.  

Oregon Music News is happy to be a Supporting Sponsor of the Portland Jazz Festival.

There is so much music out there that one feels like a poorly performing hunter/gatherer cast into Zupans. So thank you Portland Jazz Festival and Oregon Music News for directing my attention back to Pharaoh Sanders. Damn, yes! I remember now: “The Creator has a Master Plan”.

Actually, I sought the assignment because in the late 70’s I went to hear Sanders with Jim Pepper at the Northwest Service Center in Portland. Pepper, an old friend of the Pharoah, sat impassively through the concert. At its conclusion, he put his hands on his knees and simply said: “I’ve got to get back to New York. You’ve got to play on that level.” (This piece gets spiked unless I note that Ferrell Sanders was Egypted by Sun Ra.)

That was some band. Am pretty sure the personnel included Sanders, Idris Muhammad on drums, John Hicks, piano, and Walker Booker, bass. As I recall, there was a respectable amount of applause but mainly it was gaping mouths.

An excellent woman who works where I do said she doesn’t much like to listen to sounds like this on record but leaps at the opportunity to hear it live (was ecstatic about the Portland Jazz Festival’s recent presentation of Ornette Coleman).

So this is your cup of tea or it isn’t. Sanders was playing with John Coltrane on “Live in Seattle” and more that one acquaintance of mine considers that to be one the most astonishing experiences of their lives. Pharoah chatter on the Internet includes a rebuttal to Whitney Balliett’s putdown, that it’s noise, not music. Call it what you want, was the rejoinder, if it’s noise it’s noise of surpassing power and frequent beauty.

Sanders, who is verging on 70 years-of-age, was, and apparently still is, one of the deep mystics of improvised music. While it takes some serious woodshedding to become a conduit of the Spirit, at some point one can become a vessel. (Albert Ayler held that Coltrane was the Father, Sanders the Son, and, modestly, he was the Holy Ghost.) Spirit, in this incarnation, seems close to pure aural energy.

After a recent session of listening to Sanders (and, yes, the records are important but it’s harder to get yourself up for the demanding experience on record than it is when you’re there) I was mystified by a refrain which is constantly repeated. It sometimes on three cuts of a single record and in every album it almost always turns up. What accounts for this mantra or incantation? It almost seems as if everything flows from this one musical figure.

The Wikipedia entry on Sanders features an assertion by Ornette Coleman that Pharoah is the greatest living tenor player. Well, my friends who are not friends of this music will say, “consider the source.” I’m perfectly willing to do that.

So, in addition to the constantly iterated figure described above, what else can you expect to hear Sunday, February 28, at 3 p.m. in the Newmark Theater? Sanders, who says he never rehearses a band, may be as interested as you are. Of an earlier concert, he declared: “it’s all going to be new to me.”

Watch Pharoah walking toward you in an abandoned tunnel:

Oregon Music News is happy to be a Supporting Sponsor of the 2010 Portland Jazz Festival.

Listen to him on record and you’ll be mesmerized, put under a bewitching, jazzy spell.  See him live in the club and you’ll understand why this man is an internationally renowned DJ.

DJ Krush is one of the founders of Japanese hip-hop.  But that’s not what makes him important.  Krush is a true artist, a turntablist, who pulses with creative energy and pushes for constant innovation.  Not to mention he’s highly respected by fans, artists, DJs, and musicians around the world.

The man has got a mind–he doesn’t strive for any particular purpose other than self-satisfaction.  And he sets the bar for himself… immeasurably high.

—

The 1983 graffiti-soaked film Wild Style introduced hip-hop music to the world, and in Tokyo, a young Hideaki Ishi saw breakdancing, freestyle MCing, and most importantly, Grandmaster Flash scratching on a pair of primitive turntables.

The groundbreaking work transformed Ishi into DJ Krush.  He became a DJ “after I watched the movie Wild Style,” exclaims Krush.  “That movie changed my life!!” Krush claims he was “just hanging out” before he starting DJing, but after dropping out of high school, he was on the streets in a local gang and later, the Yakuza.

After Wild Style, he started going to Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park where street musicians and b-boys were breakdancing.  But there wasn’t much hip-hop music or many DJs in Japan at that time.  “There was only a small scene,” says Krush.  “It was really hard for us to find information about anything.”

Krush created his own style.  He is a composer, without any formal musical training, blending hip-hop and jazz, creating atmospheric worlds replete with dub baselines, jazz horns, raw beats, and soul divas–living in complete harmony.

Calm and chilled, his music is phenomenally jazzy as Krush has collaborated with composers and percussionists, jazz trumpeters and guitarists, and, of course, DJs, like DJ Spooky and DJ Shadow.  But he made a name for himself by playing with Japanese jazz greats not just in the studio but live as well, grabbing attention in the early 90’s by mixing turntables and live musicians together on stage.

His sound is comforting and minimal, yet extremely textured and layered–the honey to the combs.  DJ Krush is regaled as a force and inspiration in acid jazz and trip-hop scenes but he’s not interested in labels or genres.

“I prize one’s own feelings and originality over everything else,” states Krush.

DJ Krush will teach PDX a thing or two on Saturday night at Rotture when you can expect his set to bang with brazen hip-hop breaks and surreal scratching.

