billbeuttler.com

January 1, 1970

Four jazz pieces this week, and a fifth — a review of the Wednesday night performance of the Willem Breuker Kollektief at the Somerville club Johnny D's — appears to have been bumped from this morning's paper for some reason. With luck, it will run Monday. (Because if it doesn't run, I'll have spent several hours doing work for the Globe, at my editors' request, and may never see a dime for my labor.)

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Callaway speeds ahead with her 'Slow' songs

By Bill Beuttler, Globe Correspondent  |  September 24, 2004

Ann Hampton Callaway is finally singing her own tunes. More specifically, she is finally singing them on CD, having written or co-written half of the dozen songs on her August release, "Slow."

It's not that Callaway, 46, who will be performing material from the disc at Scullers on Tuesday, hasn't been writing songs all along. Some of them, in fact, are very well known. There is her theme song for the 1990s sitcom "The Nanny."

More recently, Callaway was asked to write lyrics for what became the song "I Dreamed of You" for a Barbra Streisand recording project, "A Love Like Ours." Streisand liked the lyrics so much that she debuted the song at her 1998 wedding to James Brolin, with Callaway's demo tape.

Those who have seen Callaway perform are also familiar with the gifted vocalist's shtick of improvising comical songs on the spot from phrases supplied by audience members. ("My all-time favorite improv phrase," she says, "was 'colostomy bag and shoes to match.'")

But despite her obvious deftness as a songwriter, all but the second of Callaway's previous seven CDs have ignored the singer's own compositions. "For some reason," Callaway says by phone from her Manhattan apartment, "even though I am a semiprolific songwriter, the producers I've worked with have only been interested in me doing standards."

Not so Danny Weiss, Callaway's coproducer on "Slow," her first disc for Shanachie Entertainment. "Slow" turned out to be a concept album, a "classic make-out album" inspired, Callaway says, by "certain CDs that you just put on and you know you're going to go into a space that's, you know, blissful." High on her list of role models was Shirley Horn's "Here's to Life."

"That CD was one of the most beautiful CDs I've ever heard," Callaway says, "so that set a bar . . . I mean, it's a different kind of CD. I don't have Johnny Mandel doing strings. But I think a lot of times artists try to create the records they want to listen to."

In this case, what Callaway wanted to hear was further inspired, in a roundabout way, by singer-songwriter Carole King. It was King's album "Tapestry" that stirred Callaway to want to write songs, and King had become a fan of Callaway's as well. The two agreed to collaborate on a tune for Callaway's new CD.

Callaway set off for the Virgin Megastore at Times Square to pick up King's newest CD, "Love Makes the World" (2001) in preparation. The store had been frenzied and loud, and Callaway found herself needing an oasis.

Callaway sent King an e-mail message asking if she would like to write "Slow" with her, but by the time King wrote back, Callaway had finished the piece. "I just went to my piano and the song wrote itself," she says. Callaway and King wound up collaborating on another new piece, "Tonight You're All Mine."

Then there is Callaway's own version of Streisand's wedding song. Streisand and Brolin had heard the melody by the Norwegian pianist Rolf Lovland, originally titled "Heartstrings," and Streisand asked her longtime producer, Jay Landers, to get someone to write lyrics for it. Landers tapped Callaway.

"Barbra has very high standards," Landers adds, "and she continually gravitates towards two or three composers, like Alan and Marilyn Bergman or Stephen Sondheim, that she returns to . . . because they're writing intelligent songs. And Ann's material very much falls into that world."

Callaway struggled initially with the lyrics. Streisand suggested she ignore the title and write about whatever Callaway wanted.

"I did what all partly Irish girls do when they're in trouble," Callaway says. "I succumbed to alcohol. . . . I realized she was getting married that year, and so I thought, `Well, I'll write a wedding song.' And so two white wine spritzers later, I had written a wedding lyric." 

© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Bob the Chef's owner Settles went to great lengths to cook up a local jazz festival

By Bill Beuttler, Globe Correspondent  |  September 24, 2004

The seeds of the BeanTown Jazz Festival were planted about five years ago in Bob the Chef's Jazz Cafe. It was there that the owner, Darryl Settles, approached Mayor Thomas M. Menino about the possibility of a neighborhood block party in the South End. A longtime customer of the venerable soul-food haunt, Menino was serving as an MC for a retirement party.

The idea, Settles says, "just popped in my head: 'The mayor is here, I've got all of these people here, why not ask him?'"

So he did. "You can do anything you want to do," Settles recalls him saying.

"I said, 'You see all the witnesses that I have here?' He said, 'Sure, go ahead.'" From that encounter, the idea has sprouted into an annual jazz event that's expected to draw 40,000 people tomorrow over several blocks of Columbus Avenue. Getting to this point hasn't exactly been as simple as asking the mayor for approval, but few obstacles seem to stop Settles, a former engineer who's now an entrepreneur of ever-escalating ambitions.

In addition to producing the BeanTown festival and running Bob the Chef's, Settles is president of BeanTown Sounds, which books live entertainment for corporate and social events. He keeps a hand in real estate development in Boston and in Rhode Island. He hopes to break ground soon on a 30-unit South End condo complex. And later this year, he and Brad Fredericks of Fajitas & 'Ritas hope to open a jazz nightspot and eatery at the Boston Center for the Arts called the Chit Chat Lounge.

Even with all his endeavors, producing the BeanTown Jazz Festival each year remains a source of pride for Settles. "People are amazed at how successful this festival has become in such a short period of time," says Settles, a native of South Carolina who moved to Boston in 1984. "And it's that way because we take pain and energy selecting people that are going to bring crowds."

The pain was especially evident at the beginning. Despite the mayor's informal OK, City Hall denied a Settles petition to block off Columbus Avenue. But, he says, supporters urged him not to give up.

"So I ... went up and down Tremont [Street] and Columbus Avenue," Settles says, "and had people write letters. And then we went to all the local elected officials and had them write letters in support. And we put it together in a binder and took it to City Hall, and now we have a jazz festival."

Menino himself has become a fan of the event, says mayoral press secretary Seth Gitell. "Columbus Avenue is a historic jazz corridor going back a long way in the city's history," he says, "so this helps carry that forward." At the same time, the festival retains the feel of a large party. It's free and offers a variety of children's activities. For adults, there are three music stages and many restaurant booths.

"You get everyone seeing people that they haven't seen in months," Settles says. "So a lot of times you're not really listening to the music."

That's just as well, some jazz buffs would argue. Straight-ahead instrumental jazz has tended to get short shrift at the first four BeanTown Jazz Festivals in favor of more crowd-pleasing Latin jazz, R&B, and — this year — the platinum-selling "contemporary jazz" saxophonist Najee.

Settles makes no apologies for favoring wide appeal.

"They believe that the only jazz is traditional jazz," Settles says of hard-core jazz fans, "and I don't agree with that."

While there may not be enough pure jazz to suit everyone, no one can quibble about a lack of Beantown-based artists at the festival. Almost all of this year's headliners have local roots.

"One of the great things about Boston is that we have an overabundance of musicians," Settles says. "It's really unfair for them, because there are not enough places for them to perform. But Boston is just loaded with talent." 

© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Rubalcaba mines his past with 'Paseo'

By Bill Beuttler, Globe Correspondent  |  September 19, 2004

Gonzalo Rubalcaba's three-night stand at the Real Deal Jazz Club & Cafe later this month is among the highlights in a particularly strong fall season for jazz in Boston. And his Sept. 24-26 run there could hardly be timelier.

Two days after the Cuban expatriate's Cambridge set wraps up, Blue Note Records will be bringing out "Paseo," the sparkling follow-up to Rubalcaba's highly successful 2001 CD "Supernova," which earned him Grammy nominations in two categories: best Latin jazz album and best instrumental composition.

Meanwhile, Verve Records has released "Land of the Sun," Charlie Haden's exquisite tribute to the music of Mexico and the undervalued composer Jose Sabre Marroquin, on which Haden is joined by Rubalcaba and Rubalcaba's longtime drummer Ignacio Berroa, as well as Joe Lovano, Miguel Zenon, and others. Rubalcaba wrote all the arrangements on the new Haden disc, a sensible assignment given his having earned a third 2002 Grammy nomination for his arranging on Haden's CD "Nocturne."

Rubalcaba's Real Deal appearance, like the new CD, will feature his New Cuban Quartet, in which he and Berroa are joined by fellow Cuban expats Felipe Lamoglia on saxophones and Armando Gola on electric bass. As Rubalcaba, 41, explains by phone from his home near Fort Lauderdale, "Paseo" is largely his new group's reassessment of music from his past, with five of the nine tunes on the CD having first been performed by previous groups of his a decade ago or more.

"I thought it was a wonderful moment to take this music again into consideration," Rubalcaba says, "and put that in the hands of the new people, different musicians. And I think it worked very, very good. It doesn't sound like this is music that was done 10 or 15 years ago."