OMN had the opportunity to ask Krush a few questions through Japanese translator.  We’re happy to host him in Portland because Krush will raze Rotture.

What does your name mean?

My name has no significant meaning. In late 80’s, I was spinning with my brother and one of my friends from the US gave our duo the name “krush-bang” (crush-bang) at that time. So after that, I just made my DJ name DJ Krush and my brother became DJ Bang.

Who are your musical influences?

There are so many. For example, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, etc….

What are your non-musical inspirations?

The time I spend with my family and the time I spend traveling all over the world, seeing new people, new points of view, new smells, new atmospheres…

You are a pioneer of acid jazz, trip-hop, ambient, Japanese hip-hop… the list goes on.

I’m not sure about this. Actually, I do not care about genres. I’m just doing what I want to do and as a result, people call my sound trip-hop or abstract.

If you had to give a name to your sound, what would you call it?

KRUSH!!

Are there any traditional Japanese elements in your music?

I’m not conscious of Japanese elements in my sound or styles. But the concept for my album Jaku was to mix elements with traditional Japanese style. So I employed many Japanese instruments like shakuhachi, taiko, shamisen, and others.

What is the Japanese hip-hop and DJ scene like today?

I think it is still growing up. There are many interesting artists, especially in underground scene.

Do you have any examples of artists who you enjoy in today’s Japanese hip-hop and DJ scene?

There are many so many artists that I cannot even pick a few to name at this point. But I am always interested in artists or music that have their own originality and create an atmosphere.

You’ve worked with internationally recognized artists for years.  Who was your favorite?

I respect all the artists who I have had the pleasure to work with. But I’m DJ so it was a great experience when I worked with DJ Shadow.

Who would you like to work with today?

It is hard to say who specifically, but I am always interested in working with artists who show they have originality.

What is your favorite type of music?

Old jazz.

How many times have you been to Portland before?  What do you think about it here?

This is a my fourth time coming to Portland to play a gig. There are many creative people in Portland and I have enjoyed myself every time.

—
Saturday, January 30, 2010
DJ Krush
Ryan Organ
E3
DJ Kez
Rotture
$15 advance tickets
9 PM
21+

Cool

A former wife recently developed an interest in jazz and asked me for a playlist of accessible performances. I can do better than that. The BBC documentary “Cool” by Anthony Wall (screening Sunday, January 10 at 7pm and Friday, January 15,at 9 pm) packages compliance with the request in a visually sumptuous period piece about the 1950s.

Upon hearing about the assignment, I prepared myself for some kind of abstruse sociological analysis of racism in America and the complex strategies Black people have employed to rise above it. An example of this is a book entitled “Hip: the history” by John Leland that explores the evolution of attitude associated with the word “cool” (depending on your perspective, “cool” is a subset of “hip” or vice versa).

Nothing of the sort. The concept of “cool” in music is elastic enough to accommodate a deeply atmospheric, black and white excursion through a decade that could have only been one upped by something as outrageous as the 60s.

Can you believe Miles Davis ever said that “The Birth of the Cool” was the product of his determination to “make BeBop sweet”? The Davis I encountered would tell you where to put your “sweet”. There is another Davis quote that is preposterous enough to be true, that he could tell whether a musician could play by the way he stood. (Could this apply to Bill Evans?)

Fashion, as it happens, is front stage center in “Cool.” It’s about style. It is also about the lamentably lost period when jazz music was at the heart of American (and European) culture.

The musical performances absolutely deliver what is sought by my former mate, accessibility. It starts with a visit to the chapel, Bird and Diz. Then comes the solemn decorum of the Modern Jazz Quartet, Art Farmer and Jim Hall, tight shots of Dizzy Gillespie’s expando chops, Oscar Peterson and Ray Brown (finding an example of “cool” there had to have been tough), Brubeck and Desmond, Chet Baker’s alarming beauty (face and voice), Gerry Mulligan, on clarinet, perplexed by the phrasing of Jobim’s music, Stan Getz complaining about the charge of having “gone commercial.”

This, of course, was before things got out of hand, became inaccessible, uncool. John Coltrane, playing with Davis, had not yet gotten out of hand. There is not a breath about Ornette Coleman. But first things first for the newbie.

That’s for the ears. For the eyes, New York City’s skyline, Harlem, 52nd Street, lots of train and early freeway sequences from the 50s. What the hell, why not throw in Rio during Carnival (Bossa Nova), Jack Kerouac hitting the doorbell of a wrong address, Cab Calloway and jitterbugs, scenes from New Wave movies in France using jazz sound tracks.

Fun, fun, fun, til the Butcher chopped almost all of them down.

Oregon Music News is a Reel Music 27 sponsor.

Read the whole Reel Music 27 schedule here.

John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Aretha Franklin, Woody Allen, Jimi Hendrix, Pete Seeger, Allen Ginsberg…  The list goes on and on of the artists who played at the Village Gate – a club in Greenwich Village, NYC. The club was open from 1958-1994.

Bob Dylan is said to have written A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall in the club in 1962.

Art D’Lugoff, the man behind it all, died Wednesday in NYC. Read the New York Times obit.