The music, like all of Rubalcaba's work, is built on his exceptional ability to meld the many musical idioms he has mastered, chief among them jazz, European classical, and those of his native Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America. On "Paseo," the result is music as seamless and compelling as it is contemporary, despite its many elements.

Ten years on, those old compositions are sounding better to Rubalcaba than ever. "The good thing is if you feel that you have been developing yourself as a musician, not only as a player but as a thinker," he says. "The reality is that I could think at that level as a composer, but I didn't have experience enough to play it. Right now I think we are a little bit more relaxed, more cultured."

A decade ago was also when Rubalcaba began making his long-delayed first appearances in the United States. It would have happened several years earlier, but the US government wouldn't grant Rubalcaba a visa when Dizzy Gillespie — his earliest big-name jazz advocate — tried to bring him to Central Park for a performance. The two had met when Gillespie went to Havana for a 1984 jazz festival, caught Rubalcaba's band at the Hotel Nacional, and asked the young pianist to sit in with him at the festival.

"I know that he was talking about me to everybody everyplace he went after Cuba," says Rubalcaba. "It's something that I'll appreciate the rest of my life."

For now, Rubalcaba and his all-Cuban band have a more pressing priority.

"We are taking our history to a different point, a more international point," he says. "I don't want to make music that only the Cuban people can understand. I want to make music that everybody around the world can understand, can enjoy." 

© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Season highlights: Jazz

By Bill Beuttler, Globe Correspondent  |  September 19, 2004

Jazz at its most intimate takes place in club settings. So here are a couple of notable fall shows from four of the Hub's leading jazz rooms, plus a roundup of what's in store this fall at the larger concert venues.

Cambridge's newest jazz venue, the Real Deal Jazz Club & Cafe , scored a coup when it booked guitarist Jim Hall and bassist Dave Holland for a three-night duet engagement (Dec. 2-4). The two have recorded together before, and performed a few times in Manhattan and overseas, but this is a first for this town. Later that month, piano legend McCoy Tyner will bring in a new group featuring the woefully underrated alto saxophonist Gary Bartz as his special guest (Dec. 16-19).

There is little in jazz these days that's as satisfyingly elegant as Ron Carter's "Golden Striker" trio with pianist Mulgrew Miller and guitarist Russell Malone, which returns to the Regattabar for two nights later this month (Sept. 29-30). The drumless group's performance at Newport this summer included an especially graceful Miller solo on "My Funny Valentine," but their entire set was among the high points of the festival. Guitar gods will also get a good airing this season under the Regattabar's new management, with Mike Stern coming next month (Oct. 12-13), and Bill Frisell the month after (Nov. 18-20).

The sudden passing of James Williams in July at age 53 was some of the saddest news of the summer. Just this past March he and his group ICU had ushered in Ryles 's renewed focus on jazz with a joyously energetic performance. Next month the club will host a two-night tribute to the late pianist, with local standouts Bill Pierce and John Lockwood and Williams's fellow Memphis State University alumnus Mulgrew Miller among those paying homage (Oct. 8-9). Proceeds will go toward establishing a Berklee scholarship in his name. Also worth noting for next month: a sure-to-be-sizzling set from acid-jazz guitar godfather Melvin Sparks (Oct. 2).

The city's closest approximation of a cabaret, Scullers , has a pair of standout vocalists coming in within days of each other later this month, with the sui generis Abbey Lincoln doing a Thursday-Saturday run (Sept. 23-25) followed by a Tuesday one-nighter by Ann Hampton Callaway (Sept. 28). A onetime Tony nominee, Callaway's most familiar original tune — to TV watchers, anyway — is the theme song from the popular sitcom "The Nanny." But life's not just a cabaret at Scullers, as pianist Brad Mehldau and violinist Regina Carter will demonstrate in high-profile instrumental sets next month (Mehldau, Oct. 6; Carter, Oct. 14-15).

Big names often require big venues, and no name is bigger in jazz nowadays than Marsalis. Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, with special guest vocalist Dianne Reeves, will open the Bank of America Celebrity series at Symphony Hall this month with "Out Here to Swing," featuring music by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Benny Goodman, and Charles Mingus (Sept. 26). His brother Branford Marsalis will bring his quartet to Sanders Theater later that same week to celebrate their new CD, "Eternal" (Oct. 3). Latin jazz Grammy winner Michel Camilo will follow him to the Sanders later that month (Oct. 22), and Chelsea homeboy Chick Corea will bring his Elektric Band to the Berklee Performance Center Nov. 21.
 
© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company